essays
Nothing is certain, but probably my favorite kind of reading is essays. Maybe longer essays that I can get into like a novel but that I can finish while still sitting here before having to get up and do this or come to supper. Personal History essays in The New Yorker are among my favorites, they are long enough that when done I feel like I know the author and had a real visit. A talented and imaginative friend writes essays that trigger memories and touch the heart: hers are short though, always ending just right, often with what my Linda calls a "gotcha" that she wants my sermons to end with, but just as I'm settling into them and need more.
Why essays? Well, as I say, I can read an essay, I like essays that are the length of a novel's chapter, but complete all in one reading. I read them online and in books. Maybe I came to love them from reading Harry Golden, his books of essays reprinted from his days as a newspaper person "the Carolina Israelite" social and political issues, and about his life growing up Jewish in the garment district of NYC, in a largely Yiddish speaking family. Great stories, memories, recollections. David Sedaris does this, his essays are fun to read, books of essays and clips from his lectures. Some of Mark Twain.
So, why is this in mind? From this morning, reading an essay by Jill Lepore in The New Yorker, and this morning's issue of The Bitter Southerner, the essays and photographs (one above) of Appalachian people responding indignantly to Hillbilly Elegy by J D Vance. Most everything in The Bitter Southerner is nearly always good. Including fairly recently an essay by a writer from Atlanta who used to visit her grandmother in Lanark Village, now taking and recording a memory tour along the NW Florida Gulf Coast from about St Marks to about Apalachicola, sort of an oyster tour.
Speaking of, I need oysters and I need mullet, and this morning may be my moment for going out to search.
T
Why essays? Well, as I say, I can read an essay, I like essays that are the length of a novel's chapter, but complete all in one reading. I read them online and in books. Maybe I came to love them from reading Harry Golden, his books of essays reprinted from his days as a newspaper person "the Carolina Israelite" social and political issues, and about his life growing up Jewish in the garment district of NYC, in a largely Yiddish speaking family. Great stories, memories, recollections. David Sedaris does this, his essays are fun to read, books of essays and clips from his lectures. Some of Mark Twain.
So, why is this in mind? From this morning, reading an essay by Jill Lepore in The New Yorker, and this morning's issue of The Bitter Southerner, the essays and photographs (one above) of Appalachian people responding indignantly to Hillbilly Elegy by J D Vance. Most everything in The Bitter Southerner is nearly always good. Including fairly recently an essay by a writer from Atlanta who used to visit her grandmother in Lanark Village, now taking and recording a memory tour along the NW Florida Gulf Coast from about St Marks to about Apalachicola, sort of an oyster tour.
Speaking of, I need oysters and I need mullet, and this morning may be my moment for going out to search.
T