Essay as Experiment…

…or what is Lopate saying?

Where to begin? Philip Lopate’s introduction to The Art of the Personal Essay is a dense (dense meaning “containing much matter per unit volume”, not dense meaning “thick-headed”) opening which could itself be a treatise on the personal essay, rather than a mere introduction. He describes in great detail what an essay entails (here’s a short list, from his headings: a conversational element; “honesty, confession, and privacy”; contractions and expansions of the self; “the problem of egotism”; “cheek and irony”;  “the idler figure”; “the past, the local, and the melancholy”) and what worth the essay has in this modern world.

Being an egotist myself, I read this entire essay through the lens of someone looking to write personal essays and found myself daunted. Lopate says, and I’m inclined to agree, “While young people excel at lyrical poetry and mathematics, it is hard to think of anyone who made a mark on the personal essay in his or her youth.” I certainly am better at lyrical poems than I’ve ever been at essays (though I’m crap at mathematics, so I’m not sure what young people Lopate’s been talking to). Essayists focus mostly on the past, he says, and I find that daunting, as well, because the past eludes me at every turn (I’m crap at memory, too).

I can be as self-effacing as E.B. White, but self-effacement alone won’t write a good essay and I’m not sure my tone is one anyone would want to read (some whiny twenty-something complaining that their writing isn’t what they’d like it to be? Please. [The key point here is the “whiny” not the content of the complaint]). I find myself judging myself by the standards Lopate sets for good essayists and am reminded of the Kerouac quote on my mini-fridge: “The only ones for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved … who never yawn or say a commonplace thing…” I judge myself by that, too, and inevitably fall short (though I’ve read On the Road and I wouldn’t live Kerouac’s life for anything).

I took a glance at the already existing blog posts when I first started writing this response (this is my 2nd try, the first one got eaten by an accidental click of the Back button on my browser. I’m smarter now; I’m writing it in the Notes app) and some of my classmates already seem to have a grasp of the form of the personal essay–the conversational tone, the honesty and vulnerability, the digressions that nevertheless lead back to the main point…

I think I’ve gotten into the habit of reading advice for writers or works about writers from the perspective of someone who’s already done their best work and will never write that well again. Wrong perspective. I’m only twenty-one. I think I’m going to have to re-read this introduction as advice rather than as judgment and see what I think then.

Oh, hey, there’s the epiphany in the midst of my writing! I think I’m getting the hang of this!