Essays

STN

sou'wester
can anyone recommend any good books of essays? preferably fairly modern ones...
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I read a good book of essays by Steve Jones a few years back. I think it was called The Single Helix (reference to SJ's long-standing interest in snails).
 

empty mirror

remember the jackalope
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by DFW was pretty funny and very very nineteen nineties; obviously written before the cell phone was in every pocket and before everyone had an intertube connection. the bit he wrote about being on the set of Lost Highway would be of interest to Lynch fanatics.

Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs is entertaining enough (if you are a dad; the essays are decidedly dad-centric) - the literary equivalent of sitting at a bar with someone of your generation and reminiscing about old GI Joe figures or like, Sid & Marty Kroft shows that you half-remember.
 

jenks

thread death
DfW is always good in this form
Jon Letham's stuff is good
John Berger particularly enlightening

I really like John Lanchester and Andrew O'Hagen - very LRB but they do it for me
Colm Toibin as well.

Could always go mad and go Pascal and Montesquieu
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I absolutely do not understand the appeal of David Foster Wallace -- not his style or his ideas. At least with Pynchon I'm impressed by virtuoso technical facility, even if I can't read the stuff. I read his essay on Federer, for example, and it wasn't even as good as a Simon Barnes piece in the Times.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Joan Didion writes great essays.

didion.jpg


She takes a good picture.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
For the Sake of Argument by Christopher Hitchens -- after Hazlitt and Orwell, my favorite one, and Hitch's best book by far.

It All Adds Up by Saul Bellow.
 

luka

Well-known member
Montesquieu

maybe you had montaigne in mind?
david foster wallace is appaling, its good to see you say that oliver craner. barnes is a funny one, everything he does is so overwritten that you think he must do it for a laugh and sort of admire it.
 
Top