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Perspectives: Uncollected Essays
218 pages, Paperback
Published April 15, 2026
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April 16, 2026
DeWitt Henry’s Perspectives: Uncollected Essays comprises a wide-ranging group of personal essays from a mind acutely aware of the physical world around him, his own inner world, and where the two worlds have intersected and diverged through time.
The title essay, placed first in the collection, introduces the idea that the very act of writing can change our perceptions of memory, time, and place, a theme he will return to throughout the collection:
“My physical surroundings and perceptions from then [childhood] had all come back so overwhelmingly that they refused to recede” (1).
I greatly enjoyed how the title essay of the collection invites the reader into the author’s world of Watertown, Massachusetts, ten miles west of Boston: “Here, I can show you on a map” (1). He goes on to describe the different perspectives he sees in this familiar landscape, which also includes Boston, where he was teaching at the time he wrote the essay.
This landscape is where he met and married his wife and learned to navigate an interfaith marriage and where they raised their children. The essays that include his family are some of my favorites in the collection, particularly the details of his role as “Grandee” to his grandchildren.
Much of the collection is reflection on Henry’s relationship with academia at various stages of his formal education and faculty career. As a graduate student, he experienced tension between what he hoped to gain from scholarship and his need to develop his own creative writing craft. His cofounding Ploughshares, which was to become one of the top literary magazines in the country, played an important role in his identity as a writer.
I appreciated the balance between profound soul-searching essays, such as “On My Racism: Notes by a WASP” and playful essays, such as riffing on movie clichés in “An Affair to Remember.” There was also good balance in pacing, the former essays prompting slower, contemplative reading, the latter fairly short and read quickly for fun.
The authorial voice throughout felt genuine and honest, with self-deprecating humor from time to time:
“We started dancing. I’d come to pride myself on my dancing as Mr. Get Down and Dirty, Mr. Life, despite my loneliness and other pressures” (53).
Another favorite essay is “Face to Face,” prompted by 74-year-old Henry’s republishing of the short story collection he wrote when he was 24. He wonders:
“Would my 24-year-old self be impressed by, learn from, or recognize his own writing dreams in the work of 74? Would we embarrass each other?” (147).
Reflecting on what we can learn from this essay collection, I’m struck by the idea that
the world appears to have become a place where self-reflection is no longer valued.
Perspectives clearly lays out what we are in danger of losing. How reliable is our own memory in the Digital Age? Is this memory real or is it virtual? Are we are moving ever closer toward an existence in which we cannot tell the difference between virtual experiences and lived experiences in the physical world?
The title essay, placed first in the collection, introduces the idea that the very act of writing can change our perceptions of memory, time, and place, a theme he will return to throughout the collection:
“My physical surroundings and perceptions from then [childhood] had all come back so overwhelmingly that they refused to recede” (1).
I greatly enjoyed how the title essay of the collection invites the reader into the author’s world of Watertown, Massachusetts, ten miles west of Boston: “Here, I can show you on a map” (1). He goes on to describe the different perspectives he sees in this familiar landscape, which also includes Boston, where he was teaching at the time he wrote the essay.
This landscape is where he met and married his wife and learned to navigate an interfaith marriage and where they raised their children. The essays that include his family are some of my favorites in the collection, particularly the details of his role as “Grandee” to his grandchildren.
Much of the collection is reflection on Henry’s relationship with academia at various stages of his formal education and faculty career. As a graduate student, he experienced tension between what he hoped to gain from scholarship and his need to develop his own creative writing craft. His cofounding Ploughshares, which was to become one of the top literary magazines in the country, played an important role in his identity as a writer.
I appreciated the balance between profound soul-searching essays, such as “On My Racism: Notes by a WASP” and playful essays, such as riffing on movie clichés in “An Affair to Remember.” There was also good balance in pacing, the former essays prompting slower, contemplative reading, the latter fairly short and read quickly for fun.
The authorial voice throughout felt genuine and honest, with self-deprecating humor from time to time:
“We started dancing. I’d come to pride myself on my dancing as Mr. Get Down and Dirty, Mr. Life, despite my loneliness and other pressures” (53).
Another favorite essay is “Face to Face,” prompted by 74-year-old Henry’s republishing of the short story collection he wrote when he was 24. He wonders:
“Would my 24-year-old self be impressed by, learn from, or recognize his own writing dreams in the work of 74? Would we embarrass each other?” (147).
Reflecting on what we can learn from this essay collection, I’m struck by the idea that
the world appears to have become a place where self-reflection is no longer valued.
Perspectives clearly lays out what we are in danger of losing. How reliable is our own memory in the Digital Age? Is this memory real or is it virtual? Are we are moving ever closer toward an existence in which we cannot tell the difference between virtual experiences and lived experiences in the physical world?
Displaying 1 of 1 review