woops

is not like other people
it's more like an unanthologised article written for free about why anthologised essays are bad and writted for free
 

craner

Beast of Burden

I agree with the thrust of this, although I don't agree with all of his points (I don't think good essays have to be "personal" in the way he means, in fact I think that is a large part of the problem).

The reason so many essays are so bad these days is because of solipsism and posturing; i.e. ego and vanity. There are elements of these things in my personal favorites (Fouad Ajami, Norman Podhoretz, Robert Warshow, Clement Greenberg) but, actually, the reason they are so good is down to ideas and style, not the contours of their perception or the quality of their soul. Writers regularly touted as master essayists (David Foster Wallace springs to mind) are actually responsible for some of the most turgid and pointless excretions to have soiled modern American literature in recent decades. I do not say this with any bitterness at all, it goes without saying.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
Is this an essay about why essays are bad?
not essays in general. it laments certain strands of the popular modern essay, like the overly personal, autobiographical ones, the lack of clear answers, the trend of putting emphasis on confusion and ambivalence:

And yet many of the essayists in TCAE seem oddly determined not to think clearly. They consider many options, it’s true, but existence is usually too chaotic for anything further. In lieu of a final, definite decision (which would require perspective, that problematic thing), the essayists leave behind a mess of maybes and perhapses and hot, urgent rhetorical questions that dare you to scream yes! or no! or sure, why not, who cares! It is difficult to convey the experience of getting through hundreds and hundreds of these kinds of questions: “Perhaps that’s going too far” (O’Gieblyn) … “perhaps I’m falling into confusion” (Emily Fox Gordon) … “Perhaps this is enough of a reason to journey on” (Yiyun Li)… “Perhaps the first rule of everything we endeavor to do is to pay attention” (Barry Lopez) … “this is perhaps instructive” (good old Monson, failing to instruct) … “Perhaps I’m projecting” (Gordon again).

I could go on, but then I’d be falling into the same trap many of these essayists fall into — privileging what feels true over what’s demonstrably true, wallowing in the anecdotal without so much as a touch of dry precision.
 
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