A monumental, canon-defining anthology of three centuries of American essays, from Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin to David Foster Wallace and Zadie Smith. The essay form is an especially democratic one, and many of the essays Phillip Lopate has gathered here address themselves--sometimes critically--to American values/5(48) Villapando, Ernesto: There are at least 12 citations in the text., The citations are in correct format. There are at least 6 different sources used in the paper., There are at least 4 sources used from the text book., There is at least one newspaper, magazine or periodical used in the paper., All the sources are academically reliable Nov 17, · By Phillip Lopate. November 17, Phillip Lopate spoke to Literary Hub about the new anthology he has edited, The Glorious American Essay. He recounts his own development from an “unpatriotic” young man to someone, later in life, who would embrace such writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, who personified the simultaneous darkness and optimism Estimated Reading Time: 6 mins
What Does It Mean To Be an American Essay - With Outline
Phillip Lopate spoke to Literary Hub about the new anthology he has edited, The Glorious American Essay. Lopate looks back to the American essay and forward to writers like Wesley Yang and Jia Tolentino.
What is the next face of the essay form? What does the term mean to you in ? How has your understanding of the word evolved? I will admit that when I was younger, american essay, I tended to be very unpatriotic and critical of my country, although once I started to travel abroad and witness authoritarian regimes like Spain under Franco, I could never sign on to the fear that a fascist US was just around the corner.
I came to the conclusion that we have our american essay, but our virtues as well. Part of the thrill in putting together this anthology was to see it operating simultaneously on two tracks: first, it would record the development of a literary form that I loved, the essay, american essay, as it evolved over years in this country.
At the same time, it american essay be a running account of the history of the United States, in the hands of these essayists who were contending, directly or indirectly, with the pressing problems of their day. The promise of America was always being weighed against its failure to live up to that standard.
Dubois and James Weldon Johnson eloquently addressing racial injustice, american essay. Issues of identity, american essay, gender and intersectionality were explored by writers such as Richard Rodriguez, American essay Lorde, Leonard Michaels and N. Scott Momaday, sometimes with touches of irony and self-scrutiny, which have always been assets of the essay form.
How did you? What were your criteria? PL : I thought I knew the field fairly well to begin with, having edited the best-selling Art of the Personal Essay intaught the form for decades, served on book award juries and so on. But once I started researching and collecting material, I discovered that I had lots of gaps, american essay, partly because the mandate I had set for myself was so sweeping. But it also occurred to me that fine essayists must exist in every discipline, not only literature, which sent me on a hunt that took me to cultural criticism Clement Greenberg, Kenneth Burketheology Paul Tillichfood writing M.
American essaygeography John Brinkerhoff Jacksonnature writing John Muir, John Burroughs, Edward Abbeyamerican essay writing Loren Eiseley, Lewis Thomasphilosophy George Santayana. My one consistent criterion was that the essay be lively, engaging and intelligently written, american essay. In short, I had to like it myself. Of course I would need to include the best-known practitioners of the American essay—Emerson, american essay, Thoreau, Mencken, Baldwin, Sontag, etc.
Finally, american essay, I wanted to show a wide variety of formal approaches, since the essay is by its very nature and nomenclature an experiment, which brought me to Gertrude Stein and Wayne Koestenbaum. Equally important, I was aided in all these searches by colleagues and friends who kept suggesting other names. For every fertile lead, probably four resulted in dead ends. Meanwhile, I was american essay a real learning adventure.
LH: Do you have a personal favorite among American essayists? If so, what appeals to you the most about them? So much American thought grows out of Emerson, american essay, or is in contention with Emerson, even if that debt is sometimes unacknowledged or unconscious.
What I love about Emerson is his density of thought, and the surprising twists and turns that result from it. He has a playful skepticism, a knack for thinking against himself. Each sentence starts a new rabbit of thought scampering american essay. LH: You make the interesting decision to open the anthology with an essay written in50 years before the founding of the republic.
PL : I wanted to start the anthology with the first fully-formed essayistic voices in this land, which turned out to belong to the Puritans, american essay.
Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards were highly cultivated readers, familiar with the traditions of essay-writing, Montaigne and the English, and with the latest science, even as they inveighed against witchcraft, american essay. I will admit that american essay also amused me to open the book with Cotton Mather, a prescriptive, strait-is-the-gate american essay, and end it with Zadie Smith, who is not only bi-racial but bi-national, dividing her year between London and New York, american essay whose openness to self-doubt american essay signaled by her essay collection title, american essay, Changing My Mind.
Their attraction to reasoned argument and willingness to entertain possible objections to their points of view inspired a vigorous strand of American essay-writing. So, while we may fix the founding of the United States to a specific year, the actual culture and literature of the country book-ended that date.
Which essay in the last 12 years would be your st selection? PL : Funny you should ask, american essay. As it happens, I am currently putting the finishing touches on another anthology, this one entirely devoted to the Contemporary i. I have been immersed in reading younger, up-and-coming writers, established mid-career writers, and some oldsters who are still going strong Janet Malcolm, Vivian Gornick, Barry Lopez, John McPhee, for example.
Such a banquet of names speaks to the intergenerational appeal of the form. It has something to do with the current moment, which has everyone more than a little confused and therefore trusting more than ever those strong individual voices that are willing to cop to their subjective fears, american essay, anxieties, doubts and ecstasies. The Glorious American Essayedited by Phillip Lopate, is available now.
Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature. Features Book Marks CrimeReads Longform Daily Fiction About. Via Pantheon, american essay. By Phillip Lopate. anthologies essayists essays Pantheon Books Phillip Lopate The Glorious American Essay.
Phillip Lopate Phillip Lopate is the author of To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction and of four essay collections, Bachelorhoodamerican essay, Against Joie de VivrePortrait of My Bodyand Portrait Inside My Head, american essay. He is the editor of the anthologies The Art of the Personal EssayWriting New Yorkand American Movie Critics.
He was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship, two National Endowment american essay the Arts grants, and two New York Foundation for the Arts grants. He is professor of writing at Columbia University's nonfiction MFA program, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Model Essay America Speaks
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What It Means To Be An American Essay Words | 5 Pages. Throughout the life span of the United States, from its infancy after the Revolution to the present, people have asked, “What is an American?” This question goes far beyond asking who is a citizen or who resides in this land. No, it asks what the identity of an American is? Nov 17, · By Phillip Lopate. November 17, Phillip Lopate spoke to Literary Hub about the new anthology he has edited, The Glorious American Essay. He recounts his own development from an “unpatriotic” young man to someone, later in life, who would embrace such writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, who personified the simultaneous darkness and optimism Estimated Reading Time: 6 mins Villapando, Ernesto: There are at least 12 citations in the text., The citations are in correct format. There are at least 6 different sources used in the paper., There are at least 4 sources used from the text book., There is at least one newspaper, magazine or periodical used in the paper., All the sources are academically reliable
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