Seven Essays I Meet in My Literary Heaven
January 21, 2014 § 16 Comments
A guest post from Jennifer Niesslein, founder of Full Grown People, the essay magazine:
1. The Essay that Manages to Be Funny, Poignant, and Thought-Provoking All at the Same Time. I think I like this kind of essay because it most closely mimics real life: the humor and the pathos and the mysteries of being human. Shaun Anzaldua and Jody Mace are fabulous at this, and I don’t why they’re not household names.
2. The Essay that Takes Me Someplace. Listen, I live a sheltered life. I’ve been out of the country once and that was to Toronto for a conference. (The black squirrels weirded me out.) My favorite place is home, where my robe is waiting. So when I come across an essay that transports me to Montana, or Ireland, or Italy in a way that feels like the writer is carrying me in her pocket? I’m in.
3. The Essay that Sticks the Landing. I hate an everything-is-perfect-now ending, but those endings (like Jill Talbot’s or Amber Stevens’s) that take the momentum that the writer has built and actually bring it to a lip-pressing crescendo make me swoon. Isn’t that the point of an essay? To haunt the reader just a little?
4. The Essay that Teaches Me Something. What do I know about Jewish remembrance traditions or making paper? Nothing. (See “sheltered life,” above.) As William Bradley so eloquently wrote about, these essays put me in the skin of someone I’m not, and they increase my empathy.
5. The Essay that Makes Me Rethink My Attitude Entirely. And oh, no, I’m not talking about those essays that are basically click-bait. I’m talking essays like Kim Kankiewicz’s that completely changed my thinking about beauty, from a way to stand out to a way to fit in.
6. The Essay that I Know Someone Will Read and Be Thankful that It Came to Him or Her at This Moment. This is the most very gratifying part of my job—running something that I know will make someone say, “Oh, holy hell, YES!” Not every essay will hit a nerve with every reader, but there is something magical when a reader finds an essay that tackles the same circumstances he finds himself in and, at least for a moment, his loneliness disappears.
7. The Essay that Illuminates Naked Yearning. These pieces may force writers to reveal something ugly about themselves, but we all have something ugly in us, and there’s a relief that comes from recognizing it in an essay. Every good essay, though, mitigates that ugliness by revealing a yearning. Jennifer Maher yearns for a baby.Sonya Huber yearns for her partner to be cleaved from his addiction. Eric Williamson yearns for a more peaceful marriage. All of us—writer and reader—can yearn and yearn and yearn, but that doesn’t always mean we get what we want. In an essay, we get to be understood.
Thank you for this, Jennifer. I am bookmarking your piece for all those times I write and second-guess myself, thinking, “Who is going to care about this?” You’ve reminded me that my experience is not everyone’s experience, and that’s the value in it: as writers we can take people places they’ve never been, teach them things they didn’t know, be vulnerable in ways that opens a tenderness in the reader. Thank you for this.
Andrea Badgley! I didn’t expect to bump into a former neighbor when I clicked on this link.
Yes, thank you for this!
Dinty, I’m loving your posts! So much good stuff to share with friends, students, colleagues, fellow writers… Thanks!
______________________________
Kim Barnes Professor of English University of Idaho Moscow, ID 83844 http://www.kimbarnes.com
________________________________________
Oh, wow – this is so perfect, so inspiring, and so daunting at the same time!
Essay and memoir comprise my favorite genres – largely because I often find my very self in the words of another. Regardless of our disparate circumstances in life, people often arrive at the same conclusions. I first learned this when I saw my own feelings laid bare in Annie Dillard’s, “An American Childhood.” Since then, I cannot find enough avenues into others’ minds, and sites like Full Grown People provide a brilliant clearinghouse of the finest prose on earth!
What I love about this is not only that it captures the deeply plumbed truth and humanity found in Full Grown People, but that this “list” is in itself a mini-essay exemplifying all the qualities you’re speaking about.
Thanks so much, everyone! Editing with these writers is like a homemade MFA for me; I get to see how they make the magic happen. And a huge thank-you to Dinty; you’re generosity personified.
Superb overview of what makes a great personal essay and an introduction to some essayists I haven’t read and a literary journal I hadn’t heard about. Triple thanks.
Bookmarking this so I can really dig into these stories. Thank you.
Thank you for crystallizing some rewards of nonfiction. This is a good discussion starter in a class or club, sharing our own examples of each category. Another bookmark here, for reasons already mentioned by others.
[…] Seven Essays I meet in My Literary Heaven by Jennifer Niesslein on Brevity’s Nonfiction […]
[…] “Seven Essays I Meet in My Literary Heaven” at the Brevity […]
[…] Seven Essays I Meet in My Literary Heaven, by Jennifer Niesslein, January 21st, 2014 […]
Reblogged this on Her Headache and commented:
Today I am sharing this post from a few years ago, written by a brilliant woman I greatly admire, and whom I’ve learned so much from about what makes an essay shine. Interview with Jennifer to come on this blog very soon, so watch out for that.
[…] Seven Essays I Meet in My Literary Heaven – BREVITY’S Non Fiction Blog (Another publication I read and love.) […]