On the Essay

I’ve been thinking a lot about the essay today as I walked around Toronto, eating a small cone of ice cream from the truck, watching all the business people scurry around.

I was thinking about writing an essay about the essay, and on what no one really writes them much anymore. About why essays are not books, nor even articles, but how the best of writers incorporate aspects of essay writing in their books and articles. About how the essay has nothing at all to do with text length–although bloggers tend to erroneously think of themselves as essayists–and everything to do with exploration, experimentation and the strolling way they go around a topic without really getting to the heart of anything.

This is the real reason I think nobody cares about the essay: they not only want it short, but they also want it to the point. The essay may get to the point, it may not. A good essay is in the travel, not the destination.

And, so this morning I get this in my list of feeds: Death of the Essay? :

So now I’m wondering, Are we Ñ both in journalism and in the publishing world Ñ too fixated on the idea of a narrative thrust? Are we afraid of the rambling nature of the essay? Taking its name from the French word essai, meaning “attempt,” an essay doesn’t set out to tell a complete, narrative story, but rather simply tosses out an idea like a trial balloon. Are we too polarized these days to welcome such an art form that doesn’t bother with neat, tied-up-with-a-bow conclusions?

Exactly. Except one quibble: Montaigne was less “attempting” to toss out ideas which were interesting, but submitting himself to a “trial”, trying to find out what he believed, which of his thoughts he held true and which of them were just inherited from society.

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