To motivate myself to write more essays, I recently finished Brian Dillon’s Essayism: On Form, Feeling and Nonfiction (2017). As a long-time subscriber to Cabinet magazine, I am familiar with Dillon’s byline as an editor of the quarterly, which sadly is ending its gorgeous print version and going strictly online. A few years ago, while browsing at Printed Matter, Inc. in New York City (Aaah those were the days of book shopping – browsing sans mask with the smell of old books and cats in your nostrils instead of hand sanitizer) I stumbled across Dillon’s Objects in the Mirror: Essays (2011), Oddly enough, I think I recall that the book was shrink wrapped, but I took a chance anyway.
I ended up writing a short, favorable review of Objects and posting it on Amazon, which is a rarity for me, since I have only posted six reviews in my life which explains my reviewer ranking at #17,428,947. I am hesitant to provide free content to the richest man in the world, but if I really admire a book and it suffers from lack of stardom (less than 5 reviews) I will sometimes oblige. As you know, the big publishers control the marketplace. This year’s fad is All Things Trump and the staggering number of books and the numbers of readers' reviews illustrates this: Michael Cohen’s book 2,307 reviews, John Bolton’s book 25,503 reviews, but both are paltry compared to the numbers of Dr. Mary Trump, (the "angry" niece) whose reviews total 44,914.
In comparison, two recent books about Melania Trump totaled to 2500 reviews, and she has a long, long way to go to beat Michelle Obama’s Becoming which has over 58,000 ratings. Oddly enough, 89 % percent of reviews of Becoming were 5 stars with only 3 % one star. No surprise, except in the first six reviews, Amazon listed the 5 one-star reviews with insightful critiques such as “snoozer” or “poorly written” ahead of penta-starred reviews praising the book.
I am skeptical of the veracity of these numbers. I ask myself, "What's the point of adding another review to the a book that has already thousands of review?" I have no special insider information except to say we live in a world of bots. (Be mindful that every time you verify existence to CAPTCHA, you are telling a robot that you are not a robot.) Here at The Book Shopper Blog, I rate the books on how many index cards I need to make notes. I figure if one goes to the trouble to write something on a note card -- you're engaged!
On Essayism
This tight collection of short essays is not a how-to book on writing essays, but rather it examines the qualities found within essays that characterize the form. Dillon sets up each piece with a short title (IN CAPS) to quickly clue the readers in. For example, the second essay entitled, “ON LISTS” Dillon points out that making lists is an acceptable literary technique used by the likes of William Gass and Joan Didion. Thus fortified, I will resort to the same strategy (except this is blog posting not an essay) to enumerate some of the topics explored in Essayism. They include:
ON COHERANCE. Dillion reveals one of his secrets to writing a good essay: “Find the proper guiding metaphor.” He provides an example from the philosopher Theodor Adorno:
Properly written texts are like spider’s webs: tight, concentric, transparent, well-spun and firm. They draw themselves all the creatures on the air. Metaphors flitting hastily through them become their nourishing prey. Subject matter comes winging towards them.
Fortunately, if you cannot unearth the spot-on metaphor, Dillon thinks you can still write a good essay.
ON ATTENTION. For the record, Dillon admires essays that “pays the minutest or most sustain attention to one thing, one time or place, one strain or strand of existence.”
ON FRAGMENTS. Dillon discusses the concept of fragments. He explains how fragments have played role in history of knowledge. Fragments can be relics from an ancient civilization or the surviving passages of the Greek and Roman authors. It is acceptable, to Dillion because disparate fragments can be put together and if not well, it is also permissible “to say many contradictory things at once.”
ON CONSOLATION. Throughout the book Dillon confesses his own bouts with depression, bordering on suicide, but the tone is more melancholic than desperate. He follows his own principles: “I distrust writers who write straight away about their depression or other mental pain…But why this doubt or scruple? I tell myself it is because I want from writing, from literature a more conscious and conspicuously worked evidence of distance and thought, transformation of the raw material.”
But Dillon does not limit himself in this book as a primer on essays, but rather he weaves narratives about his own life and an examination of some the essayists (including a thorough Readings list) whom he admires. If you like essays, expect your list of reading material is going to grow exponentially.
I give it 3 index cards.
Book Shopping Notes: The easiest way to get a copy of Essayism or other Dillon books is to contact Mark Burell (mburell AT emory.edu). Mark is the manager of the Carlos Museum Bookshop on the campus of Emory University and is responsible for my copy of Essayism. The photo of Printed Matter Inc. is circa 2014, before they moved to their current larger and cleaner location.
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