The Art of the Personal Essay

835 Pages·1994·19.375 MB·English

by  Phillip Lopate

C 0 N T I N U E D F11 0 M F R 0 N T F L A P
account of a prizefight and his vitriolic medita­
tion "On the Pleasure of Hating"; Lamb's ten­
der and self-mocking Elia pieces; Turgenev's
powerful first-person account of a beheading;
Tanizaki's dazzling decoding ofJapanese culture
and domesticity; Thoreau's leisurely, pantheistic
nature-stroll, "Walking"; F. Scott Fitzgerald's
mordant scrutiny of his breakdown; James
Baldwin's immortal portraits of his difficult
father, himself, and his mentor, Richard
Wright; and Joan Didion's bittersweet memoir
of her leavetaking from New York.
The personal essay form is placed in context
by Phillip Lopate, himself an acclaimed essayist,
with an illuminating, in-depth introduction.
With generous selections from fifty writers
from around the world, The Art of the Personal
Essay is a landmark collection of brilliant, dis­
cerning, and immensely entertaining writing.
PHILLIP LOPATE is the author of Against
Joie de Vivre, Bachelorhood, The Rug Merchant,
Being with Children, and Confessions of
Summer. A recipient of Guggenheim and
National Endowment for the Arts fellowships,
his works have appeared in Best American
Essays, The Paris Review, Pushcart Prize annu­
als, and many other publications. He lives in
Brooklyn, New York, and is Adams Professor
of English at Hofstra University.
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f
r more than four hundred years the per­
onal essay has been one of the richest and
most vibrant of all literary forms. The Art of the
Personal Essay is the first anthology to celebrate
this lively, fertile genre. Distinguished from the
formal essay by its friendly, conversational tone,
its drive toward candor and confession, and its
often quirky, first-person voice, the personal
essay offers above all a feast of individuality. It
seizes on the minutiae of daily life-fashions,
rituals, vanities, family life, romantic foibles,
the pleasures and pangs of solitude-and the
great social and political issues of the day, from
a daring, opinionated perspective. Frequently
humorous, the personal essay is perhaps the
most instantly approachable and divertingly
human type of nonfiction.
This robust tradition is represented here by
more than seventy-five essays, beginning with
influential forerunners from ancient Rome
(Seneca, Plutarch) and the Far East to the mas­
tering of the form by its sixteenth-century
founder, Michel de Montaigne; through the
golden age of the English essay (from Addison
& Steele and Samuel Johnson through Orwell
and Woolf) to its variegated outcroppings in
Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and its
efflorescence in the United States.
Some of the highlights include Montaigne's
astonishingly frank discussion of sexuality, "On
Some Verses of Virgil"; Hazlitt's boisterous
CONTINUED ON BACK FLAP
The Art
of
the
Perso n al
E ss a
y
A Teachers f:r Writers Collaborative B o o k
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A N c H 0 R B 0 0 K s
D 0 u B L E D A y
New York London Toronto Sydney Auckland
The Art
t he
f
0
Perso n al
Es s a
y
An Anthology
'=i'
from the Classical Era
to the Present
Sele cted a nd with a n
Intr odu ction by
Philli Lo ate
p p
AN ANCHOR BooK
PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY
a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036
ANCHOR BOOKS, DOUBLEDAY, and the portrayal of an anchor are trademarks of
Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present
was originally published in hardcover by Anchor Books/Doubleday in 1994.
A Teachers & Writers Collaborative Book
Book Design by Cheryl L. Cipriani
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
The Art of the personal essay : an anthology from the classical era to the present
I selected and with an introduction by Phililp Lopate.
p. cm.
"A Teachers & Writers Collaborative book."
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
1. Essays. 2. Essays-Translations into English. I. Lopate, Phillip,
1943- . II. Teachers & Writers Collaborative.
PN6141.A78 1994
808.84-dc20 94-29708
CIP
ISBN 0-385-42298-9 (Hardcover)
ISBN 0-385-42339-X (Paperback)
Introduction, selection, and headnotes copyright © 1994 by Phillip Lopate
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First Anchor Books Paperback Edition: June 1995
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
C O N lr lE N lr §
Acknowledgments xix
Introduction . . xxiii
Forerunners
SENECA
On Noise . . 5
Asthma 8
Scipio's Villa 10
Slaves 12
PLUTARCH
Consolation to His Wife 17
SEI SHONAGON
Hateful Things . . . . . . . . . . . 24
KEN KO
Essays in Idleness [Selections] . . . . . 30
OU-YANG HSIU
Pleasure Boat Studio . . . . . . . . . . 38
.
II
Fountain head
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Of Books . . . . . . . 46
Of a Monstrous Child . . 57
On Some Verses of Virgil 58
[ v j] Contents
111
The Rise of the English Essay
ABRAHAM COWLEY
Of Greatness . . 116
ADDISON & STEELE
Nicolini and the Lions
(Joseph Addison) 123
An Hour or Two Sacred to Sorrow
(Richard Steele) 126
Twenty-four Hours in London
(Richard Steele) 129
Love-Letters (Richard Steele) 133
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Boarding House 137
The Solitude of the Country 141
MARIA EDGEWORTH
An Essay on the Noble Science
of Self-Justification . . . . . . . . . 146
CHARLES LAMB
New Year's Eve . . . . . 160
A Chapter on Ears . . . . 165
Dream Children: A Reverie 169
The Superannuated Man 172
WILLIAM HAZLITT
On Going a Journey 181
On the Pleasure of Hating 189
The Fight . . . . . 198
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
The Lantern-Bearers 213
An Apology for Idlers
222
On Marriage . . . 229
MAX BEERBOHM
Going Out for a Walk 237
Laughter . . . . . . 239
Contents [vii]
G. K. CHESTERTON
A Pi�ce of Chalk . . . . . . 249
On Running After One's Hat . 252
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Street Haunting
256
The Death of the Moth 265
GEORGE ORWELL
Such, Such Were the Joys . . . . . 269
.
IV
Other Cultures, Other Continents
IVAN TURGENEV
The Execution of Tropmann . . . . . 306
.
LU HSUN
This Too Is Life 326
Death . . . 329
JUNICHIRO TANIZAKI
In Praise of Shadows . . . . . . . . 335
.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Unpacking My Library 363
Hashish in Marseilles 370
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Blindness . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
HUBERT BUTLER
Beside the Nore 388
Aunt Harriet 393
E. M. CIORAN
Some Blind Alleys: A Letter . . . . . . 404
ROLAND BARTHES
Leaving the Movie Theater . . . . . . 418
.
NATALIA GINZBURG
He and I . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
.