Many Circles: New and Selected Essays

by Albert Goldbarth

Many Circles collects the best of Goldbarth's three earlier essay collections, along with several new pieces. Goldbarth, whom Joyce Carol Oates has called "a dazzling virtuoso who can break your heart," weaves through an array of fascinating topics (including alien life, Jewish history, pop culture, ancient and recent events, and quantum physics) to explore the greater questions of our existence and our universe. Each essay, in language and topic, is a rich and extraordinary adventure, full of surprise and epiphany. As Robert Atwan, editor of The Best American Essays series, has "Theses essays are a whole new breed . . . Goldbarth has spliced strands of the old genre with a powerful new gene―and the results are miraculous."

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction

276 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2001

About the author

Albert Goldbarth is an American poet born January 31, 1948 in Chicago. He is known for his prolific production, his gregarious tone, his eclectic interests and his distinctive 'talky' style. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and won the National Book Critics Circle award in 1991 and 2001, the only poet to receive the honor two times. He also won the Mark Twain Award for Humorous Poetry, awarded by the Poetry Foundation, in 2008.

Goldbarth received his BA from the University of Illinois in 1969 and his MFA from the University of Iowa in 1971. He is currently distinguished professor of Humanities at Wichita State University, and he teaches in the Low-Residency MFA program in Creative Writing at Converse College.

Reviews

[Ross Wagenhofer · Rating 3 out of 5]

One subject will appear in section 1, juxtaposed with a seemingly unrelated subject in section 2 (for the shorter essays in this book, replace "section" with "paragraph"), and sometimes a third or a fourth subject will appear, and we are to trust Goldbarth will connect these topics into a satisfactory thematic whole by the end; this is typical of the sort essay form that appears in literary magazines that aren't the ones you can find in a Barnes & Noble but nevertheless command some level of cachet among writers (if not among lay readers). Whether you find the essays in this book satisfying or not will depend on how impressed you are with Goldbarth's whimsical use of English paired with the usual high-brow elision of explanation and transition - this is learned writing for learned readers, can't make things too easy for us - and whether you consider modern concepts like "scientific truth" or "time" as malleable as Albert seems to. I'm reminded of Bernard Nightingale of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia who prefers the 55 crystal spheres of Aristotle's cosmos.

The two large essays that make up the bulk of this book are pretty good. Skip the rest and just read those.

Goodreads doesn't allow fractional reviews, so I can't give this book the 2.5 stars I'd like to: perfect mediocrity.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goldbarth is a master of the essay form. His agility is apparent throughout this collection, where he's able to draw connections between such diverse topics as parallel universe theories and dating a lesbian before she comes out to da Vinci's obsession with mandalas and his friend Ellen's struggle with mental illness. He handles all these topics with the heart and microscopic vision of the poet he is, so there are lines the hit like epiphanies of lyric art. Expect to be dazzled and challenged.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Various Goldbarth Creative NonFiction essays--not as good as "Griffin" or "The Knife," but he has some interesting writing acrobatics and abstract questions (like thoughts on what his occupations in previous lives were...) that are exciting, though dense.

[Ori Fienberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's like... He puts all other current writers to shame. I'm only giving him 4 out of 5 stars out of spite.

[Marginalia2 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the essays may be quirky, but too many seem to rely on clever language and ballet type leaps from sentence to sentence. These essays simply drone—

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goldbarth's poetic background is evident in this, the best collection of essays I have ever read.

[PEN Center USA · Rating 5 out of 5]

2002 PEN Center USA Award Winner for Creative Nonfiction