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 | | The Best American Essays 2007 (Edition 001) by David Foster Wallace (Editor), Robert Atwan (Series Editor) ISBN-10: 9780618709274 ISBN-10: 0-618-70927-4 ISBN-13: 9780618709274 ISBN-13: 978-0-618-70927-4 Paperback 2008-10-29 Houghton Mifflin Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description The twenty-two essays in this powerful collection -- perhaps the most diverse in the entire series -- come from a wide variety of periodicals, ranging from n + 1 and PMS to the New Republic and The New Yorker, and showcase a remarkable range of forms. Read on for narrative -- in first and third person -- opinion, memoir, argument, the essay-review, confession, reportage, even a dispatch from Iraq. The philosopher Peter Singer makes a case for philanthropy; the poet Molly Peacock constructs a mosaic tribute to a little-known but remarkable eighteenth-century woman artist; the novelist Marilynne Robinson explores what has happened to holiness in contemporary Christianity; the essayist Richard Rodriguez wonders if California has anything left to say to America; and the Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson attempts to find common ground with the evangelical community. In his introduction, David Foster Wallace makes the spirited case that "many of these essays are valuable simply as exhibits of what a first-rate artistic mind can make of particular fact-sets -- whether these involve the 17-kHz ring tones of some kids' cell phones, the language of movement as parsed by dogs, the near-infinity of ways to experience and describe an earthquake, the existential synecdoche of stagefright, or the revelation that most of what you've believed and revered turns out to be self-indulgent crap." | ||
Reviews | ||
Had to... I had to get this for an English class. I ordered it off Amazon because the University Book Store didn't have any. It is, however, pretty good considering it's required reading... | ||
the voice of dissent I don't hate to be the voice of dissent in this case. I'm not a fan of Wallace, so I suppose I wasn't that surprised that his choice of essays was at best mediocre and at worst really, really (really) bad. Lately the Best American series has been disappointing. I'm hoping it will get better. | ||
Like all anthologies, a mixed bag. A typical anthology in this series has about two dozen essays and merits a 3-star rating. This book is no exception. With essays by Ian Buruma, Malcolm Gladwell, Cynthia Ozick, Marilynne Robinson, Richard Rodriguez, Elaine Scarry, Louis Menand, John Lahr, Peter Singer, Edward O. Wilson, and an introduction by David Foster Wallace, there is no shortage of big-name contributors. Unfortunately, name recognition doesn't always guarantee quality and, for me, the gems in this collection came from authors I was unfamiliar with until now. In addition to a terrific introduction by DFW, there were four essays among the 22 in this collection that I found exceptional: "Werner" by Jo Ann Beard "Shakers" by Daniel Orozco "Dragon Slayers" by Jerald Walker "Fathead's Hard Times" by W.S. DiPiero Several essays covered political topics: Mark Danner on Iraq, George Gessert on torture, Garret Keizer on gun control, Phillip Robertson on Iraq, Elaine Scarry on America's compliance with the Geneva Convention, Roger Scruton's "A Carnivore's Credo", Ian Buruma on multiculturalism, Edward O. Wilson on responsible environmental stewardship, Peter Singer's "What should a millionaire give - and what should you?" It might be just a testament to my shallowness, but the only two of these essays that didn't feel like homework were those by Elaine Scarry and Peter Singer. Gladwell's profile of Cesar Millan (The Dog Whisperer) is interesting, but only moderately so. Personal reminiscences are provided by John Lahr, Molly Peacock, Cynthia Ozick, and Marione Ingram. Of these, only that by Lahr rises above the average; Ingram's account of her family's experience during WWII during air raids on Hamburg, which should be moving, is told in a way which manages to be oddly flat and unaffecting. Essays by Mark Greif ("Afternoon of the Sex Children") and Richard Rodriguez ("Disappointment") were just irritating. Greif ruminates for 20 pages on the unappealing topic of pedophilia, without managing to express a single coherent thought, while Rodriguez argues that California's heyday is over in an essay that is nothing more than an extended, solipsistic whine. Finally, it pains me to report that the musings of Marilynne Robinson, a writer I greatly admire, on personal holiness, did not coalesce to form a particularly successful essay. | ||
Not Just for Essay Lovers The Best American Essays is an annual christmas gift to my husband. This year, I decided to read a few essays to see why he likes them. This really is a "best" selection of essays on various subjects edited by a different guest writer every year. The essays are always compelling reads and are ideal when you know there will be a wait, i.e. Dr's office, etc. | ||
Funny, intellectual, and powerful essays don't disappoint I picked up this volume with some trepidation, only because I had walked around the whole bookstore and nothing had yet quite caught my eye. How could someone choose "the best essays" out of the abundance of magazines and wouldn't the winners have to be low-to-middle-brow to sell copy? Well, I was happily mistaken. The volume is terrific. I haven't read every essay in the book, but I have read more then half and no one picks up these books to read them cover-to-cover. Only a couple have disappointed. Most others were real page-turners. A few essays in particular caught my attention: "A Carnivore's Credo" - Roger Scruton explains why vegetarians are right in being appalled by the modern food system, but wrong in their solution of skipping meat. Almost got me to start eating meat again. "The Freedom to Offend" - Ian Buruma offers a short polemic on why we give up our free speech for sensitivity only with peril. "Afternoon of the Sex Children" - Mark Greif leads us through a tour of today's seriously messed up relationship with sexual youth. On one hand, pedophilia is more stigmatized (rightly) than ever before, but on the other hand our celebrity culture, our literature, our advertising and our pornography celebrate sex with young people. What happened? Sereval Iraq-related essays - If you've been paying attention, the specifics aren't news, but several essays do a great service of compiling and presenting coherently the chaos that has been the American intervention in Iraq. Sophiscated, funny, insightful. Reading this book isn't that different than reading the New York Times Magazine, VQR, Atlantic Monthly, or many other magazines that are well-written and don't condescend. Except that this book is, after all, a selection of the "best," without the inevitable filler (and ads!) of a weekly, monthly, or even quarterly rag. | ||