Essay: "Corn Pone Opinions." Mark Twain.

Introduction to This Blog

Over the years I have read many essays from throughout the centuries. I have learned that there are two basic formats for essays. One is from the inventor of the form, Montaigne, in which he seems to move from thought to thought. The other format is that of Francis Bacon and Addison and Steele’s Spectator Papers, in which the essay is organized with a beginning, middle and end. I don’t know what to call the essays we write in school. I suppose, because they are based on the format of the five-paragraph essay, they resemble more the Bacon, Addison and Steele approach.

I am going to begin my collection of essays with those that mark the decades in the twentieth century in America. They were collected by Joyce Carol Oates and Robert Atwan and published as Best American Essays of the [Twentieth] Century. Some are funny. Most are not. Some are eloquent. Their formats are not easy to categorize. Some seem to be pure narrative. Some seem even to be short stories rather than the essay format we are used to. All of these essays, however, provoke thought.

Why read the Best American Essays of the Century? The essays are in chronological order, from Mark Twain's "Corn-Pone Opinions," 1901, to Saul Bellow's "Graven Images" in 1997. If you expect these essays to be pleasant, comforting and fun to read, you are mistaken. Joyce Carol Oates, one of the editors of the book, says, "My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment, and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish." Most of these essays provoke. Many of them I had never read, but they paint a vivid portrait of the twentieth century.

Best American Essays of the Century. Editors: Oates and Atwan. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 2000.

Essay: Mark Twain. "Corn-Pone Opinions." 1901.

10-second review: The source of most men's ideas is imitation of others' ideas.

Quote: “We are creatures of outside influences; as a rule we do not think, we only imitate.” p. 3.

Best American Essays of the Century. Editors: Oates and Atwan. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 2000.