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The Best American Essays 2012: The Premier Annual Collection―Finest Literary Essays from Top Magazines
The Best American Series®
First, Best, and Best-Selling
The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume’s series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected — and most popular — of its kind.
The Best American Essays 2012 includes
Marcia Angell, Miah Arnold, Mark Doty, Joseph Epstein, Jonathan Franzen,
Malcolm Gladwell, Francine Prose, Lauren Slater,
Sandra Tsing Loh, Jose Antonio Vargas, and others
First, Best, and Best-Selling
The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume’s series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected — and most popular — of its kind.
The Best American Essays 2012 includes
Marcia Angell, Miah Arnold, Mark Doty, Joseph Epstein, Jonathan Franzen,
Malcolm Gladwell, Francine Prose, Lauren Slater,
Sandra Tsing Loh, Jose Antonio Vargas, and others
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
119 people are currently reading
671 people want to read
About the author
Robert Atwan
254 books26 followersRobert Atwan has been the series editor of The Best American Essays since its inception in 1986. He has edited numerous literary anthologies and written essays and reviews for periodicals nationwide.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 99 reviews
November 7, 2012
Annoyed that David Brooks was the guest editor (he is not an essayist, not a great writer, just a pundit, a columnist). So I was not surprised to find that many of these pieces are not essays at all, but magazine features. They are good and informative as magazine journalism, but not essays. There are a few strong essays however, namely David Lawless' "My Father/My Husband"--heartbreaking, affecting, and interesting choices for narrative structure (will teach this essay), and the final two pieces, "Outlaw" by Jose Antonio Vargas and "Paper Tigers" by Wesley Yang. But mostly there is very little risk in Brooks' selections, and again, he should have edited "Best American Magazine Writing" (and then included 75% of these pieces). Shout out to Sandra Tsing Loh, whose "rants" are hilarous and honest and compelling. Her piece in this collection, "The Bitch is Back" was terrific, too.
January 6, 2013
This is the first time I revisited Best American Essays since the 2009 edition and I think I am going to have to check this series out perennially. The essays cover a variety of topics often flying just below the radar. In this edition as in the last one I read a lot of the essays slant towards a few themes likely to the the interests of the guest editor. I'll take it essay by essay:
1. The Foul Reign of "Self-Reliance" (Benjamin Anastas)
This is an alternate look at Ralph Waldo-Emerson's definition of "self-reliance." The author makes the case that Americans have too comfortably settled upon an era that is uncompromisingly Emersonian. What had once been liberating principles of independence in thought and action has morphed into smart-phone absorbed people clinging fervently to their own opinions in the swamp of opposition. There is too much love for the self and for flashy iconoclasts. True love for families, neighbors, and communities has disintegrated and settled somewhere at the bottom of the barrel. Living-for-yourself is now loving-yourself.
I'm not sure about the application of Emerson in this essay but the writer takes some of his groundwork ("Trust thyself," "No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature") and it works for the sake of the essay. Not one of the stronger ones, but provoking nonetheless.
2. The Crazy State of Psychiatry (Marcia Agnell)
The Crazy State of Psychiatry is basically a review of several books criticizing psychiatric medicine. Marcia Angell presents some solid evidence and tight arguments that these drugs are doing more harm than good. In fact, the only good they are doing is making money for the corporations that sell them and the psychiatrists who prescribe them (quick diagnoses and easy drug solutions save a lot of talk-time). Much psychiatric medicines are basically a shortcuts at the expense of the taker--and many come with nasty side-effects that require more medicine. Agnell questions how such prescriptions became appropriate in the first place--whether isolating depression and other mental disorders to chemical balances in the brain is even scientifically sound (there appears to be a lot more going on than chemicals in the brain).
She also presents the history of the DSM-IV and the soon-to-be-released DSM-V with its ever-increasing pages of diagnoses. Practically any problem that appears to be mental can be diagnosed as a disease under this ever-expanding handbook. The frustrating part is that it hardly references any scientific research yet still manages to be the authority. There's a ton of information on psychiatric medicine packed in this essay including a neat little placebo experiment. I finished wanting to know more... This one is worth a reread if not for anything else than to dig deeper into the sources that Agnell retrieved her information.
3. You Owe Me (Miah Arnold)
Oh wow. This one is heavy. It's about dealing with grief at a children's hospital. The author is a creative writing teacher at a special hospital for kids. The dark side is that almost all of the kids that come there die. Some die in a few months, some after a few years. Miah Arnold writes so compassionately that I felt she probably one of the most courageous women ever. Wrapping up her thoughts, though, she questions her sanity, or the sanity of any teacher who has stayed there more than a year. I wonder. . .
This is one of a couple essays about teachers a one of my favorites.
4. Edward Hopper (Geoffrey Bent)
This essay is a reflection on the art of Edward Hopper. I am not familiar with Edward Hopper so I did not read this essay.
7. Vanishing Act (Paul Collins)
This is about a writer who wrote her first manuscript at age twelve. There are many citations of her writing and it is whimsical and fantastical, but most of all eloquent. Her first story got so much attention that she was classified in the same category os Mozart and Chopin. The year was 1927. Her first published story, A House Without Window about a little girl name Eepersip. Eepersip tries to convince her friends to explore the woods but they are afraid so she goes and gets lost in the woods herself. The bits of Follet’s writing included are light and feathery yet drew me in in only a few words.
The remaining part of the essay goes on the describe her later life. Barbara Follet is well on her way realizing her dreams. She gets to sail the sea with a crew of sailors (her greatest ambition) and writes another playfully eloquent story about her adventures. And then at fourteen her father leaves her mother. The young author begins to lose touch with the dreams of her youth and her own identity. She feels alienated living with her mother in Depression-era Manhattan. She elopes young with an outdoorsman and after a few writings of drab, uninspiring New York she disappears completely.
"I don't like civilization," Follet wrote. She is never heard from again. Her words and her story linger, her ideals failing to match any sort of fantastic reality she created at a younger but more complete age. The essay gives you the feeling that this shouldn't have happened, that time reversed and something that was being built up collapsed too soon.
Sometimes kids are really smart. But without the support they need, world weighs them down instead of props them up.
8. Insatiable (Mark Doty)
This essay is a comparative critique on Walt Whitman. His work is put side by side with Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Apparently the two men had a correspondence. Stoker praised Whitman’s work. Within the essay critique, Doty offers a personal narrative as well. It is about physical desire. He compares his longing with Whitman’s longing, or is it feeding? Actually, Whitman may be offering everything that he can offer. It’s more like a desire to know someone as deeply as possible. Doty wraps up with an interesting passage from Whitman where he describes dripping blood, and offers it to the reader. There is never satisfaction, never wholeness. In this constant offering, be it manifest as a physical means for spiritual completion, there can never be completeness.
11. Farther Away (Jonathan Franzen)
This essay took me a while to warm up to. Jonathan Franzen starts out talking about his preparations for his trip to a small island in the Atlantic Ocean. It takes him a while to get there as it is not just a flight away from mainland Chile but another flight away from a small island to this even smaller island (Masfuera). The author is not a very outdoorsy guy. In fact he is more of a literature scholar. He is going to remove himself from society and think about things. He brings a copy of Robinson Crusoe with him.
Franzen features vivid descriptions of his adventures and disappointments. But it is when he starts philosophically musing that it gets interesting. He even states that he is uncomfortable until he has the opportunity to settle down and read Robinson Crusoe. Also, the author had been good friends with the late David Foster Wallace. This gives him some additional food for thought as he tries to understand his late friend's existential malaise.
In his grieving thoughts Franzen tries to diagnose the problems of modern life the wore away at his friend. It is not about what makes us happy but about what gives us a fulfilling connection to reality... Franzen analyzes Robinson Crusoe--it gave its readers a chance to detach and wonder what they would do in such far removed situations. With modernity came the opportunity to take risks, and Robinson Crusoe gave people a chance to do so in their own solitude (aka to take a risk without actually taking the risk). One must choose to suspend disbelief when picking up a novel--an attitude of departure, often for pleasure. But the novel has become outmoded by movies, TV shows, video games, and consequently disappeared to an over-saturation of sources of fiction. Invasive like a weed, the fiction of the novel has epidemically overrun the whole world. Franzen tries to neatly tie up his distant musings by connecting them to the world he left and ambitiously ends with a theory about the current state of the internet. The possible versions of self that were once mapped out in novels as various different characters doing different things, though, may now be mapped onto the "world."
12. Creation Myth (Malcolm Gladwell)
A re-examination of the mythos that surrounds innovation. Gladwell breaks down the history leading up to Apple's unprecedented ubiquity. He breaks it down into a three-step process: the first wave of computer scientists and researchers create the functional technology. It is complicated and esoteric. This is the stage of origins. Then comes Xerox and their bulky yet promising super-computers. This is the next and middle stage in the integration of intelligence technology. It is the stage where things get made. Some people, including Jobs himself, say Xerox could have done so much more had they taken their products a step further. Gladwell argues that they couldn't have taken it a step further--that their large, bulky computers were their ultimate offering to a sequence of technological adaptation. Finally came Apple, IBM, and Microsoft, the fine-tuners. We get direct manipulation of the desktop and one-button mouses at this stage. This is the stage where the technology enters the hands of the people.
Overall, this essay is a nice brief history of modern computer technology. The point? I guess that would be that in a corporate world there are limits to innovation. There may be a creative head of a company but innovation is up to the innovators.
13. Dr. Don (Peter Hessler)
Dr. Don Keeps it Real. Dr. Don owns a pharmacy in rural Colorado and he does it like any small town business ought to be. He is not a corporate caricature but rather a small town hero. If you do business with him, it is personal. This is what a real community is. I do not know what America is aiming for nowadays but it is not anything that awards the small town hero like this. The reliable go-to guy who holds the town fabric together is a helpless victim to corporate enterprise and its idealistic big sister, global trade. Dr. Don keeps it together despite this. Dr. Don's business is Dr. Don's business, and it is also his life. And the life of Dr. Don is the life of a kind of man that is a pillar, an invisible pillar not seen anymore in any American town. As long as there is a CVS taking up every little niche of America, who needs 'em? A place like CVS, like any well branded corp, is about anonymity. Who cares who goes in and who cares who goes out? Dr. Don is not CVS. Dr. Don cares.
14. Objects of Affection (Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough)
A nice glance at the objects we own and their capacity to hold memories. Their endurance in the physical world can often be more constant than our fleeting experiences. They can even hold pieces of our identity lost somewhere along the way.
15. Getting Schooled (Garret Keizer)
Another essay about teaching. Keizer's tone rings of authority from experience. He talks about the difficulty of getting his message across to high school students and the gap of relating to them across several generations--especially on getting them to read and think. Even though I'm fuzzy on the reference, I walked away fully convinced: "Carthage must be destroyed." And, no, I'm not sure if I get it but maybe someday I will.
18. The Bitch is Back (Sandra Tsing Loh)
A rather insightful essay about menopause. I don't know much about menopause so this was sort of enlightening.
19. How Doctors Die (Ken Murray)
23. Outlaw (Jose Antonio Vargas)
24. Paper Tigers (Weseley Yang)
Written by a Korean-American who claims no identity as Korean but 100% as American, this essay sheds some light on the American identity. The focus of Yang's piece is about the "Bamboo Ceiling," the highest rung of achievement an Asian American can reach in the U.S. The limit is usually drawn right before the echelons of leadership. Yang throws out some numbers, like how 9 of the Fortune 500 are Asian Americans. By the looks of it one might think there is some racial profiling going on. And surely there is. But there is a deeper reason the Bamboo Ceiling is so hard to break.
"Upholding family honor. Filial piety. Restraint." Deeply rooted East Asian traditions have been around thousands of years and are terribly hard to break in just one or two generations. One of the high school students Yang interviews says he feels like he skipped a generation. His parents rent a flat in New York City and he has earned the Ivy League degree but something is still missing. It's not uncommon for and Asian-American to feel compelled to get the highest test scores, the best ranks, but all this success is on paper and while surely it is one way to improve one's intelligence it also skips a beat--or a whole rhythm section--that is the realm of socialization. Coming to American and finding success is one thing, but how relevant is a whole generation of, say, Korean-Americans who have passed the most difficult exams and placed themselves in the most intelligent research programs if they have little to no ability to break out from under the umbrella of white man's leadership? What more are they but a marginal community, albeit a fairly hard-working one? Yang asks these question and the answer, it turns out, is in the art of pick-up.
Well, not entirely. But this is one of the investigations Yang delves into. There are Asian Leadership Programs such as LEAP but even these fall short of teaching the minute details of social behavior. And this is what it comes down to when you stop and wonder why Asian-Americans face a wall in the workforce just short of the first step of leadership. But working in the business world is one thing. Once you break it down, the X-factor is about taking risks. But being a self-identifying individual is different. Yang offers his own story on finding his own identity...
The answer, he finds, is in daring to be different and not seeking meaning through achieving scholarships and pieces of paper, even if they are handed to you by Harvard. An American identity for someone who is Asian-American ought to come from doing something that is distinctly different, which is much harder to do than it is to talk about.
1. The Foul Reign of "Self-Reliance" (Benjamin Anastas)
This is an alternate look at Ralph Waldo-Emerson's definition of "self-reliance." The author makes the case that Americans have too comfortably settled upon an era that is uncompromisingly Emersonian. What had once been liberating principles of independence in thought and action has morphed into smart-phone absorbed people clinging fervently to their own opinions in the swamp of opposition. There is too much love for the self and for flashy iconoclasts. True love for families, neighbors, and communities has disintegrated and settled somewhere at the bottom of the barrel. Living-for-yourself is now loving-yourself.
I'm not sure about the application of Emerson in this essay but the writer takes some of his groundwork ("Trust thyself," "No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature") and it works for the sake of the essay. Not one of the stronger ones, but provoking nonetheless.
2. The Crazy State of Psychiatry (Marcia Agnell)
The Crazy State of Psychiatry is basically a review of several books criticizing psychiatric medicine. Marcia Angell presents some solid evidence and tight arguments that these drugs are doing more harm than good. In fact, the only good they are doing is making money for the corporations that sell them and the psychiatrists who prescribe them (quick diagnoses and easy drug solutions save a lot of talk-time). Much psychiatric medicines are basically a shortcuts at the expense of the taker--and many come with nasty side-effects that require more medicine. Agnell questions how such prescriptions became appropriate in the first place--whether isolating depression and other mental disorders to chemical balances in the brain is even scientifically sound (there appears to be a lot more going on than chemicals in the brain).
She also presents the history of the DSM-IV and the soon-to-be-released DSM-V with its ever-increasing pages of diagnoses. Practically any problem that appears to be mental can be diagnosed as a disease under this ever-expanding handbook. The frustrating part is that it hardly references any scientific research yet still manages to be the authority. There's a ton of information on psychiatric medicine packed in this essay including a neat little placebo experiment. I finished wanting to know more... This one is worth a reread if not for anything else than to dig deeper into the sources that Agnell retrieved her information.
3. You Owe Me (Miah Arnold)
Oh wow. This one is heavy. It's about dealing with grief at a children's hospital. The author is a creative writing teacher at a special hospital for kids. The dark side is that almost all of the kids that come there die. Some die in a few months, some after a few years. Miah Arnold writes so compassionately that I felt she probably one of the most courageous women ever. Wrapping up her thoughts, though, she questions her sanity, or the sanity of any teacher who has stayed there more than a year. I wonder. . .
This is one of a couple essays about teachers a one of my favorites.
4. Edward Hopper (Geoffrey Bent)
This essay is a reflection on the art of Edward Hopper. I am not familiar with Edward Hopper so I did not read this essay.
7. Vanishing Act (Paul Collins)
This is about a writer who wrote her first manuscript at age twelve. There are many citations of her writing and it is whimsical and fantastical, but most of all eloquent. Her first story got so much attention that she was classified in the same category os Mozart and Chopin. The year was 1927. Her first published story, A House Without Window about a little girl name Eepersip. Eepersip tries to convince her friends to explore the woods but they are afraid so she goes and gets lost in the woods herself. The bits of Follet’s writing included are light and feathery yet drew me in in only a few words.
The remaining part of the essay goes on the describe her later life. Barbara Follet is well on her way realizing her dreams. She gets to sail the sea with a crew of sailors (her greatest ambition) and writes another playfully eloquent story about her adventures. And then at fourteen her father leaves her mother. The young author begins to lose touch with the dreams of her youth and her own identity. She feels alienated living with her mother in Depression-era Manhattan. She elopes young with an outdoorsman and after a few writings of drab, uninspiring New York she disappears completely.
"I don't like civilization," Follet wrote. She is never heard from again. Her words and her story linger, her ideals failing to match any sort of fantastic reality she created at a younger but more complete age. The essay gives you the feeling that this shouldn't have happened, that time reversed and something that was being built up collapsed too soon.
Sometimes kids are really smart. But without the support they need, world weighs them down instead of props them up.
8. Insatiable (Mark Doty)
This essay is a comparative critique on Walt Whitman. His work is put side by side with Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Apparently the two men had a correspondence. Stoker praised Whitman’s work. Within the essay critique, Doty offers a personal narrative as well. It is about physical desire. He compares his longing with Whitman’s longing, or is it feeding? Actually, Whitman may be offering everything that he can offer. It’s more like a desire to know someone as deeply as possible. Doty wraps up with an interesting passage from Whitman where he describes dripping blood, and offers it to the reader. There is never satisfaction, never wholeness. In this constant offering, be it manifest as a physical means for spiritual completion, there can never be completeness.
11. Farther Away (Jonathan Franzen)
This essay took me a while to warm up to. Jonathan Franzen starts out talking about his preparations for his trip to a small island in the Atlantic Ocean. It takes him a while to get there as it is not just a flight away from mainland Chile but another flight away from a small island to this even smaller island (Masfuera). The author is not a very outdoorsy guy. In fact he is more of a literature scholar. He is going to remove himself from society and think about things. He brings a copy of Robinson Crusoe with him.
Franzen features vivid descriptions of his adventures and disappointments. But it is when he starts philosophically musing that it gets interesting. He even states that he is uncomfortable until he has the opportunity to settle down and read Robinson Crusoe. Also, the author had been good friends with the late David Foster Wallace. This gives him some additional food for thought as he tries to understand his late friend's existential malaise.
In his grieving thoughts Franzen tries to diagnose the problems of modern life the wore away at his friend. It is not about what makes us happy but about what gives us a fulfilling connection to reality... Franzen analyzes Robinson Crusoe--it gave its readers a chance to detach and wonder what they would do in such far removed situations. With modernity came the opportunity to take risks, and Robinson Crusoe gave people a chance to do so in their own solitude (aka to take a risk without actually taking the risk). One must choose to suspend disbelief when picking up a novel--an attitude of departure, often for pleasure. But the novel has become outmoded by movies, TV shows, video games, and consequently disappeared to an over-saturation of sources of fiction. Invasive like a weed, the fiction of the novel has epidemically overrun the whole world. Franzen tries to neatly tie up his distant musings by connecting them to the world he left and ambitiously ends with a theory about the current state of the internet. The possible versions of self that were once mapped out in novels as various different characters doing different things, though, may now be mapped onto the "world."
12. Creation Myth (Malcolm Gladwell)
A re-examination of the mythos that surrounds innovation. Gladwell breaks down the history leading up to Apple's unprecedented ubiquity. He breaks it down into a three-step process: the first wave of computer scientists and researchers create the functional technology. It is complicated and esoteric. This is the stage of origins. Then comes Xerox and their bulky yet promising super-computers. This is the next and middle stage in the integration of intelligence technology. It is the stage where things get made. Some people, including Jobs himself, say Xerox could have done so much more had they taken their products a step further. Gladwell argues that they couldn't have taken it a step further--that their large, bulky computers were their ultimate offering to a sequence of technological adaptation. Finally came Apple, IBM, and Microsoft, the fine-tuners. We get direct manipulation of the desktop and one-button mouses at this stage. This is the stage where the technology enters the hands of the people.
Overall, this essay is a nice brief history of modern computer technology. The point? I guess that would be that in a corporate world there are limits to innovation. There may be a creative head of a company but innovation is up to the innovators.
13. Dr. Don (Peter Hessler)
Dr. Don Keeps it Real. Dr. Don owns a pharmacy in rural Colorado and he does it like any small town business ought to be. He is not a corporate caricature but rather a small town hero. If you do business with him, it is personal. This is what a real community is. I do not know what America is aiming for nowadays but it is not anything that awards the small town hero like this. The reliable go-to guy who holds the town fabric together is a helpless victim to corporate enterprise and its idealistic big sister, global trade. Dr. Don keeps it together despite this. Dr. Don's business is Dr. Don's business, and it is also his life. And the life of Dr. Don is the life of a kind of man that is a pillar, an invisible pillar not seen anymore in any American town. As long as there is a CVS taking up every little niche of America, who needs 'em? A place like CVS, like any well branded corp, is about anonymity. Who cares who goes in and who cares who goes out? Dr. Don is not CVS. Dr. Don cares.
14. Objects of Affection (Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough)
A nice glance at the objects we own and their capacity to hold memories. Their endurance in the physical world can often be more constant than our fleeting experiences. They can even hold pieces of our identity lost somewhere along the way.
15. Getting Schooled (Garret Keizer)
Another essay about teaching. Keizer's tone rings of authority from experience. He talks about the difficulty of getting his message across to high school students and the gap of relating to them across several generations--especially on getting them to read and think. Even though I'm fuzzy on the reference, I walked away fully convinced: "Carthage must be destroyed." And, no, I'm not sure if I get it but maybe someday I will.
18. The Bitch is Back (Sandra Tsing Loh)
A rather insightful essay about menopause. I don't know much about menopause so this was sort of enlightening.
19. How Doctors Die (Ken Murray)
23. Outlaw (Jose Antonio Vargas)
24. Paper Tigers (Weseley Yang)
Written by a Korean-American who claims no identity as Korean but 100% as American, this essay sheds some light on the American identity. The focus of Yang's piece is about the "Bamboo Ceiling," the highest rung of achievement an Asian American can reach in the U.S. The limit is usually drawn right before the echelons of leadership. Yang throws out some numbers, like how 9 of the Fortune 500 are Asian Americans. By the looks of it one might think there is some racial profiling going on. And surely there is. But there is a deeper reason the Bamboo Ceiling is so hard to break.
"Upholding family honor. Filial piety. Restraint." Deeply rooted East Asian traditions have been around thousands of years and are terribly hard to break in just one or two generations. One of the high school students Yang interviews says he feels like he skipped a generation. His parents rent a flat in New York City and he has earned the Ivy League degree but something is still missing. It's not uncommon for and Asian-American to feel compelled to get the highest test scores, the best ranks, but all this success is on paper and while surely it is one way to improve one's intelligence it also skips a beat--or a whole rhythm section--that is the realm of socialization. Coming to American and finding success is one thing, but how relevant is a whole generation of, say, Korean-Americans who have passed the most difficult exams and placed themselves in the most intelligent research programs if they have little to no ability to break out from under the umbrella of white man's leadership? What more are they but a marginal community, albeit a fairly hard-working one? Yang asks these question and the answer, it turns out, is in the art of pick-up.
Well, not entirely. But this is one of the investigations Yang delves into. There are Asian Leadership Programs such as LEAP but even these fall short of teaching the minute details of social behavior. And this is what it comes down to when you stop and wonder why Asian-Americans face a wall in the workforce just short of the first step of leadership. But working in the business world is one thing. Once you break it down, the X-factor is about taking risks. But being a self-identifying individual is different. Yang offers his own story on finding his own identity...
The answer, he finds, is in daring to be different and not seeking meaning through achieving scholarships and pieces of paper, even if they are handed to you by Harvard. An American identity for someone who is Asian-American ought to come from doing something that is distinctly different, which is much harder to do than it is to talk about.
December 7, 2012
Per usual, let's do this by the individual essays as opposed to the collective. It's probably a step below 2011 and perhaps a step above the 2010. Anyhow, the best american essays are always worth a look.
This particular iteration is notable for its introduction, a slight shot at the creative writing model and a call to good old time essaying, and its lack of duds. Not everything is exceptional, but they are often quite good.
In particular Order:
High:
1. Duh-Boring-An essay on boredom. It saddens me deeply that I didn't think of it first.
2. You Owe Me-An essay about cancerous children in a writing group. Queue tears followed by me trying to cover it up when my wife asks.
3. The Crazy State of Psychiatry-An essay about the usefulness of meds as well as their prevalance in treating symptoms and why.
4. Dr. Don-A profile of a unique pharmacisit in Colorado. Ostensibly it serves as a nice reminder that it's not always possible to pigeon hole people.
5. Who are you and what are you doing here-One of those essays that reminds you that, barring a belife in reincarnation, what we do here is important because we're only doing it once.
6. Getting Schooled-An essay about the rigors of being a public school teacher.
7. Outlaw-Everyone already read this. It's written by Antonio Vargas when he admitted to being an illegal immigrant, which btw, get with it America, immigration is good.
Middle:
8. The Good Short Life-An essay written by a man with a terminal disease.
9. A Beauty-A reflection on beauty, particularly attractive people, written through the prism of a friendship with a very good looking man.
10. Paper Tigers-Written about the need of people from Asian cultures to take on, or reject certain white social constructs in order to succeed.
11. Killing my Body to save my mind-Written by Lauren Slater about her extreme weight gain after taking Zyprexa to ward off depression.
12. The Bitch is Back-An essay about menopause. I am getting old.
13. The Accidental Universe-An essay from Harper's about the origins and shifting beliefs about the nature of the universe. Hint: multiverse concepts are strange.
14. My Father/My husband-An interesting and creative, if slightly repetitive essay written by a husband who's wife has Alzheimer's. This should be higher.
15. Farther Away-That essay that Franzen wrote in the New Yorker that everyone has already read.
16. Vanishing Act-This should probably be higher. Though, to be fair, it's hard not to be jealous of a girl that publishes at the age of 12. That said, when she flames out due to financial troubles and societal norms you feel kind of bad for her.
17.Creation Myth-Okay, Malcom Gladwell can be insufferable due to his social-psychological book of the month typeness, but he does churn out an interesting piece about the rise of engineers in Silicon Valley.
18. The Foul Reign of Self-Reliance-This essay mainly reminded me that I should feel guilty about that book of Emerson essays that I haven't read....even if this essay is about Emerson was the first Tea Party member.
19. How Doctors Die-Hint: they know when they are going to go. They don't spend time/money trying to live two years instead of eight months. It will be one of the important health care questions of the next twenty years.
20. Humanism-I wanted to like this more than I did. It still should probably be higher. It's a mixture of the Renaissance thought and current technological advances. Yeah, it should be higher.
21. Other Women-This is a pretty good essay by Francine Prose about feminism.
22. Insatiable-This has to do with desire, and Whitman, and Bram Stoker, but it didn't grab me.
23. Objects of Affection-This should be higher. It's an essay about the effect of growing up in poverty on the way you related to objects.
Eh;
24. Edward Hopper and the Geometry of Despair-I guess I'm just not big on Edward Hopper.
This particular iteration is notable for its introduction, a slight shot at the creative writing model and a call to good old time essaying, and its lack of duds. Not everything is exceptional, but they are often quite good.
In particular Order:
High:
1. Duh-Boring-An essay on boredom. It saddens me deeply that I didn't think of it first.
2. You Owe Me-An essay about cancerous children in a writing group. Queue tears followed by me trying to cover it up when my wife asks.
3. The Crazy State of Psychiatry-An essay about the usefulness of meds as well as their prevalance in treating symptoms and why.
4. Dr. Don-A profile of a unique pharmacisit in Colorado. Ostensibly it serves as a nice reminder that it's not always possible to pigeon hole people.
5. Who are you and what are you doing here-One of those essays that reminds you that, barring a belife in reincarnation, what we do here is important because we're only doing it once.
6. Getting Schooled-An essay about the rigors of being a public school teacher.
7. Outlaw-Everyone already read this. It's written by Antonio Vargas when he admitted to being an illegal immigrant, which btw, get with it America, immigration is good.
Middle:
8. The Good Short Life-An essay written by a man with a terminal disease.
9. A Beauty-A reflection on beauty, particularly attractive people, written through the prism of a friendship with a very good looking man.
10. Paper Tigers-Written about the need of people from Asian cultures to take on, or reject certain white social constructs in order to succeed.
11. Killing my Body to save my mind-Written by Lauren Slater about her extreme weight gain after taking Zyprexa to ward off depression.
12. The Bitch is Back-An essay about menopause. I am getting old.
13. The Accidental Universe-An essay from Harper's about the origins and shifting beliefs about the nature of the universe. Hint: multiverse concepts are strange.
14. My Father/My husband-An interesting and creative, if slightly repetitive essay written by a husband who's wife has Alzheimer's. This should be higher.
15. Farther Away-That essay that Franzen wrote in the New Yorker that everyone has already read.
16. Vanishing Act-This should probably be higher. Though, to be fair, it's hard not to be jealous of a girl that publishes at the age of 12. That said, when she flames out due to financial troubles and societal norms you feel kind of bad for her.
17.Creation Myth-Okay, Malcom Gladwell can be insufferable due to his social-psychological book of the month typeness, but he does churn out an interesting piece about the rise of engineers in Silicon Valley.
18. The Foul Reign of Self-Reliance-This essay mainly reminded me that I should feel guilty about that book of Emerson essays that I haven't read....even if this essay is about Emerson was the first Tea Party member.
19. How Doctors Die-Hint: they know when they are going to go. They don't spend time/money trying to live two years instead of eight months. It will be one of the important health care questions of the next twenty years.
20. Humanism-I wanted to like this more than I did. It still should probably be higher. It's a mixture of the Renaissance thought and current technological advances. Yeah, it should be higher.
21. Other Women-This is a pretty good essay by Francine Prose about feminism.
22. Insatiable-This has to do with desire, and Whitman, and Bram Stoker, but it didn't grab me.
23. Objects of Affection-This should be higher. It's an essay about the effect of growing up in poverty on the way you related to objects.
Eh;
24. Edward Hopper and the Geometry of Despair-I guess I'm just not big on Edward Hopper.
June 4, 2021
Outstanding for me in this collection of 'best' 2011 essays is Benjamin Anastas' The Foul Reign of "Self-Reliance". Ten years later Anastas' arguments against the American ideal of self-reliance seem prescient. I leave you with two quotes from the essay:
"The plague of devices that keep us staring into the shallow puddle of our dopamine reactions, caressing our touchscreens for another fix of our own importance? That's right: it all started with Emerson's "Self-Reliance."
and,
"...Emerson tips the scales in favor of his own confessional, and any hope he might have raised for creating a balance to the self's divinity is lost. Ever since, we've been misreading him, or at least misapplying him. As a sad result, it has been the swagger of a man's walk that makes his measure, and Americans' right to love ourselves before any other that trumps all."
"The plague of devices that keep us staring into the shallow puddle of our dopamine reactions, caressing our touchscreens for another fix of our own importance? That's right: it all started with Emerson's "Self-Reliance."
and,
"...Emerson tips the scales in favor of his own confessional, and any hope he might have raised for creating a balance to the self's divinity is lost. Ever since, we've been misreading him, or at least misapplying him. As a sad result, it has been the swagger of a man's walk that makes his measure, and Americans' right to love ourselves before any other that trumps all."
December 24, 2012
I really loved last year's Best American Essays, and used it as my classroom reader for two semesters. Students connected to those essays, saw what writing could be, and were almost never disappointed on the whole. I could never use BAE 2012 in my classroom. Many of the essays were overly cerebral--many downright boring--and, I have to say it, a little snotty. The introduction itself was a little snobbish, with David Brooks talking about all the essays he was forced to "wade through" in order to find these gems (and, remember, he's only given about 100 or so--the very best of the best--and if you look in the back of the book, listed among the authors he had to "wade through" are most of the best writers in the genre). There a few really great essays here, including "You Owe Me" and "Who are you and What are you Doing Here?".
If you'd like to know more of what I really thought, tune in to the latest episode of SummerBooks, where we discuss BAE, as well as Best American Short Stories of 2012. www.summerbooks.podbean.com
If you'd like to know more of what I really thought, tune in to the latest episode of SummerBooks, where we discuss BAE, as well as Best American Short Stories of 2012. www.summerbooks.podbean.com
February 19, 2013
I bought the Kindle edition from Amazon.com for $1.99 and read it on my iPad, which was great. Though conservative pundit David Brooks was a guest editor, there was nothing conservative about the choices or content of these essays. All the essays were worth reading but 10 or so were truly outstanding. For example, one essay explored how Emerson’s discussions of self-reliance have influenced the anti-social attitudes of people today was interesting but the next one, a book review that examined how drugs used by people with mental health problems work no better than placebos but have some awful side-effects, was amazing. There was a sassy essay about menopause, The Bitch is Back, that offers 3 tips – understand that you are 50, hire a maid to clean, have no shame and gain the 25 pounds. How Doctors Die is a piece about avoiding low benefit surgical procedures at the end of life. Other Women is Frances Prose’s insightful discussion of feminism based on her longtime membership in a women’s group. Among the outstanding essays were: Who are you and what are you doing here,by Mark Edmundson, that explained how most students are more concerned about the social life of college and too little about classes; Miah Arnold’s You owe me, a very sad description of her writing classes with severly ill children in a cancer ward; Joseph Epstein’s discussion of boredom that was laugh-out-loud funny in several places, and Malcolm Gladwell’s Creation Myth, which began with the story of Steve Jobs spending 2 days at Xerox PARC and learning about the mouse and graphic user interface. The last two essays explore the issue of immigration and are unforgettable. Great book!
April 20, 2013
Benjamin Anastas -- The Foul Reign of "Self-Reliance" -- 1*
Marcia Angell -- The Crazy State of Psychiatry -- 5*
Miah Arnold -- You Owe Me -- 5*
Geoffrey Bent -- Edward Hopper and the Geometry of Despair -- 1*
Robert Boyers -- A Beauty -- 2*
Dudley Clendinen -- The Good Short Life -- 4*
Paul Collins -- Vanishing Act -- 3*
Mark Doty -- Insatiable -- 2*
Mark Edmundson -- Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here? -- 4*
Joseph Epstein -- Duh, Bor-ing -- 3*
Jonathan Franzen -- Farther Away -- 5*
Malcom Gladwell -- Creation Myth -- 4*
Peter Hessler -- Dr. Don -- 4*
Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough -- Objects of Affection -- 3*
Garret Keizer -- Getting Schooled -- 3*
David J. Lawless -- My Father/My Husband -- 5*
Alan Lightman -- The Accidental Universe -- 3*
Sandra Tsing Loh -- The Bitch Is Back -- 3*
Ken Murray -- How Doctors Die -- 5*
Francine Prose -- Other Women -- 2*
Richard Sennett -- Humanism -- 2*
Lauren Slater -- Killing My Body to Save My Mind -- 2*
Jose Antonio Vargas -- Outlaw -- 5*
Wesley Yang -- Paper Tigers -- 5*
Marcia Angell -- The Crazy State of Psychiatry -- 5*
Miah Arnold -- You Owe Me -- 5*
Geoffrey Bent -- Edward Hopper and the Geometry of Despair -- 1*
Robert Boyers -- A Beauty -- 2*
Dudley Clendinen -- The Good Short Life -- 4*
Paul Collins -- Vanishing Act -- 3*
Mark Doty -- Insatiable -- 2*
Mark Edmundson -- Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here? -- 4*
Joseph Epstein -- Duh, Bor-ing -- 3*
Jonathan Franzen -- Farther Away -- 5*
Malcom Gladwell -- Creation Myth -- 4*
Peter Hessler -- Dr. Don -- 4*
Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough -- Objects of Affection -- 3*
Garret Keizer -- Getting Schooled -- 3*
David J. Lawless -- My Father/My Husband -- 5*
Alan Lightman -- The Accidental Universe -- 3*
Sandra Tsing Loh -- The Bitch Is Back -- 3*
Ken Murray -- How Doctors Die -- 5*
Francine Prose -- Other Women -- 2*
Richard Sennett -- Humanism -- 2*
Lauren Slater -- Killing My Body to Save My Mind -- 2*
Jose Antonio Vargas -- Outlaw -- 5*
Wesley Yang -- Paper Tigers -- 5*
July 12, 2013
The Best American Essays relies heavily on the curator of the collection's preferences. Atwan tended towards the literary review with the personal twist or the scientific spotlight. Of the 24 essays collected, only five were by women and eight were from publications that had the proper noun "New York" in the title. I was surprised how many I had read already in their original iterations (five). I was surprised to find I had already read five of these essays in their original iteration. This had not been the case in previous years, so either my reading habits are more refined or the essays appeared in rather main stream publications. I know well that I am a lazy literary citizen and while the essays were all very well written, they were not surprising and they did not demonstrate the full breadth of the essay as a medium. Rather than growing the boundaries of the form, these pieces discuss interesting current topics of debate, aging, health care, education, and technology. Read the collection for it's merit as a snapshot of 2012 rather than the art of writing.
August 15, 2024
This book is listed on Goodreads twice.
This remains the best collection of BAE I have read. The opening essay by Marcia Angell at Harvard, argues that our current treatment of depression based on the theory of a chemical imbalance is wrong. Twelve years later, this morning, The Atlantic sends me a blurb for their new issue: "'A Dangerous Idea About How the Brain Works' by Ethan Brooks 'The chemical-imbalance theory in mental health influenced the way we talk and think about these conditions. But is it right?'"
A later essay in the same collection details how that medication impacts the body and life of a clinically depressed person, and how she believes it is keeping her alive. There are other worthy essays which, after all this time, I can't specify. I just know I found several worth reading more than once.
This remains the best collection of BAE I have read. The opening essay by Marcia Angell at Harvard, argues that our current treatment of depression based on the theory of a chemical imbalance is wrong. Twelve years later, this morning, The Atlantic sends me a blurb for their new issue: "'A Dangerous Idea About How the Brain Works' by Ethan Brooks 'The chemical-imbalance theory in mental health influenced the way we talk and think about these conditions. But is it right?'"
A later essay in the same collection details how that medication impacts the body and life of a clinically depressed person, and how she believes it is keeping her alive. There are other worthy essays which, after all this time, I can't specify. I just know I found several worth reading more than once.
February 27, 2013
Simply put...required reading. Only two essays failed to snag me completely. "The Crazy State of Psychiatry" was a little too technical for my taste. My eyes tend to glaze when faced with too many statistics. Also, as an avid fan of my own antidepressant, perhaps it hit a little too close to home. Likewise, I found "Humanism" a bit of a chore to get through, so I "read" it kind of like I "read" Tess of the D'Ubervilles" in high school. Meaning I looked at the words, turned the pages, and thought about what I was going to read next.
The highlights of this collection for me were Garret Keizer's ultra-realistic and much needed view of our modern school system, Wesley Yang's eye-opening theory on the "bamboo ceiling" in "Paper Tigers", with the biggest surprise going to the hilarious view on menopause, "The Bitch is Back" by Sandra Tsing Loh.
The essays in this collection are more than merely "notable", they are a testament to the fact that fine writing is alive and well in essay form.
Words of warning - grab a box of tissues for "My Father/My Husband", a dictionary for "The Accidental Universe", and let go of your preconceived notions for "Outlaw". While the last request is the hardest, you will be glad you did.
The highlights of this collection for me were Garret Keizer's ultra-realistic and much needed view of our modern school system, Wesley Yang's eye-opening theory on the "bamboo ceiling" in "Paper Tigers", with the biggest surprise going to the hilarious view on menopause, "The Bitch is Back" by Sandra Tsing Loh.
The essays in this collection are more than merely "notable", they are a testament to the fact that fine writing is alive and well in essay form.
Words of warning - grab a box of tissues for "My Father/My Husband", a dictionary for "The Accidental Universe", and let go of your preconceived notions for "Outlaw". While the last request is the hardest, you will be glad you did.
April 10, 2013
In his introduction, editor David Brooks writes, "I tried to pick the [essays] that will be useful to you." In this, he was successful. Every essay in this anthology--and in terms of subject matter, this is a diverse lot--offered something worthwhile to ponder. Every selected essayist is clearly an active thinker with something to say, and each says it well (an aside: Joseph Epstein's "Duh, Bor-ing" was coincidentally the one essay I've read of his that didn't bore me).
As a creative writer, I must also note that rarely was anything in this collection said artfully. The essays were accessible and provocative in content but traditional, sometimes highly academic, in form (Richard Sennett's first line in "Humanism" is the depressingly high-school-esque "In this essay I want to explore . . ."). The editing principle was, as Brooks baldly stated, utility, and if intellectual stimulation is all the reader craves, satisfaction awaits. If the reader desires musical sentences and formal innovation, with the exception of David J. Lawless's "My Father/My Husband" and perhaps Franzen's "Farther Away," the longing for wild, rollicking, exquisitely assembled language will remain unfulfilled.
As a creative writer, I must also note that rarely was anything in this collection said artfully. The essays were accessible and provocative in content but traditional, sometimes highly academic, in form (Richard Sennett's first line in "Humanism" is the depressingly high-school-esque "In this essay I want to explore . . ."). The editing principle was, as Brooks baldly stated, utility, and if intellectual stimulation is all the reader craves, satisfaction awaits. If the reader desires musical sentences and formal innovation, with the exception of David J. Lawless's "My Father/My Husband" and perhaps Franzen's "Farther Away," the longing for wild, rollicking, exquisitely assembled language will remain unfulfilled.
April 2, 2024
This is the 4th time reading a Best American Essays collection. I first met this series about 10 years ago when one edition was required reading for a class in college. This edition seemed to have more of a highbrow or pretentious selection than I remembered getting from the other editions that I've read, which were more artistic and down-to-earth.
My favorite in this edition was Vanishing Act by Paul Collins, a historical essay telling the story of forgotten American author Barbara Follett, who became nationally famous in the 1920's when she published a very successful novel at the age of 12. Maybe she would have sealed her place in America's literary memory had she not gone missing at age 25. No one knows what happened to her. This gem was worth all the other essays in the collection put together.
The runner up was Farther Away by Jonathan Frazen, probably the longest piece in the collection. It covers multiple topics, but it's most compelling aspect, to me, was the travel writing about the author's trip to a remote island off the coast of Chile, where he hoped to see and photograph a rare bird that inhabits the island.
Honorable mention to My Father / My Husband, which was very sweet. It was a love letter of sorts to the author's late wife who suffered severely from dementia the last few years of her life.
My favorite in this edition was Vanishing Act by Paul Collins, a historical essay telling the story of forgotten American author Barbara Follett, who became nationally famous in the 1920's when she published a very successful novel at the age of 12. Maybe she would have sealed her place in America's literary memory had she not gone missing at age 25. No one knows what happened to her. This gem was worth all the other essays in the collection put together.
The runner up was Farther Away by Jonathan Frazen, probably the longest piece in the collection. It covers multiple topics, but it's most compelling aspect, to me, was the travel writing about the author's trip to a remote island off the coast of Chile, where he hoped to see and photograph a rare bird that inhabits the island.
Honorable mention to My Father / My Husband, which was very sweet. It was a love letter of sorts to the author's late wife who suffered severely from dementia the last few years of her life.
October 10, 2021
"Two essays I particularly liked: Killing My Body to Save My Mind by Lauren Slater and Outlaw by Jose Antonio Vargas. Both these essays are very personal. But they stay on task, making them on the short side for these kinds of volumes, and they deal with subjects that I am aware of, but haven't read about over and over again.
I walked away from this book--metaphorically, because I wasn't doing much walking last week--with a question--How do you go about choosing subjects for essays? Things like boredom and beauty or things much more from personal experience?"
Excerpt from Original Content.
I walked away from this book--metaphorically, because I wasn't doing much walking last week--with a question--How do you go about choosing subjects for essays? Things like boredom and beauty or things much more from personal experience?"
Excerpt from Original Content.
November 19, 2025
I enjoyed this more than I expected. I'm not an essay person, but the book was on sale and edited by someone I admire, so I gave it a go. Many of the essays wee enlightening (the one on psychiatry). Most were thought-provoking, even if I didn't agree with them. Well worth my time.
July 25, 2019
The writing was okay. Some of the arguments I disagreed with. Overall I enjoy the essay as a form of writing.
May 3, 2023
The Best American Essays Series is among my favorite books to read. The 2012 edition seems to consist not of essays but rather feature length magazine articles. This is the sole reason I'm reluctant to rate this book 5 stars. To be fair, all the entries are well written and provide a welcome relief from the current political and social stresses. For reasons unclear to me, death, dying, and disease is a recurring theme in 8 or 9 out of 24 entries. An additional two entries tend toward other dark themes which I leave for you to discover in your own reading ventures. This makes for some depressing reading sessions. But, the entries are nonetheless worthwhile reading as they provide new information that was unknown to me. They also give insight to the lives of people that I might not otherwise encounter and an opportunity for reflection on life.
May 17, 2025
All these collections are great
August 27, 2025
Standouts included the essays from Miah Arnold, Ken Murray, and Sandra Tsing Loh.
March 20, 2017
For the most part, an aggressively mediocre, uninteresting collection. I enjoyed some essays, but they were the exception, not the rule. I blame David Brooks, a conservative pundit, rather than a writer of much worth.
February 17, 2015
February 2015, update: RadioLab this week aired "How Doctors Die," which first appeared as an eye-opening essay a few years ago. Ken Murray, a physician, wrote the piece. He and others discuss why many doctors will accept pain management but not much elsewhen their time comes: http://www.radiolab.org/story/bitter-... … Murray's essay appeared in this Best American anthology after it published here: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/201...
January 2013, original comments: My favorite annual book series. A third of the essays — seven of twenty-four — in the 2012 edition earned five amazing stars from me. Apple/Steve Jobs appears in two of these essays.
Creation Myth
— by Malcolm Gladwell
— about innovation and creativity, the evolution of a concept
— Steve Jobs, the subject of this essay, opens the piece as a 24-year-old in 1979 who went to the Xerox Research Center. An engineer showed him a "mouse" and "windows." "Why aren't you doing anything with this?" asked Jobs.
The Foul Reign of "Self-Reliance
— about the excessive love of individual liberty while paying homage to the famous 1997 Apple campaign: "Here's To The Crazy Ones" — the original Think Different ad.
The Accidental Universe
— by Alan Lightman
— The basic features of our universe are accidents.
— We live in one of a number of universes.
Edward Hopper and the Geometry of Despair
— Hopper loved buildings. For him, society consisted of windows — whether looking in or out. See the options. What's on the other side?
— The author lives in Glen Ellyn, a few Metra stops from "Nighthawks," hanging in the Art Institute of Chicago.
How Doctors Die
— Medical professionals see "futile care" performed on people.
— Poor knowledge and misguided, unrealistic expectations lead to bad decisions.
— The system encourages excessive treatment.
— Die in peace at home, with the best-ever pain management.
Objects of Affection
— about a complicated attitude toward possessions — the practical and functional; books, records, stoneware, jewelry, photographs
— The author grew up in 1950s Poland, where her grandmother saw everything she owned perish in a fire during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.
Getting Schooled
— A teacher returns to the classroom after a 14-year hiatus and describes the changes he saw in the kids, culture and curriculum.
January 2013, original comments: My favorite annual book series. A third of the essays — seven of twenty-four — in the 2012 edition earned five amazing stars from me. Apple/Steve Jobs appears in two of these essays.
Creation Myth
— by Malcolm Gladwell
— about innovation and creativity, the evolution of a concept
— Steve Jobs, the subject of this essay, opens the piece as a 24-year-old in 1979 who went to the Xerox Research Center. An engineer showed him a "mouse" and "windows." "Why aren't you doing anything with this?" asked Jobs.
The Foul Reign of "Self-Reliance
— about the excessive love of individual liberty while paying homage to the famous 1997 Apple campaign: "Here's To The Crazy Ones" — the original Think Different ad.
The Accidental Universe
— by Alan Lightman
— The basic features of our universe are accidents.
— We live in one of a number of universes.
Edward Hopper and the Geometry of Despair
— Hopper loved buildings. For him, society consisted of windows — whether looking in or out. See the options. What's on the other side?
— The author lives in Glen Ellyn, a few Metra stops from "Nighthawks," hanging in the Art Institute of Chicago.
How Doctors Die
— Medical professionals see "futile care" performed on people.
— Poor knowledge and misguided, unrealistic expectations lead to bad decisions.
— The system encourages excessive treatment.
— Die in peace at home, with the best-ever pain management.
Objects of Affection
— about a complicated attitude toward possessions — the practical and functional; books, records, stoneware, jewelry, photographs
— The author grew up in 1950s Poland, where her grandmother saw everything she owned perish in a fire during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.
Getting Schooled
— A teacher returns to the classroom after a 14-year hiatus and describes the changes he saw in the kids, culture and curriculum.
August 29, 2013
Every year, I read two collections: The Best American Short Stories and the Best American Essays. I love short stories and essays, but over the years have evolved into too much of an intellectual magpie to track them down myself. It's like the difference between walking down a street and visiting a museum, I suppose: If I run across something in a magazine, I scan it; if it's something in bound covers in front of me, I read every word. The curation process loans gravitas somehow.
This year's Best American Short Stories is one of the best I've read in years. Almost all of the essays were worth reading. The standouts (for moi):
• The Crazy State of Psychiatry: An examination of the role Big Pharmo plays in the medicalization of depression.
• Outlaw: The writer Antonio Vargas's notes on growing up illegal.
• Paper Tigers: An examination of anti-Asian bias in mainstream America,
• Farther Away: Yes, like everyone else, I'd like to hate Jonathan Franzen, but I can't because he writes so well. When his close friend David Foster Wallace committed suicide, Franzen's response was to run away to a remote island ff the coast of Ecuador. He stayed maybe three days max before scurrying on home -- hey! There were SuperBowl parties to attend-- but he wrang every last drop of pathos and literary allusion out of those three days. Brilliant essay.
• Insatiable: The Walt Whitman/Dracula connection
• Other Women: Francine Prose on the 1970s roots of feminism. (This hit home! In the 1970s, I was a volunteer medic with the Berkeley Women's Health Collective, and I still remember the Marxist-Leninist self-critique sessions in which we sat around in a big circle and were encouraged to trash ourselves. If we wouldn't trash ourselves, other women would obligingly trash us instead. "You embrace your slave chains!" One woman ranted at me. This because I continued to wear eyeliner, despite my commitment to speculum self-exams!)
This year's Best American Short Stories is one of the best I've read in years. Almost all of the essays were worth reading. The standouts (for moi):
• The Crazy State of Psychiatry: An examination of the role Big Pharmo plays in the medicalization of depression.
• Outlaw: The writer Antonio Vargas's notes on growing up illegal.
• Paper Tigers: An examination of anti-Asian bias in mainstream America,
• Farther Away: Yes, like everyone else, I'd like to hate Jonathan Franzen, but I can't because he writes so well. When his close friend David Foster Wallace committed suicide, Franzen's response was to run away to a remote island ff the coast of Ecuador. He stayed maybe three days max before scurrying on home -- hey! There were SuperBowl parties to attend-- but he wrang every last drop of pathos and literary allusion out of those three days. Brilliant essay.
• Insatiable: The Walt Whitman/Dracula connection
• Other Women: Francine Prose on the 1970s roots of feminism. (This hit home! In the 1970s, I was a volunteer medic with the Berkeley Women's Health Collective, and I still remember the Marxist-Leninist self-critique sessions in which we sat around in a big circle and were encouraged to trash ourselves. If we wouldn't trash ourselves, other women would obligingly trash us instead. "You embrace your slave chains!" One woman ranted at me. This because I continued to wear eyeliner, despite my commitment to speculum self-exams!)
December 19, 2013
This was a really great anthology. I read it for content but also for models for essay writing. My overarching takeaway from this collection is that the essay form can break the general creative writing rule of “show don’t tell” and the single, almost short-story like template some beginners fall into. Not all essays follow that structure. The essay was “traditionally written on topics,” and what made them (and continues to make them) distinct? Reflection (Intro: pg IX)
My Favorite Essays I Recommend from this anthology:
1. The Crazy State of Psychiatry (really made me think and question assumptions about antidepressants)
2. A Beauty (worth playing with form, an interesting in-depth look of a complex character)
3. How Doctors Die (unique, real-time tale about dangers of modern medicine keeping us alive but miserable)
4. Vanishing Act (specific interesting example to explain broad commentary on lost talent, etc. Well done)
5. Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here? (great musing on secondary education)
6. Farther Away (great insight on grief and a sneak peek into the personal life of David Foster Wallace)
7. Dr. Don (does interesting things with dialogue doing most of the heavy-lifting, worth experimenting with)
8. Getting Schooled (as an urban public school teacher, AMEN. I too worry about my kids not wanting or liking reading and what that means. Cool perspective, mostly told in flashback and comparing past and present)
9. My Father/My Husband (brilliant, best one in the series. So beautiful and sad and real)
10. Other Women (enjoyed the different perspective on feminism)
11. Outlaw (awesome, lots at stake, happening in real-time, using self as a way to explore immigration issue)
My Favorite Essays I Recommend from this anthology:
1. The Crazy State of Psychiatry (really made me think and question assumptions about antidepressants)
2. A Beauty (worth playing with form, an interesting in-depth look of a complex character)
3. How Doctors Die (unique, real-time tale about dangers of modern medicine keeping us alive but miserable)
4. Vanishing Act (specific interesting example to explain broad commentary on lost talent, etc. Well done)
5. Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here? (great musing on secondary education)
6. Farther Away (great insight on grief and a sneak peek into the personal life of David Foster Wallace)
7. Dr. Don (does interesting things with dialogue doing most of the heavy-lifting, worth experimenting with)
8. Getting Schooled (as an urban public school teacher, AMEN. I too worry about my kids not wanting or liking reading and what that means. Cool perspective, mostly told in flashback and comparing past and present)
9. My Father/My Husband (brilliant, best one in the series. So beautiful and sad and real)
10. Other Women (enjoyed the different perspective on feminism)
11. Outlaw (awesome, lots at stake, happening in real-time, using self as a way to explore immigration issue)
August 20, 2014
I love these Best American Essay collections, which are reliably full of good writing, and generally quite diverse in topic and style.
The previous year's collection, as I noted in my Livejournal review, was edited by a woman of color, and had a 54% female authorship, and a 37%-ish writer-of-color authorship. Here we're back to the more typical 25% female and 12% color; with a white male making the choices. Hmmm.
While Mr. Brooks complains a bit about the dominance of Death (especially Death of Parents), Illness, and Nursing Homes as themes of the modern essay -- Death and Illness are the subjects of 21% of the selections. I'm thinking there should be a 10% limit, until the last Baby Boomer is finally dust. "How Doctors Die" is a darned effective piece, however, and should be required reading. We'd give it a waiver.
The collection is full of good work, and several pieces overlap. There's one that blame's all the country's ills on Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance" and another that takes the opposite view. There are two essays in a row that tackle the subject of boredom. Several address writers and their personalities, including Jonathan Franzen's sharply double-edged memorial of David Foster Wallace, and Paul Collins's piece on a successful writer who simply disappeared. I was quite taken by "Dr. Don" which tells the story of a pharmacist in Colorado who's the only medical law in several counties; and by Malcolm Gladwell's "Creation Myth" and Ewa Hryniewicz-Varbrough's "Objects of Affection."
The biggest impact, for me, came from Richard Sennett's "Humanism." It's an attempt to bring that label up to date, and I took it as a guidepost for the direction to take the Literature class I'm teaching, this next semester.
The previous year's collection, as I noted in my Livejournal review, was edited by a woman of color, and had a 54% female authorship, and a 37%-ish writer-of-color authorship. Here we're back to the more typical 25% female and 12% color; with a white male making the choices. Hmmm.
While Mr. Brooks complains a bit about the dominance of Death (especially Death of Parents), Illness, and Nursing Homes as themes of the modern essay -- Death and Illness are the subjects of 21% of the selections. I'm thinking there should be a 10% limit, until the last Baby Boomer is finally dust. "How Doctors Die" is a darned effective piece, however, and should be required reading. We'd give it a waiver.
The collection is full of good work, and several pieces overlap. There's one that blame's all the country's ills on Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance" and another that takes the opposite view. There are two essays in a row that tackle the subject of boredom. Several address writers and their personalities, including Jonathan Franzen's sharply double-edged memorial of David Foster Wallace, and Paul Collins's piece on a successful writer who simply disappeared. I was quite taken by "Dr. Don" which tells the story of a pharmacist in Colorado who's the only medical law in several counties; and by Malcolm Gladwell's "Creation Myth" and Ewa Hryniewicz-Varbrough's "Objects of Affection."
The biggest impact, for me, came from Richard Sennett's "Humanism." It's an attempt to bring that label up to date, and I took it as a guidepost for the direction to take the Literature class I'm teaching, this next semester.
July 22, 2013
-The collection is definitely worth reading for the following essays, (or at least these were MY personal faves, as I found them to be quite moving):
Marcia Agnell's "The Crazy State of Psychiatry" (which, btw, I read immediately after having finished the memoir "Marbles" ... Scary. Very scary.)
Miah Arnold- "You Owe Me"
Mark Edmundson "Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?"
Jonathan Franzen, Father Away
Peter Hessler, Dr. Don
Garret Keizer, Getting Schooled
David J. Lawless, My Father/My Husband
-I bought the Kindle version because it was featured for $1 or $2, but I would have preferred the paper version, for the fact that I like to read the contributors' notes, and it was annoying to have to "follow link" to them each time I finished an essay. Also, on the topic of the contributors' notes, I wish they'd include some final thoughts or other commentary from the authors, or spark of inspiration on the subject matter, the way they do in the Best American Short Stories.
-I'm subtracting a star or two because I must admit to having skipped three or four that just couldn't hold my attention.
Marcia Agnell's "The Crazy State of Psychiatry" (which, btw, I read immediately after having finished the memoir "Marbles" ... Scary. Very scary.)
Miah Arnold- "You Owe Me"
Mark Edmundson "Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?"
Jonathan Franzen, Father Away
Peter Hessler, Dr. Don
Garret Keizer, Getting Schooled
David J. Lawless, My Father/My Husband
-I bought the Kindle version because it was featured for $1 or $2, but I would have preferred the paper version, for the fact that I like to read the contributors' notes, and it was annoying to have to "follow link" to them each time I finished an essay. Also, on the topic of the contributors' notes, I wish they'd include some final thoughts or other commentary from the authors, or spark of inspiration on the subject matter, the way they do in the Best American Short Stories.
-I'm subtracting a star or two because I must admit to having skipped three or four that just couldn't hold my attention.
November 8, 2014
These 24 essays cover the waterfront, downtown, uptown and outer space with topics ranging from the effect of Emerson's philosophy on the American psyche, the art of Edward Hopper, teaching high school in a rural community, dark matter and theory of a multiverse, diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, obstacles to innovation at American companies, and a visit to a remote Pacific island by a writer and enthusiastic birder.
Reading this book was a mind stretching experience. If I had to pick a favorite, I'd pick "Outlaw" by Jose Antonio Vargas about a young man's experiences as an illegal immigrant. Or I'd pick "Creation Myth" by Malcolm Gladwell about technological innovation at Xerox and Apple. Or I'd pick " My Father/My Husband" by Donald J. Lawless about caring for his wife who has Alzheimer's disease. Or "How Doctors Die" by Ken Murray on end of life decision making.
Or "Dr Don" by Peter Hessler about health care and a local pharmacist in a remote area of Colorado. Or "Paper Tigers" by Wesley Yang about "the bamboo curtain" and Asian-American experience. Or "Vanishing Act" by Paul Collins about a 1920's child prodigy. Or....
Reading this book was a mind stretching experience. If I had to pick a favorite, I'd pick "Outlaw" by Jose Antonio Vargas about a young man's experiences as an illegal immigrant. Or I'd pick "Creation Myth" by Malcolm Gladwell about technological innovation at Xerox and Apple. Or I'd pick " My Father/My Husband" by Donald J. Lawless about caring for his wife who has Alzheimer's disease. Or "How Doctors Die" by Ken Murray on end of life decision making.
Or "Dr Don" by Peter Hessler about health care and a local pharmacist in a remote area of Colorado. Or "Paper Tigers" by Wesley Yang about "the bamboo curtain" and Asian-American experience. Or "Vanishing Act" by Paul Collins about a 1920's child prodigy. Or....
April 12, 2013
Some years I like the collection more than others. These are the essays I liked the most: The State of Psychiatry, about how treatment went from learning how to copy to take a pill was spot on; You Owe Me, written by a teacher who teaches terminal children at a hospital was uplifting but also sad; The Good Short Life, about coming to terms with a terminal illness was good; My Father/My Husband, about the conversations between a man and his wife who has Alzheimer's, was poignant; How Doctors Die, about how little end of life care they choose for themselves makes one wonder if all that care is worth it.
The Bitch is Back, which was about menopause was not that funny, in fact she seemed angry and whiny while trying to be funny. Made me glad that I had my children early (in my twenties) and my mother had us late (mid-thirties was late back then) so that I didn't have to take care of both children at home and an elderly parent half a world away at the same time.
The Bitch is Back, which was about menopause was not that funny, in fact she seemed angry and whiny while trying to be funny. Made me glad that I had my children early (in my twenties) and my mother had us late (mid-thirties was late back then) so that I didn't have to take care of both children at home and an elderly parent half a world away at the same time.
January 28, 2014
All of the works in this collection are erudite and full of speculation on the human condition, which makes this book a thought-provoking read (and a helpful tool for non-fiction writers) that will expand your mind and you reflect on what you've just read. My only qualm is that I don't consider some of the material to be "essays," which wouldn't be a problem if not for the misleading title. One example, a wonderful article titled "Dr. Don," is a profile story of a rural doctor's life and his impact on the community. Beautifully written, but not an essay. Another example is a non-fiction (I think?) piece titled "My Father/My Husband," which consists almost entirely of dialogue between a husband and his wife with Alzheimer's. It, too, is touching and well-written, but I wouldn't consider it an essay. None of this diminishes the quality of the fine work in the collection, but I just thought it wise to forewarn you.
January 23, 2013
David Brooks, as expected, compiled a thoughtful and engaging selection of essays.
Faves:
Miah Arnold: "You Owe Me"
Dudley Clendinen: "The Good Short Life"
("But we don't talk about how to die. We act as if facing death weren't one of life's greatest, most absorbing thrills and challenges. Believe me, it is. This is not dull.")
Mark Edmundson: "Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?"
("In reading, I continue to look for one thing -- to be influenced, to learn something new, to be thrown off my course and onto another, better way.")
Joseph Epstein: "Duh, Bor-ing"
("One can also tell a great deal about a person by what bores him.")
Jonathan Franzen: "Farther Away"
("The allure of suicide, the last big score, may go underground, but it never entirely disappears.")
Malcolm Gladwell: "Creation Myth"
Alan Lightman: "The Accidental Universe"
Ken Murray: "How Doctors Die"
Faves:
Miah Arnold: "You Owe Me"
Dudley Clendinen: "The Good Short Life"
("But we don't talk about how to die. We act as if facing death weren't one of life's greatest, most absorbing thrills and challenges. Believe me, it is. This is not dull.")
Mark Edmundson: "Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?"
("In reading, I continue to look for one thing -- to be influenced, to learn something new, to be thrown off my course and onto another, better way.")
Joseph Epstein: "Duh, Bor-ing"
("One can also tell a great deal about a person by what bores him.")
Jonathan Franzen: "Farther Away"
("The allure of suicide, the last big score, may go underground, but it never entirely disappears.")
Malcolm Gladwell: "Creation Myth"
Alan Lightman: "The Accidental Universe"
Ken Murray: "How Doctors Die"
Read
September 11, 2013Another great collection. Although all of the individual essay were top-notch, some hit me more than others. I especially liked "The Crazy State of Psychiatry", about how people are over-medicated and the problems it creates. It leads to a later essay called "Killing My Body to Save My Mind," which is a personal account of one patient who comes to live with some of the side effects of this phenomena. "The Good Short Life," about a man who is told he has ALS is very touching. "Who are you..." and "The Creation Myth" are another two good ones. I actually posted a link to the original of "Getting Schooled" to my Facebook account and to some of my teacher friends, it's that good. The last one is "How Doctors Die," which delves into the difference between how most patients and most doctors are treated for terminal illnesses. A lot to think about in this last one.
June 2, 2015
I'm not sure why this volume doesn't seem to be as favored by Goodreads reviewers as last year's---I found this set of essays infinitely more interesting. Yes, there is a journalistic bent to some of them in that they discuss policy topics and facts; however, I fail to see how talking about policy topics relevant to current readers makes something not an essay. There's a heavy focus on education and healthcare, which I enjoyed quite a bit (although I certainly didn't agree with all of the viewpoints---hello, the anthropic principle?!). There are also some incredibly moving pieces in here; the essay by Lawless certainly is, and so is the Vargas essay. There are definitely essays in here that I will read multiple times over.
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