Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Essay: "Slaves." Seneca.



One-minute review: Plea for the humane treatment of slaves.

Quotes:
“ ‘They are slaves’—no, men. ‘They are slaves’—no, comrades. ‘They are slaves’—no,  humble friends. ‘They are slaves’—no, fellow slaves, if you remember that Fortune holds equal sway over both.”

“In consequence, when they cannot speak in the master’s presence, they speak about him.”

“But how many of those slaves are in fact his master!”

“Remember, if you please, that the man you call slave sprang from the same seed, enjoys the same daylight, breathes like you, lives like you, dies like you. You can as easily conceive  him a free man as he can conceive you a slave.”

“Treat your slave with compassion, even with courtesy; admit him to your conversation, your planning, your society.”

“ ‘He is a slave!’ But perhaps a free man in spirit.”

“…do not choose to have your slaves fear you, you use words to castigate them. A lash is to admonish dumb beasts.”

“They [the masters] profess they have been injured in order to work injury.”

The Art of the Personal Essay. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Essay: Scipio's Villa." Seneca.



One-minute review: Should be titled “Scipio’s Bath.” Scipio voluntarily left Rome because “it was impossible that he continue in Rome and Rome continue free.” His bath is not modern with mirrors, but dark, constructed of stone, with slits for some light, but dark for hot bathing—the bathing that comes after strong exertions on the farm or on the battlefield.

Quote:
“For we all plant olive orchards for others to enjoy.”

The Art of the Personal Essay. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Monday, March 29, 2010

"On Noise." Seneca the Younger



One-minute review: The noise outside does not matter if one’s mind is quiet. When all else fails, move.

Quotes:
“Voices, I think, are more inclined to distract one than general noise; noise merely fills one’s ears, battering away at them, while voices actually catch one’s attention.”

“For I force my mind to become self-absorbed….”

“There can be absolute bedlam without so long as there is no commotion within….”

“Night does not remove our worries; it brings them to the surface. All it gives us is a change in anxieties. For even when people are asleep they have dreams as troubled as their days.”

“His mind is in a ferment. It is that which needs to be set at peace.”

“The fact that the body is lying down is no reason for supposing that the mind is at peace. Rest is sometimes far from restful.”

“When great military commanders notice indiscipline among their men, they suppress it by giving them some work to do….”

“We give the impression of being in retirement and are nothing of the kind.”

The Art of the Personal Essay. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Thoughts on the Personal Essay. Phillip Lopate (10)



10-second review: Montaigne invented the essay. He meant by the term “essay” to experiment, to test, to try out. William Zeiger has a final word on the nature of the personal essay as used by Montaigne: “The practice of experimenting, or trying something out, is expected in the now uncommon sense of the verb to prove—the sense of ‘testing’ rather than ‘demonstrating validity.’ Montaigne ‘proved’ his ideas in that he tried them out in his essays. He spun out their implications, sampled their suggestions. He did not argue or try to persuade. He had no investment in winning over his audience to his opinion; accordingly, he had no fear of being refuted. On the contrary, he expected that some of the ideas he expressed would change, as they did in later essays. Refutation represented not a personal defeat but an advance toward truth as valuable as confirmation. To ‘prove’ an idea, for Montaigne, was to examine it in order to find out how true it was.”

The Art of the Personal Essay. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Thoughts on the Personal Essay. Phillip Lopate (9)



10-second review: What is the personal essay? Bonamy DobrĂ©e: “The essay…claimed to put aside all pedantry, all learning crammed out of books, and merely gave you the reasonable decent man talking to you or me or anyone else of what he thought about life: or rather, the man was talking to himself and allowing anyone who cared to do so to overhear him.”

“All personal essays are addressed to what Virginia Woolf called ‘the common reader’….”

The Art of the Personal Essay. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Thoughts on the Personal Essay. Phillip Lopate (8).



10-second review:  The personal essayist often focuses on the past. “A young person still thinks it is possible—there is time enough—to become all things: athlete and aesthete, soldier and pacifist, anchorite and debauchee. Later, knowing one’s fate and accepting the responsibility of that uninnocent knowledge define the perspective of the form. The personal essayist looks back at the choices that were made, the roads not taken…. In literature, noted Gore Vidal, ‘the true confessors have been aware that not only is life mostly failure, but that in one’s failure or pettiness or wrongness exists the living drama of the self.’ The wonder is that the personal essay can make this bitter awareness appetizing and even amusing to the reader.”

The Art of the Personal Essay. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Thoughts on the Personal Essay. Phillip Lopate (7).



10-second review: Persona of the essayist. “As part of their ironic modesty, personal essayists frequently represent themselves as loafers or retirees, inactive and tangential to the marketplace. The shiftless marginality of the essayist’s persona is underscored by the titles of some of the most famous essay series: The Idler, The Rambler (Samuel Johnson), The Spectator, and The Tatler (Addison and Steele). Perhaps by affecting the role of lazy scribblers, essayists make themselves out to be harmless, thereby able to poke fun at will.”

The Art of the Personal Essay. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Thoughts on the Personal Essay. Phillip Lopate (6)


10-second review: The problem of egotism. “Still it takes a fair amount of ego to discourse on one’s private affairs and offer judgments about life…. Most people are brought up to think it is impolite to talk about themselves; in academic papers, scholars are discouraged from using the first person singular.”

“The trick is to realize that one is not important, except insofar as one’s example can serve to elucidate a more widespread human trait and make readers feel a little less lonely and freakish.”

The Art of the Personal Essay. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Thoughts on the Personal Essay. Phillip Lopate (5)



10-second review: Another way to begin a personal essay. Become a curmudgeon. “…for there is no quicker way to demonstrate idiosyncrasy and independence than to stand a platitude on its head… to show a prickly opposition  to what the rest of humanity view s as patently wholesome…or to find merits in what the community regards as loathsome….”

The Art of the Personal Essay. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Thoughts on the Personal Essay. Phillip Lopate (4).



10-second review: One way to begin a personal essay. “Personal essayists are adept at interrogating their ignorance. Just as often as they tell us what they know, they ask at the beginning of an exploration of a problem what it is they don’t know—and why. They follow the clue of their ignorance through the maze….. What one doesn’t understand or can’t do is as good a place as any to start investigating….”

The Art of the Personal Essay. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Thoughts on the Personal Essay. Phillip Lopate (3).

10-second review: The “building blocks” of the personal essay. “How the world comes at another person, the irritations, jubilations, aches and pains, humorous flashes—these are the classic building materials of the personal essay.”

The Art of the Personal Essay. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Thoughts on the Personal Essay. Phillip Lopate (2)

10-second review: The personal essayist is, in a sense, entering into a dispute with the reader because essayists naturally dispute with themselves. Stuart Hampshire: “It is natural to enter into dialogues and disputes with others…because it is natural to enter into disputes with oneself. The mind works by contradiction.”

“Personal essayists converse with the reader because they are already having dialogues and disputes with themselves.”

The Art of the Personal Essay. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Thoughts on the Personal Essay. Phillip Lopate (1).



10-second review: The personal essay is distinguished from the formal essay by an emphasis on style and personality. “Unlike the formal essay, it depends less on airtight reasoning than on style and personality….”

The Art of the Personal Essay. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Essay: "French and English Spoken." Theodore Pratt.



One-minute review: The author has everything bad happen to him when he tries to learn and use French, from failing French I in college three times to embarrassing misunderstandings when he tries to use his French while living in France. However, he did not have to try to learn to master French in France because all the French were trying to learn English with the result that their English was spoken so badly that the result was miscommunication.

American Essays. Ed. Charles B. Shaw. A Pelican Mentor Book. New York: The New American Library. 1948.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Essay: "Seed Corn and Mistletoe." Bernard De Voto



One-minute review: An essay on the American Christmas—symbolized by a lighted cabin in the dark in the snow surrounded by a forest and looking west. “Cerebrals” can criticize America’s Christmas all they want—its commercialism, etc.—but an American Christmas is uniquely an American Christmas, remembered by adults as children and passed on to their children. And an American Christmas is preceded by an American Thanksgiving with its pumpkins and shocked corn in a way that only Americans gather corn in shocks. The roots of America may lie in Europe, but the symbol of America is maize and Europe had no maize. America is America and all that it symbolizes, including maize, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

American Essays. Ed. Charles B. Shaw. A Pelican Mentor Book. New York: The New American Library. 1948.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Essay: "Three Kinds of Collectors." Christopher Morley.



One-minute review: Book collecting—memories of books the author found, and reflections on the effect they had on him. “I am tracing the spiritual genealogy of certain books that have meant much to me.” Three of the authors whose books he had loved were Walt Whitman, George Gissing (The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft) and Joseph Conrad (Mirror of the Sea).

An interesting exercise would be to think and write about the books readers have read—how they found them, when they read them, where they read them and reflections on how they affected them.

American Essays. Ed. Charles B. Shaw. A Pelican Mentor Book. New York: The New American Library. 1948.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Essay: "Dying for Dear Old...." Heywood Broun.



One-minute review: A criticism of the excessive emotion accompanying college football. Concludes with the following sentences: “He was never invited to come to Cambridge to assist in the coaching of any future Harvard eleven. His heresy was profound. He had practically intimated that being defeated was less than tragic.”

American Essays. Ed. Charles B. Shaw. A Pelican Mentor Book. New York: The New American Library. 1948.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Essay: "The Older Generation." Randolph Bourne.


Essay: “The Older Generation.” Randolph Bourne.

One-minute review: The older generation is complacent, stagnant and self-satisfied. It has locked out, not led, the younger generation with its idealistic youth. The older generation’s philosophy of life imprisons the older generation. “The shuddering fear that we in turn may become weary, complacent, evasive, should be the best preventive of that stagnation. We shall never have done looking for the miracle, that it shall be given to us to lighten, cheer and purify our ‘younger generation,’ even as our older has depressed and disintegrated us.”

American Essays. Ed. Charles B. Shaw. A Pelican Mentor Book. New York: The New American Library. 1948.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Essay: "The Rediscovery of Jones." Simeon Strunsky



One-minute review: The Jones family is us. Disregarded in the books by sociologists in the1920’s, the Jones family disappeared in the statistics of the census. But in the next decade of the 1930’s, the Joneses will become of interest, because the Jones family is like you and me and all the rest of us Americans.

American Essays. Ed. Charles B. Shaw. A Pelican Mentor Book. New York: The New American Library. 1948.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Essay: "On the Difference Between Wit and Humor." Charles S. Brooks



One-minute review: “Wit is a lean creature with sharp inquiring nose whereas humor has a kindly eye….” ………. “…wit fades whereas humor lasts.” ………. “But is there anything more melancholy than the wit of another generation?” ………. “Sydney Smith was the most celebrated wit of his day, but he is dull reading now. Blackwood’s [Magazine] at its first issue was a witty daring sheet, but for us the pages are stagnant.” ………. “Where are the wits of yesteryear?” ………. “Yet the humor of Falstaff and Lamb and Fielding remains and is a reminder to us that humor, to be real, must be founded on humanity….”

American Essays. Ed. Charles B. Shaw. A Pelican Mentor Book. New York: The New American Library. 1948.