American essays

No Common Reader (Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman)

August 28, 2012

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998) collects eighteen essays by Anne Fadiman about her lifelong love of all things book-related. Whether describing her childhood fascination with sesquipedalians (“long words,” as she explains), or the post-nuptial stress [...]

In a D’Agata’s Vida (Halls of Fame by John D’Agata)

May 29, 2012

Clever? Sure. But John D’Agata’s collection of essays Halls of Fame (Graywolf) makes great use of its peculiar structural tactics (textual collages, narratives hidden in footnotes, essay as poetry) to examine the strange ambition of America’s stranger inhabitants—famous twentieth-century [...]