THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN ESSAY

The esteemed anthologist and Columbia professor compiles another vast array of American essays.

“What makes this period so interesting,” writes Lopate, “is the mélange of clashing generations and points of view” as well as the rise of the personal essay. This period opened the door to a range of diverse, powerful voices, many of which have been underrepresented in many anthologies of the 20th century. Lopate begins with a piece by Hilton Als, who creates a lovely autobiographical portrait of actor Louise Brooks, written from her point of view: “I was asked to perform with the Zieg­feld Follies; I was the most hated Follies girl, ever (too well-read, too much attitude); I was loved then and only then by several les­bians of intellectual distinction and many fairy boys who drank and wrote.” Next is Nicholson Baker’s reflective series of vignettes, “One Summer,” in which every paragraph begins with those two words. Anne Carson’s somber “Decreation” delves into the lives of three women who “had the nerve to enter a zone of absolute spiritual daring” while Terry Castle’s lighthearted, confessional “Home Alone” explores her vice for alluring interior decorating magazines. Sloane Crosley’s witty “The Doctor Is a Woman,” describes the process of freezing her 67 remaining eggs, “a gaudy amount of eggs for a human to produce….I am not a woman—I am a fish.” In “Matricide,” Meghan Daum writes affectingly about her mother’s passing, and death appears again in poet and undertaker Thomas Lynch’s comforting “Bodies in Motion and at Rest.” Sleight-of-hand modernism scatters about in Ander Monson’s “Failure: A Meditation, Another Iteration (With Interruptions).” Lopate makes an appearance in “Experience Necessary,” responding to an essay by Montaigne. As in previous volumes, the list of contributors is enviable: Patricia Hempl, Barry Lopez, John McPhee, Joyce Carol Oates, David Sedaris, Alexander Chee, Eula Biss, Margo Jefferson, Yiyun Li, Darryl Pinckney, Rebecca Solnit, etc….

There’s something for everyone in this sumptuous collection.