Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

Lex Williford & Michael Martone (eds)

The Next American Essay

John D'Agata, Guy Davenport (eds)

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present

Phillip Lopate (ed)

Following on from last week’s review from Courtney I’ve been reading a lot of essays recently, partly because they’re so hot right now ;-) and partly because I’ve been taking a paper on creative non-fiction. Anthologies are funny things, they are by their nature fragmented and some editors have a stronger presence than others.

Of these three anthologies the Lopate strives to be the definitive collection. It is a huge book, covers a vast period of time and introduces readers to the classics of the genre. You can see why it is often used as a text.

The collection consists of 75 personal essays, spanning over 400 years. The earliest dates from the 1600's, from Seneca and De Montaigne to Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginia Woolf and Orwell.

One section - "Other Cultures, Other Continents"-includes: Ivan Turgenev, Lu Hsun, Jorge Luis Borges, and Roland Barthes. He also includes the "American Scene" with Thoreau, Thurber, McCarthy, Fitzgerald, E.B. White, Baldwin, Didion and Lopate himself.

The whole collection is also categorised by "Theme and Form" such as: ambition, city life, country living, death, drugs & alcohol, disability & illness, food, family ties, leisure, love and sexuality, music, nature, walking, race & ethnicity. The classifications of essays under "Form" list: analytical meditation, consolation, diatribe, humor, list, mossaic, memoir. I really like this aspect.

His introduction is a great essay in itself about the personal essay. He discusses his selection, rationale and arrangement of this book.

The other two anthologies are not as ambitious in covering the history of the essay; they only cover my life time. Of the two D’Agata’s is the most eclectic in taste. He is trying to make us think about the genre- What is the essay? How do we define it and why? What are our expectations and do they matter?

Of all the editors John D'Agata's voice is the most present –he manages to carry the entire collection on a whimsical story about why he loves essays. It's charming. His selections are often bold and buck tradition in an attempt to show us the potential of the essay.

The touchstone anthology covers the same era as D’Agata’s but is less experimental. The editors asked 500 creative writing teachers which essays they like to teach and picked out their 50 favourites from the submissions. With that in mind it would have been interesting to have a small commentary from a teacher before each piece. The essays are all consistently good but not, on the whole, very risky.

If I could only choose one to take to a desert island I would probably pick the Lopate because it is so comprehensive but really you wouldn’t go wrong reading all three for three different takes on the form.