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The Best American Essays 1997
This year's collection of outstanding essays offers distinctive works by Susan Sontag, Hilton Als, Thomas McGuane, Joy Williams, and Roy Blount, among other notable writers. Simultaneous.
226 pages, Paperback
First published November 3, 1997
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97 people want to read
About the author
Ian Frazier
51 books249 followersIan Frazier (b.1951) is an American writer and humorist. He is the author of Travels in Siberia, Great Plains, On the Rez, Lamentations of the Father and Coyote V. Acme, among other works, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He graduated from Harvard University. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, he lives in Montclair, New Jersey.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/ianfra...
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 30, 2014
Ian Frazier has diverse taste, which means that this collection (1) is diverse and (2) doesn't entirely appeal to me. None of the essays were amazing, though five of them I'd return to--Jo Ann Beard's "The Fourth State of Matter," Louis de Bernieres's "Legends of the Fall" (he wrote Captain Corelli's Mandolin, and the writing is so different here), Richard Ford's "In the Face," Gay Talese's "Ali in Havana," and Joy Williams's "The Case Against Babies." If I could give this collection a 3.5 I would.
September 7, 2021
Faves:
Roy Blount, Jr., "First Tell Me What Kind of Reader You Are"
Louis De Bernieres, "Legends of the Fall"
Debra Dickerson, "Who Shot Johnny?"
Dagoberto Gilb, "Northeast Direct"
Verlyn Klinkenborg, "We Are Still Only Human"
Natalie Kusz, "Ring Leader"
Lauren Slater, "Black Swans"
Susan Sontag, "A Century of Cinema"
Joy Williams, "The Case Against Babies"
Roy Blount, Jr., "First Tell Me What Kind of Reader You Are"
Louis De Bernieres, "Legends of the Fall"
Debra Dickerson, "Who Shot Johnny?"
Dagoberto Gilb, "Northeast Direct"
Verlyn Klinkenborg, "We Are Still Only Human"
Natalie Kusz, "Ring Leader"
Lauren Slater, "Black Swans"
Susan Sontag, "A Century of Cinema"
Joy Williams, "The Case Against Babies"
June 26, 2018
Some of these essays, taken individually, are very strong ("Fourth State of Matter," "Black Swans," and "The Case Against Babies" were my personal favorites). However, this book doesn't really work for me as a *collection*. Not only do the essays topics/themes/etc. not go together, but Frazier includes several different styles of essays. The change in essay style, tone, format, and so on is jarring when you try to read the essays collectively.
June 10, 2025
I’m pretty seriously disappointed with this collection. The essay is my favorite medium and Ian Frazier one of my favorite writers - I’m not sure how this selection is so poor. What’s even more confusing is that each of these writers is tremendous, though he’s somehow chosen their worst work? It’s flat, it’s uninspiring, lazy even? But it takes effort to put together a collection this bad. Idk.
April 17, 2020
1997. A good year for American essays.
October 6, 2013
This is a collection of some of the best essays of 1997, as chosen by the editor for 1997, Ian Frazier. In this series, a different "guest editor" is chosen each year. Roughly 100 essays are chosen from what has been published during the past year, and turned over to the guest editor, who chooses the essays to be included in the collection.
What surprised me is that I enjoyed this collection even more than the collection of short stories that I read several weeks ago. I would have thought that essays, due to the requirement of being true, would be much drier, more boring reading. But many of these essays read like fiction and could easily pass for fiction.
Below are quick summaries for the essays in this collection. I highly recommend "Who Shot Johnny", "My Father", and "Black Swans"..
Notes on My Mother by Hilton Als - The author talks about his mother, who is from Barbados and lives in New York, where the author grew up.
The Fourth State of Matter by Jo Ann Beard - Chilling story of senseless killings in a university by a grad student. Reads like a thrilling piece of fiction, scary to think that it's true.
First Tell Me What Kind of Reader You Are by Roy Blount, Jr. - He talks about the irritation of always being asked what kind of writer he is.
Labyrinthine by Bernard Cooper - Strange little story about boy who is obsessed with drawing and solving mazes.
Legends of the Fall by Louis de Bernieres - Louis talks about the statistics of suicides committed at Beachy Head, in England, when people leap to their deaths from the top of the cliffs.
Who Shot Johnny? by Debra Dickerson - This is the incredible story the author's nephew, a young black man who is shot for no apparent reason. Disturbing in its description of the society in which this sort of violence has become commonplace. A must read..
In The Face by Richard Ford - A funny essay talking about a man's need to smack somebody in the face.
Rat Patrol: A Saga by Frank Gannon - Very funny description of a boy's fascination with explosions.
Northeast Direct by Dagoberto Gilb - Man on train realizes that the guy in front of him is reading a book that he wrote, but can't bring himself to talk to the man.
We Are Still Only Human by Verlyn Klinkenborg - Short piece looking at humankind's tendency to be cruel.
Ring Leader by Natalie Kusz - Story of the author, a native Alaskan, trying to fit in, living in the Midwest.
Don't Get Comfortable by Naton Leslie - Colorful story of author's father and other characters working on railroad.
Twenty-Fish Days by Thomas McGuane - Story of a good day fishing.
Backlogs of History by Cullen Murphy - Very interesting discussion of the tendency for us to collect more and more documents and how this makes any sort of research into the past harder and harder.
A Drugstore Eden by Cynthia Ozick - The author reminisces about the drugstore that her parents owned while she was growing up, and the garden hidden in the lot behind it.
My Father by Lukie Chapman Reilly - A disturbing description of a father who terrorizes his children and how a daughter spends her entire life trying to deal with the effects.
Living in Tongues by Luc Sante - The author talks about the nature of being bilingual and how each language that he speaks deals with entirely different aspects of his life.
My Habit by Paul Sheehan - The author talks about his hobby of collecting used crack vials.
Dinner at Uncle Boris's by Charles Simic - Narrative about a strange dinner with a strange family.
Black Swans by Lauren Slater - A very vivid description of what it's like to suffer from OCD--Obsessive Compulsive Disorder--and how Prozac affects the author's disease.
A Century of Cinema by Susan Sontag - Ms. Sontag bemoans the death of good moviemaking.
Ali in Havana by Gay Talese - The story of Mohammed Ali's visit to Cuba and his meeting with Castro.
The Gangster We Are All Looking For by Le Thi Diem Thuy - Story of the rocky family life of a family of Vietnamese refugees.
The Case Against Babies by Joy Williams - Ms. Williams discusses our obssession with producing babies.
What surprised me is that I enjoyed this collection even more than the collection of short stories that I read several weeks ago. I would have thought that essays, due to the requirement of being true, would be much drier, more boring reading. But many of these essays read like fiction and could easily pass for fiction.
Below are quick summaries for the essays in this collection. I highly recommend "Who Shot Johnny", "My Father", and "Black Swans"..
Notes on My Mother by Hilton Als - The author talks about his mother, who is from Barbados and lives in New York, where the author grew up.
The Fourth State of Matter by Jo Ann Beard - Chilling story of senseless killings in a university by a grad student. Reads like a thrilling piece of fiction, scary to think that it's true.
First Tell Me What Kind of Reader You Are by Roy Blount, Jr. - He talks about the irritation of always being asked what kind of writer he is.
Labyrinthine by Bernard Cooper - Strange little story about boy who is obsessed with drawing and solving mazes.
Legends of the Fall by Louis de Bernieres - Louis talks about the statistics of suicides committed at Beachy Head, in England, when people leap to their deaths from the top of the cliffs.
Who Shot Johnny? by Debra Dickerson - This is the incredible story the author's nephew, a young black man who is shot for no apparent reason. Disturbing in its description of the society in which this sort of violence has become commonplace. A must read..
In The Face by Richard Ford - A funny essay talking about a man's need to smack somebody in the face.
Rat Patrol: A Saga by Frank Gannon - Very funny description of a boy's fascination with explosions.
Northeast Direct by Dagoberto Gilb - Man on train realizes that the guy in front of him is reading a book that he wrote, but can't bring himself to talk to the man.
We Are Still Only Human by Verlyn Klinkenborg - Short piece looking at humankind's tendency to be cruel.
Ring Leader by Natalie Kusz - Story of the author, a native Alaskan, trying to fit in, living in the Midwest.
Don't Get Comfortable by Naton Leslie - Colorful story of author's father and other characters working on railroad.
Twenty-Fish Days by Thomas McGuane - Story of a good day fishing.
Backlogs of History by Cullen Murphy - Very interesting discussion of the tendency for us to collect more and more documents and how this makes any sort of research into the past harder and harder.
A Drugstore Eden by Cynthia Ozick - The author reminisces about the drugstore that her parents owned while she was growing up, and the garden hidden in the lot behind it.
My Father by Lukie Chapman Reilly - A disturbing description of a father who terrorizes his children and how a daughter spends her entire life trying to deal with the effects.
Living in Tongues by Luc Sante - The author talks about the nature of being bilingual and how each language that he speaks deals with entirely different aspects of his life.
My Habit by Paul Sheehan - The author talks about his hobby of collecting used crack vials.
Dinner at Uncle Boris's by Charles Simic - Narrative about a strange dinner with a strange family.
Black Swans by Lauren Slater - A very vivid description of what it's like to suffer from OCD--Obsessive Compulsive Disorder--and how Prozac affects the author's disease.
A Century of Cinema by Susan Sontag - Ms. Sontag bemoans the death of good moviemaking.
Ali in Havana by Gay Talese - The story of Mohammed Ali's visit to Cuba and his meeting with Castro.
The Gangster We Are All Looking For by Le Thi Diem Thuy - Story of the rocky family life of a family of Vietnamese refugees.
The Case Against Babies by Joy Williams - Ms. Williams discusses our obssession with producing babies.
May 2, 2009
I wish our local library had more of this kind of book available. I bought this one at the book sale.
This is some of the best writing you could ever hope to find, on very amazingly different subjects.
For example, a man who has a collection of many years of crack vials, picked up on the streets; a woman who suddenly was paralyzed by OCD, her turnaround with Prozac and its ultimate betrayal and her making peace with the end result; a man writes of his native language French, how all important concepts are explained to him in that language and the dying out of Walloons, a spoken, but never written, dialect of French.
This is some of the best writing you could ever hope to find, on very amazingly different subjects.
For example, a man who has a collection of many years of crack vials, picked up on the streets; a woman who suddenly was paralyzed by OCD, her turnaround with Prozac and its ultimate betrayal and her making peace with the end result; a man writes of his native language French, how all important concepts are explained to him in that language and the dying out of Walloons, a spoken, but never written, dialect of French.
September 27, 2012
Alternate titles: "Older People We Admired or Felt Obliged to Admire"; "My Childhood Was Sooo Complicated". Mostly I did not enjoy this, but "The Fourth State of Matter" (Jo Ann Beard) was everything you could want in an essay, and some of these I might have liked better if they had not been nestled among similar, less interesting stories (if you have just read an essay about an abusive father, you may not want the next essay to start "The first thing you have to understand about my childhood..."). A mixed bag.
October 6, 2015
The essays by Jo Ann Beard, Richard Ford, Le Thi Diem Thuy, Charles Simic, and Naton Leslie are all fantastic. The rest are decent, if not a bit quirky (Ian Frazier made the choices for this year), and the only real clunker is Susan Sontag's namedropping essay on the death of cinema. There are plenty of nice essays here, but aside from the first five I listed (and, really, only Beard's essay on the 1991 Iowa City shooting is an essential read), nothing else stands out.
May 13, 2009
This includes what I consider one of the best essays I've ever read--Jo Ann Beard's Fourth State of Matter. Every time I read it, I'm stunned by how she structures her essay for her subject matter. Also notable in this volume, Who Shot Johnny, by Debra Dickerson, and We Are Still Only Human, by Verlyn Klinkenborg.
December 6, 2015
This series often a mixed bag as every reader will provide a different take. 1997's collection has several gems starting with "The Fourth State of Matter by Jo Ann Beard. Others I found to be very good:
Who shot Johnny?
My Father
And these were enjoyable:
In the Face
The case against babies
Ring Leader
A Drugstore Eden
My Habit
We are still only Human
Dinner at Uncle Boris's
Who shot Johnny?
My Father
And these were enjoyable:
In the Face
The case against babies
Ring Leader
A Drugstore Eden
My Habit
We are still only Human
Dinner at Uncle Boris's
July 31, 2012
The essays I enjoyed the most were:
The Case Against Babies by Joy Williams,
My Habit by Paul Sheehan about collecting crack vials,
A Century Of Cinema by Susan Sontag.
Others were also good. Some were quite dull.
The Case Against Babies by Joy Williams,
My Habit by Paul Sheehan about collecting crack vials,
A Century Of Cinema by Susan Sontag.
Others were also good. Some were quite dull.
May 11, 2011
This is probably my favorite collection, heartfelt memoir and humor, including Jo Ann Beard's "Fourth State of Matter," probably my favorite essay. Period.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews