How We Speak to One Another

by Ander Monson (Editor)

“To read the collected essays here is to feel invited to a salon.” — Signature
 
How We Speak to One Another  is some of the most engaging evidence we’ve got that the essay is going strong. Here, essayists talk back to each other, to the work they love and the work that disquiets them, and to the very basic building blocks of what we understand “essay” to be. What’s compiled in these pages testifies to the endless flexibility, generosity, curiosity, and audacity of essays. Even more than that, it provides the kind of pleasure any great essay collection does—upsetting our ideas and challenging the way we organize our sense of the world.
 
Edited by a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and a former managing editor of Essay Daily , this collection “clearly demonstrates the essay is alive and well, kicking and evolving, grappling with its place in literature” ( Kirkus Reviews ).
 
“A fun read, even for nonwriters.”— Publishers Weekly
 
Contributors Ander Monson, Marcia Aldrich, Kristen Radtke, Robin Hemley, Robert Atwan, Matt Dube, Aisha Sabatini Sloan, T. Clutch Fleischmann, Rigoberto González, Kati Standefer, Julie Lauterbach-Colby, César Diaz, Emily Deprang, Lucas Mann, Danica Novgorodoff, Bonnie J. Rough, Peter Grandbois, Albert Goldbarth, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Steven Church, Bethany Maile, David Legault, Joni Tevis, John D'Agata, Meehan Crist,Thomas Mira Y Lopez, Danielle Deulen, John T. Price, Maya L. Kapoor, Chelsea Biondolillo, Megan Kimble, Brian Doyle, Nicole Walkder, Paul Lisicky, Brian Oliu, Pam Houston, Dave Mondy, Phillip Lopate, Amy Benson, Patrick Madden, Elena Passarello, Erin Zwiener, Patricia Vigderman, and Ryan Van Meter.
Winner of the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awar

Genres: Essays, Writing, Nonfiction, Anthologies

325 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 20, 2017

About the author

Ander Monson is the author of Vanishing Point; Neck Deep and Other Predicaments, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize; the novel Other Electricities; and the poetry collections Vacationland and The Available World. He lives and teaches in Arizona and edits the magazine DIAGRAM.

Although Ander is a proud graduate of Knox College, he also received advanced degrees from Iowa State and the University of Alabama.

More info is available here.
http://poetry.arizona.edu/presenter-a...

Reviews

[Abi Kemp · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am deeply offended by the existence of this book, How We Speak To One Another (Paperback).

DISCLAIMER: SPOILERS

Chapter five, titled "Cheesing Cars", is a step by step tutorial on how to throw cheese at cars from the window of a medium-sized building or two story house as they innocently drive home from work, or to pick up their children from day care. The last step says, "8) Watch them drive away with an embarrassed, hopeless expression on their face and yell obscenities at them because this, ladies and gentlemen, is how Ander Monson thinks that we should speak to each other.

He also gives a list of various insults that he believes are the "most hurtful" and "personal". He talks about calling people various obscenities, the "art of gaslighting", and my least favorite, how we should yell at fast food workers when we don't feel like paying "barbaric and downright offensive" prices for a meal, or when they put tomatoes on your burger and you specifically said NO tomatoes. He thinks that we should spit in their faces. I don't want to spit in their faces.

Chapter seven, "To Sons and Daughters...", is a chapter about the importance of talking back to your parents. He said it is important to throw a tantrum when you don't get what you want, and when they tell you "no", to do it anyways.

CHAPTER NINE IS LITERALLY JUST A LIST OF HOW TO SAY "F*** You" IN EVERY SINGLE LANGUAGE INCLUDING PIG LATIN AND GIBBERISH. If you don't believe me, Fidiguck Yidigou. That one's gibberish.

I would not recommend this read to my worst enemy. The hateful, extreme, and utterly criminal ideas and opinions shared in this "novel" are not worth wasting two thousand six hundred and seventy four pages on.

He also said to throw onions at fat people. That one just didn't sit right with me. 😕

[Abby]

I read this like medication, or more like a nutritional supplement, saved for the moment I needed some super nerdy essays about essays to remind me of writing's possibilities. It served very well. Seriously, there are so many good pieces in here (and many would be quite useful teaching material). List of favorites is topped by T Clutch Fleischmann's "Looking for Samuel Delaney" (it's another New York City essay and I don't even care it's SO GOOD); "On Collage, Chris Kraus, and Misremembered Didion," Aisha Sabatini Sloan; "On the Essential Art of Failing," Peter Grandbois; "On Long Winters, Short Essays, and a Sky That Stretches Forever" by Chelsea Biondolillo; "On Jim Bouton's Ball Four," Dave Mondy; Emily Deprang, Bethany Maile, Bonnie J. Rough...etc. etc. I could go on, but I'll let you find your own faves.

[Josephine Ensign · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating collection of essays. My two favorites were Amy Benson's "On Eliot Weinberger's 'Wrens'" and Rigoberto Gonzalez's "Observations About Writing Memoir in My Twenties, Thirties, and Forties." A favorite passage from Gonzalez: "Writing about trauma doesn't solve, doesn't answer, and sometimes doesn't close—it sifts through the rubble and tries to communicate what happened there. Whatever is put back together is, ideally, outside of the body and soul, but inside the imagination. It is a map of a place we no longer inhabit, but which still inhabits us." p. 69

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

A curated Essay Daily anthology, wherein essayists essay about seminal essays. This reminded me how much I enjoy reading Ander Monson. A few, but not all, of the essays lean pedagogical. Beware.

[Kelly McCloskey-Romero · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am exploring what a good essay is by reading as many as I can and thinking about the genre. Still in process.

[Mills College Library]

814.608 H8479 2017

[Leonard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't read all of the nearly fifty short chapters in this book, each by a different author, but found the ones I read to be mildly interesting and not particularly crucial to me at this time.

[Lanie Tankard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's my review:

http://www.thewoventalepress.net/2017...

[Anna Hargett]

Interesting collection of Essays. What drew me to the book was the essay "Essential Art of Failing" by Peter Grandbois. Great piece. Favorite quote, "Wisdom is to know your limitations and work within them."

I was also drawn to the Essay "On Tom Junod's 'The Falling Man.'" This was an essay on the iconic photograph of an unknown man falling to his death from the twin tower on 9/11. Fascinating yet disturbing photo. That photo/story has always stayed with me since I saw a documentary on it.