Last Writes

I hope the malleable, nonlinear, collage-like aesthetic of the multigenre essay will suit you over the next two weeks; it is an essay that should build its structure and its associative links incrementally and sometimes stealthily. If it works for you it's probably because you will manage to channel Montaigne, who once described the essaying impulse by noting that "my style and my mind alike go rambling." Some of you will sense the literary possibilities of the genre, and others the musical possibilities. By the way, I recently chanced upon this very appropriate paragraph in Robert Root's The Nonfictionist's Guide: On Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction:

"The segmented essay is like an oratorio or a concerto. The spaces are like intervals of silence between the separate elements. Sometimes the segments of prose in an essay can be recitative, aria, duet or trio, chorus; they can be allegro non troppo, allegro appasionato, andante, allegretto grazioso. This is what the spaces say: In this interval of silence hold onto what you have just heard; prepare yourself to hear something different; ponder the ways these separatenesses are part of a whole. Like musical compositions, nonfiction need not be one uninterrupted melody, one movement, but can also be the arrangement of distinct and discrete miniatures, changes of tempo, sonority, melody, separated by silences. This is what the spaces say" (86).

I also like Susan Griffin's description, in her meta-essay, "The Red Shoes," of the wandering nature of language and storytelling, and think it gives us another way to think about the essays you just worked on:

"The extent of the unknown borders all language. One's relationship with it is erotic. One has a passion to know. But one can never entirely know what is other. Telling a story, no matter how much you know, you are very soon pulled into unexplored territory. Even the familiar is filled with unexpected blank spaces. The usual Sunday drive is all of a sudden a wild ride into terra incognita. You are glad to be going, but there is a vague feeling of discomfort. Where are you?"

So you're all embarking on your essayistic wandering without a map, honoring Robert Davis's and Mark Shadle's belief that "motion is the essay's ubiquitous trope." These writers elsewhere refer, quite appealingly, to the essay's potential as a "cabinet of wonders." I continue to be drawn to the idea of creating a collaborative "cabinet of wonders" for a course like this, an essay for which each of us contributes one section of a group oratorio that we then try to get published somewhere. Another time, I guess! In the meantime, do feel free, in this space, to provide a window onto your writing process, to share a segment of your essay, to ask for advice from the group, etc.