Hey there!
I’m looking forward to talking about the first three essays in Best American Essays 2023 with those of you who are up for it!
My goal is to chat for an hour this coming Sunday, 11/12, about 11:00 PST. If it’s only me, I will dedicate the time anyway…! Because I believe in making time to read and talk and think about ideas.
Some of you are perhaps very experienced in considering an essay’s aims. Maybe you write them, maybe you’ve published, maybe you’ve won awards.
For others, it can be new, which is awesome. Then there’s that feeling of looking at a thing—reading a work, and reaching the end, and holding it in mind, and wondering, what was that? The first three essays in this collection are wildly different, surprising in various ways, and I’d say really fun, though in a dark kind of literary fun. Ha!
If you have no idea where to start, but you’re reading the essays and granting them consideration, there are three fundamental questions I always offered to my college students as a way to start the conversation. Three questions, though asked in various ways:
How does the title relate to the essay? (Or seem to relate…it’s okay to guess, to estimate, to wonder…maybe it’s just damn baffling! Ha!) What does the title add or emphasize?
Why does the author end where they end? How does the ending speak to the essayist’s goals? Why end there?
What can we take away that might enrich our lives, as writers, or as humans, or…?
Okay—a fourth question:
What do you remember about the piece, after you put the pages aside? Sometimes what we remember isn’t the big deal or central focus of the work, but it’s something that clicks with us, maybe a tiny detail, something funny or strange or informative or…..I don’t know. You tell me!
Those are just ideas, for anyone who might be looking for a toehold, a foothold, a step, a door, an open window, a question, a sentence.
Do you have the book? Are you joining us/me?
How are you?
xo
I hope I haven't thrown anyone off--somehow I'm aiming for Sunday. Sunday 11/12! I had the wrong date....
I’ll be there too!