The Next American Essay

Description

In The Next American Essay, John D’Agata takes a literary tour of lyric essays written by the masters of the craft. Beginning with 1975 and John McPhee’s ingenious piece, “The Search for Marvin Gardens,” D’Agata selects an example of creative nonfiction for each subsequent year. These essays are unrestrained, elusive, explosive, mysterious—a personal lingual playground. They encompass and illuminate culture, myth, history, romance, and sex. Each essay is a world of its own, a world so distinctive it resists definition.
Contributors include:
Sherman Alexie
David Antin
Jenny Boully
Anne Carson
Guy Davenport
Lydia Davis
Joan Didion
Annie Dillard
Thalia Field
Albert Goldbarth
Susan Griffin
Theresa Hak Kung Cha
Jamaica Kincaid
Wayne Koestenbaum
Barry Lopez
John McPhee
Carole Maso
Harry Mathews
Susan Mitchell
Fabio Morabito
Mary Ruefle
David Shields
Dennis Silk
Susan Sontag
Alexander Theroux
George W. S. Trow
David Foster Wallace
Eliot Weinberger
Joe Wenderoth
James Wright

John D’Agata is the author Halls of Fame. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he holds M.F.A.s in both nonfiction and poetry and is currently editor of lyric essays for Seneca Review.

To the Reader
PrologueGuy Davenport
And1975
John McPhee
The Search for Marvin Gardens1976
Barry Lopez
The Raven1977
Susan Sontag
Unguided Tour1978
Jamaica Kincaid
Girl1979
Joan Didion
The White Album1980
James Wright
May Morning1981
Harry Matthews
Country Cooking from Central France: Roast Boned Rolled Stuffed Shoulder of Lamb (Farce Double)0
1982
Annie Dillard
Total Eclipse1983
David Antin
The Theory and Practice of Postmodernism: A Manifesto1984
Eliot Weinberger
The Dream of India1985
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Erato Love Poetry1986
Dennis Silk
The Marionette Theater1987
Anne Carson
Kinds of Water1988
Fabio Morabito
Oil1989
George W. S. Trow
Needs1990
Susan Mitchell
Notes Toward a History of Scaffolding1991
Albert Goldbarth
Delft1992
Paul Metcalf
” . . . and nobody objected”October 1992
Sherman Alexie
Captivity1993
Susan Griffin
Red Shoes1994
Alexander Theroux
Black1995
Lydia Davis
Foucault and Pencil1996
David Shields
Life Story1997
David Foster Wallace
Ticket to the Fair1998
i0Wayne Koestenbaum
Darling’s Prick1999
Carole Maso
The Intercession of the Saints2000
Mary Ruefle
Monument2001
Thalia Field
A : I2002
Brian Lennon
Sleep2003
Jenny Boully
The BodyEpilogueJoe Wenderoth
Things To Do Today

“From the living Monopoly game (in an essay by John McPhee) to a set of unattended ghostly footnotes, from the Joan Didion elegy to the Anne Carson fantasia, this book shows what the essay is and what, with any luck, it will be. The collection is full of pleasures and surprises, the most stunning of which is the ongoing essay by D’Agata himself–he transforms a mere anthology into the living biography of an art form.” —Michael Silverblatt, creator, producer, and host of public radio’s “Bookworm”“D’Agata avows love of the diversity of the essay form, and it is palpable on every page of this unique, esoteric, beautiful book. He tells the reader that he first became enamored of essays when his mother read him the news of the day while he was still in her womb. It is this kind of fantastic, myth-making perspective that runs through each entry of this anthology, whose contributors include such master essayists as John McPhee, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion and Annie Dillard. Hopping from one genre to another–biography, poetry, philosophy, travel writing, memoir–D’Agata makes the point that the essay is not just one form of writing but can be every form of writing . . . [Many of D’Agata’s] choices convey the wondrously infinite possibilities of the essay form. Standouts include ‘Unguided Tour,’ Sontag’s cranky philosophical dialogue with her inner self; ‘Life Story,’ David Shields’s string of aphorisms composed entirely of bumper sticker slogans; ‘Ticket to the Fair,’ David Foster Wallace’s colorful, compassionate tour of the Illinois State Fair; and ‘The Body,’ Jenny Boully’s postmodern pastiche of autobiographical (or not) footnotes. D’Agata’s idea of an essay–or lyric essay, as he comes to call these writings–conflates both art and fact, blurring the line between objectivity and subjectivity. The lyric essay, he says, has a ‘kind of logic that wants to sing.’ Readers, listen up, then: here is a book that makes some beautiful music.” —Publishers Weekly