ESCAPE INTO MEANING

A popular video essayist deepens his observations with a probing, graceful debut in print.

Puschak, a journalist and creator of the YouTube channel The Nerdwriter, surveys an uncommonly broad swath of literary, artistic, and philosophical ground in this inaugural collection, but he doesn’t skimp on the particulars. Though the author sometimes rambles, he’s seldom without a point, and the vast majority of these astute pieces show him to be an exemplar of inquiry and reflection. Puschak’s voice is companionable and engrossing, as he digests, weighs, and speculates with such assuredness that it belies his own insecurities and unsettled views. The author’s unifying theme is the power of gifted articulation, a skill he also demonstrates. The concept of the oeuvre is much on his mind, and he critiques those of luminaries as disparate as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jerry Seinfeld, William Butler Yeats, Quentin Tarantino, and William Gibson while locating surprising parallels in their designs and obsessions. Apart from the book’s apt title essay, an incisive take on Tolkien and the spectrum of meaning, particularly accessible and personal is “On Friendship,” an examination of the concept of identity. Puschak traces the boundaries of individuality and finds them permeable, especially with groups of friends. “I’m used to thinking of individuals as the basic unit of humanity,” he writes, “but maybe it’s shared identities that matter most.” A few pages later, he continues, “we aren’t as discrete as the body implies. Our identities do blend, and the intricacy of that blending in a group of friends is a unity all its own.” Some essays are outliers—e.g., “Ode to Public Benches,” a celebration of “the pageant of the metropolis” that evolves into a rumination on urban planning. One may argue that Puschak occasionally overplays his hand; not every connection is plausible, nor does everyone he reveres genuinely deserve such largesse. Still, more often than not, he impresses.

Puschak is a writer of enviable promise, pursuing substance with clarity and verve.