essay about contemporary literature

50 Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

Liberty Hardy

Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty

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I feel like essay collections don’t get enough credit. They’re so wonderful! They’re like short story collections, but TRUE. It’s like going to a truth buffet. You can get information about sooooo many topics, sometimes in one single book! To prove that there are a zillion amazing essay collections out there, I compiled 50 great contemporary essay collections, just from the last 18 months alone.  Ranging in topics from food, nature, politics, sex, celebrity, and more, there is something here for everyone!

I’ve included a brief description from the publisher with each title. Tell us in the comments about which of these you’ve read or other contemporary essay collections that you love. There are a LOT of them. Yay, books!

Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

They can’t kill us until they kill us  by hanif abdurraqib.

“In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib’s is a voice that matters. Whether he’s attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown’s grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly.”

Would Everybody Please Stop?: Reflections on Life and Other Bad Ideas  by Jenny Allen

“Jenny Allen’s musings range fluidly from the personal to the philosophical. She writes with the familiarity of someone telling a dinner party anecdote, forgoing decorum for candor and comedy. To read  Would Everybody Please Stop?  is to experience life with imaginative and incisive humor.”

Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds  by Yemisi Aribisala

“A sumptuous menu of essays about Nigerian cuisine, lovingly presented by the nation’s top epicurean writer. As well as a mouth-watering appraisal of Nigerian food,  Longthroat Memoirs  is a series of love letters to the Nigerian palate. From the cultural history of soup, to fish as aphrodisiac and the sensual allure of snails,  Longthroat Memoirs  explores the complexities, the meticulousness, and the tactile joy of Nigerian gastronomy.”

Beyond Measure: Essays  by Rachel Z. Arndt

“ Beyond Measure  is a fascinating exploration of the rituals, routines, metrics and expectations through which we attempt to quantify and ascribe value to our lives. With mordant humor and penetrating intellect, Arndt casts her gaze beyond event-driven narratives to the machinery underlying them: judo competitions measured in weigh-ins and wait times; the significance of the elliptical’s stationary churn; the rote scripts of dating apps; the stupefying sameness of the daily commute.”

Magic Hours  by Tom Bissell

“Award-winning essayist Tom Bissell explores the highs and lows of the creative process. He takes us from the set of  The Big Bang Theory  to the first novel of Ernest Hemingway to the final work of David Foster Wallace; from the films of Werner Herzog to the film of Tommy Wiseau to the editorial meeting in which Paula Fox’s work was relaunched into the world. Originally published in magazines such as  The Believer ,  The New Yorker , and  Harper’s , these essays represent ten years of Bissell’s best writing on every aspect of creation—be it Iraq War documentaries or video-game character voices—and will provoke as much thought as they do laughter.”

Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession  by Alice Bolin

“In this poignant collection, Alice Bolin examines iconic American works from the essays of Joan Didion and James Baldwin to  Twin Peaks , Britney Spears, and  Serial , illuminating the widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies (dead and alive) are used as props to bolster men’s stories. Smart and accessible, thoughtful and heartfelt, Bolin investigates the implications of our cultural fixations, and her own role as a consumer and creator.”

Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life  by Jenny Boully

“Jenny Boully’s essays are ripe with romance and sensual pleasures, drawing connections between the digression, reflection, imagination, and experience that characterizes falling in love as well as the life of a writer. Literary theory, philosophy, and linguistics rub up against memory, dreamscapes, and fancy, making the practice of writing a metaphor for the illusory nature of experience.  Betwixt and Between  is, in many ways, simply a book about how to live.”

Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give by Ada Calhoun

“In  Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give , Ada Calhoun presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage, opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates, but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which ‘the first twenty years are the hardest.'”

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays  by Alexander Chee

“ How to Write an Autobiographical Novel  is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing—Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley—the writing of his first novel,  Edinburgh , and the election of Donald Trump.”

Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays  by Durga Chew-Bose

“ Too Much and Not the Mood is a beautiful and surprising exploration of what it means to be a first-generation, creative young woman working today. On April 11, 1931, Virginia Woolf ended her entry in A Writer’s Diary with the words ‘too much and not the mood’ to describe her frustration with placating her readers, what she described as the ‘cramming in and the cutting out.’ She wondered if she had anything at all that was truly worth saying. The attitude of that sentiment inspired Durga Chew-Bose to gather own writing in this lyrical collection of poetic essays that examine personhood and artistic growth. Drawing inspiration from a diverse group of incisive and inquiring female authors, Chew-Bose captures the inner restlessness that keeps her always on the brink of creative expression.”

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy  by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“‘We were eight years in power’ was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s ‘first white president.'”

Look Alive Out There: Essays by Sloane Crosley

“In  Look Alive Out There,  whether it’s scaling active volcanoes, crashing shivas, playing herself on  Gossip Girl,  befriending swingers, or squinting down the barrel of the fertility gun, Crosley continues to rise to the occasion with unmatchable nerve and electric one-liners. And as her subjects become more serious, her essays deliver not just laughs but lasting emotional heft and insight. Crosley has taken up the gauntlets thrown by her predecessors—Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, David Sedaris—and crafted something rare, affecting, and true.”

Fl â neuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London  by Lauren Elkin

“Part cultural meander, part memoir,  Flâneuse  takes us on a distinctly cosmopolitan jaunt that begins in New York, where Elkin grew up, and transports us to Paris via Venice, Tokyo, and London, all cities in which she’s lived. We are shown the paths beaten by such  flâneuses  as the cross-dressing nineteenth-century novelist George Sand, the Parisian artist Sophie Calle, the wartime correspondent Martha Gellhorn, and the writer Jean Rhys. With tenacity and insight, Elkin creates a mosaic of what urban settings have meant to women, charting through literature, art, history, and film the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes fraught relationship that women have with the metropolis.”

Idiophone  by Amy Fusselman

“Leaping from ballet to quiltmaking, from the The Nutcracker to an Annie-B Parson interview,  Idiophone  is a strikingly original meditation on risk-taking and provocation in art and a unabashedly honest, funny, and intimate consideration of art-making in the context of motherhood, and motherhood in the context of addiction. Amy Fusselman’s compact, beautifully digressive essay feels both surprising and effortless, fueled by broad-ranging curiosity, and, fundamentally, joy.”

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture  by Roxane Gay

“In this valuable and revealing anthology, cultural critic and bestselling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are ‘routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied’ for speaking out.”

Sunshine State: Essays  by Sarah Gerard

“With the personal insight of  The Empathy Exams , the societal exposal of  Nickel and Dimed , and the stylistic innovation and intensity of her own break-out debut novel  Binary Star , Sarah Gerard’s  Sunshine State  uses the intimately personal to unearth the deep reservoirs of humanity buried in the corners of our world often hardest to face.”

The Art of the Wasted Day  by Patricia Hampl

“ The Art of the Wasted Day  is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated eighteenth-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of ‘retirement’ in rural Wales. Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne—the hero of this book—who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind, thus inventing the personal essay.”

A Really Big Lunch: The Roving Gourmand on Food and Life  by Jim Harrison

“Jim Harrison’s legendary gourmandise is on full display in  A Really Big Lunch . From the titular  New Yorker  piece about a French lunch that went to thirty-seven courses, to pieces from  Brick ,  Playboy , Kermit Lynch Newsletter, and more on the relationship between hunter and prey, or the obscure language of wine reviews,  A Really Big Lunch  is shot through with Harrison’s pointed aperçus and keen delight in the pleasures of the senses. And between the lines the pieces give glimpses of Harrison’s life over the last three decades.  A Really Big Lunch  is a literary delight that will satisfy every appetite.”

Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me  by Bill Hayes

“Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city’s incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.”

Would You Rather?: A Memoir of Growing Up and Coming Out  by Katie Heaney

“Here, for the first time, Katie opens up about realizing at the age of twenty-eight that she is gay. In these poignant, funny essays, she wrestles with her shifting sexuality and identity, and describes what it was like coming out to everyone she knows (and everyone she doesn’t). As she revisits her past, looking for any ‘clues’ that might have predicted this outcome, Katie reveals that life doesn’t always move directly from point A to point B—no matter how much we would like it to.”

Tonight I’m Someone Else: Essays  by Chelsea Hodson

“From graffiti gangs and  Grand Theft Auto  to sugar daddies, Schopenhauer, and a deadly game of Russian roulette, in these essays, Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide. She asks what our privacy, our intimacy, and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking, linking, and sharing.”

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.: Essays  by Samantha Irby

“With  We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. , ‘bitches gotta eat’ blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making ‘adult’ budgets, explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette—she’s ’35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something’—detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father’s ashes, sharing awkward sexual encounters, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms—hang in there for the Costco loot—she’s as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.”

This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America  by Morgan Jerkins

“Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country’s larger discussion about inequality. In  This Will Be My Undoing , Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large.”

Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays  by Fenton Johnson

“Part retrospective, part memoir, Fenton Johnson’s collection  Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays  explores sexuality, religion, geography, the AIDS crisis, and more. Johnson’s wanderings take him from the hills of Kentucky to those of San Francisco, from the streets of Paris to the sidewalks of Calcutta. Along the way, he investigates questions large and small: What’s the relationship between artists and museums, illuminated in a New Guinean display of shrunken heads? What’s the difference between empiricism and intuition?”

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays  by Scaachi Koul

“In  One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter , Scaachi Koul deploys her razor-sharp humor to share all the fears, outrages, and mortifying moments of her life. She learned from an early age what made her miserable, and for Scaachi anything can be cause for despair. Whether it’s a shopping trip gone awry; enduring awkward conversations with her bikini waxer; overcoming her fear of flying while vacationing halfway around the world; dealing with Internet trolls, or navigating the fears and anxieties of her parents. Alongside these personal stories are pointed observations about life as a woman of color: where every aspect of her appearance is open for critique, derision, or outright scorn; where strict gender rules bind in both Western and Indian cultures, leaving little room for a woman not solely focused on marriage and children to have a career (and a life) for herself.”

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions  by Valeria Luiselli and jon lee anderson (translator)

“A damning confrontation between the American dream and the reality of undocumented children seeking a new life in the U.S. Structured around the 40 questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation,  Tell Me How It Ends  (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman’s essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fear—both here and back home.”

All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers  by Alana Massey

“Mixing Didion’s affected cool with moments of giddy celebrity worship, Massey examines the lives of the women who reflect our greatest aspirations and darkest fears back onto us. These essays are personal without being confessional and clever in a way that invites readers into the joke. A cultural critique and a finely wrought fan letter, interwoven with stories that are achingly personal, All the Lives I Want is also an exploration of mental illness, the sex industry, and the dangers of loving too hard.”

Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish: Essays  by Tom McCarthy

“Certain points of reference recur with dreamlike insistence—among them the artist Ed Ruscha’s  Royal Road Test , a photographic documentation of the roadside debris of a Royal typewriter hurled from the window of a traveling car; the great blooms of jellyfish that are filling the oceans and gumming up the machinery of commerce and military domination—and the question throughout is: How can art explode the restraining conventions of so-called realism, whether aesthetic or political, to engage in the active reinvention of the world?”

Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America  by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding

“When 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump and 94 percent of black women voted for Hillary Clinton, how can women unite in Trump’s America? Nasty Women includes inspiring essays from a diverse group of talented women writers who seek to provide a broad look at how we got here and what we need to do to move forward.”

Don’t Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life  by Peggy Orenstein

“Named one of the ’40 women who changed the media business in the last 40 years’ by  Columbia Journalism Review , Peggy Orenstein is one of the most prominent, unflinching feminist voices of our time. Her writing has broken ground and broken silences on topics as wide-ranging as miscarriage, motherhood, breast cancer, princess culture and the importance of girls’ sexual pleasure. Her unique blend of investigative reporting, personal revelation and unexpected humor has made her books bestselling classics.”

When You Find Out the World Is Against You: And Other Funny Memories About Awful Moments  by Kelly Oxford

“Kelly Oxford likes to blow up the internet. Whether it is with the kind of Tweets that lead  Rolling Stone  to name her one of the Funniest People on Twitter or with pictures of her hilariously adorable family (human and animal) or with something much more serious, like creating the hashtag #NotOkay, where millions of women came together to share their stories of sexual assault, Kelly has a unique, razor-sharp perspective on modern life. As a screen writer, professional sh*t disturber, wife and mother of three, Kelly is about everything but the status quo.”

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman  by Anne Helen Petersen

“You know the type: the woman who won’t shut up, who’s too brazen, too opinionated—too much. She’s the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In  Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud , Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of ‘unruliness’ to explore the ascension of pop culture powerhouses like Lena Dunham, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures. With its brisk, incisive analysis,  Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud  will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.”

Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist  by Franchesca Ramsey

“In her first book, Ramsey uses her own experiences as an accidental activist to explore the many ways we communicate with each other—from the highs of bridging gaps and making connections to the many pitfalls that accompany talking about race, power, sexuality, and gender in an unpredictable public space…the internet.”

Shrewed: A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and Girls  by Elizabeth Renzetti

“Drawing upon Renzetti’s decades of reporting on feminist issues,  Shrewed  is a book about feminism’s crossroads. From Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign to the quest for equal pay, from the lessons we can learn from old ladies to the future of feminism in a turbulent world, Renzetti takes a pointed, witty look at how far we’ve come—and how far we have to go.”

What Are We Doing Here?: Essays  by Marilynne Robinson

“In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson’s peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display.”

Double Bind: Women on Ambition  by Robin Romm

“‘A work of courage and ferocious honesty’ (Diana Abu-Jaber),  Double Bind  could not come at a more urgent time. Even as major figures from Gloria Steinem to Beyoncé embrace the word ‘feminism,’ the word ‘ambition’ remains loaded with ambivalence. Many women see it as synonymous with strident or aggressive, yet most feel compelled to strive and achieve—the seeming contradiction leaving them in a perpetual double bind. Ayana Mathis, Molly Ringwald, Roxane Gay, and a constellation of ‘nimble thinkers . . . dismantle this maddening paradox’ ( O, The Oprah Magazine ) with candor, wit, and rage. Women who have made landmark achievements in fields as diverse as law, dog sledding, and butchery weigh in, breaking the last feminist taboo once and for all.”

The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers and Life  by Richard Russo

“In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into his life as a writer, teacher, friend, and reader. From a commencement speech he gave at Colby College, to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made him reevaluate the purpose of humor in art and life, to a comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain’s value, to his harrowing journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued gender-reassignment surgery,  The Destiny Thief  reflects the broad interests and experiences of one of America’s most beloved authors. Warm, funny, wise, and poignant, the essays included here traverse Russo’s writing life, expanding our understanding of who he is and how his singular, incredibly generous mind works. An utter joy to read, they give deep insight into the creative process from the prospective of one of our greatest writers.”

Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race by Naben Ruthnum

“Curry is a dish that doesn’t quite exist, but, as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn’t properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations. By grappling with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own upbringing, Naben Ruthnum depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity. With the sardonic wit of Gita Mehta’s  Karma Cola  and the refined, obsessive palette of Bill Buford’s  Heat , Ruthnum sinks his teeth into the story of how the beloved flavor calcified into an aesthetic genre that limits the imaginations of writers, readers, and eaters.”

The River of Consciousness  by Oliver Sacks

“Sacks, an Oxford-educated polymath, had a deep familiarity not only with literature and medicine but with botany, animal anatomy, chemistry, the history of science, philosophy, and psychology.  The River of Consciousness  is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.”

All the Women in My Family Sing: Women Write the World: Essays on Equality, Justice, and Freedom (Nothing But the Truth So Help Me God)  by Deborah Santana and America Ferrera

“ All the Women in My Family Sing  is an anthology documenting the experiences of women of color at the dawn of the twenty-first century. It is a vital collection of prose and poetry whose topics range from the pressures of being the vice-president of a Fortune 500 Company, to escaping the killing fields of Cambodia, to the struggles inside immigration, identity, romance, and self-worth. These brief, trenchant essays capture the aspirations and wisdom of women of color as they exercise autonomy, creativity, and dignity and build bridges to heal the brokenness in today’s turbulent world.”

We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America  by Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page

“For some, ‘passing’ means opportunity, access, or safety. Others don’t willingly pass but are ‘passed’ in specific situations by someone else.  We Wear the Mask , edited by  Brando Skyhorse  and  Lisa Page , is an illuminating and timely anthology that examines the complex reality of passing in America. Skyhorse, a Mexican American, writes about how his mother passed him as an American Indian before he learned who he really is. Page shares how her white mother didn’t tell friends about her black ex-husband or that her children were, in fact, biracial.”

Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith

“Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world’s preeminent fiction writers, but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to  The New Yorker  and the  New York Review of Books  on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.”

The Mother of All Questions: Further Reports from the Feminist Revolutions  by Rebecca Solnit

“In a timely follow-up to her national bestseller  Men Explain Things to Me , Rebecca Solnit offers indispensable commentary on women who refuse to be silenced, misogynistic violence, the fragile masculinity of the literary canon, the gender binary, the recent history of rape jokes, and much more. In characteristic style, Solnit mixes humor, keen analysis, and powerful insight in these essays.”

The Wrong Way to Save Your Life: Essays  by Megan Stielstra

“Whether she’s imagining the implications of open-carry laws on college campuses, recounting the story of going underwater on the mortgage of her first home, or revealing the unexpected pains and joys of marriage and motherhood, Stielstra’s work informs, impels, enlightens, and embraces us all. The result is something beautiful—this story, her courage, and, potentially, our own.”

Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms  by Michelle Tea

“Delivered with her signature honesty and dark humor, this is Tea’s first-ever collection of journalistic writing. As she blurs the line between telling other people’s stories and her own, she turns an investigative eye to the genre that’s nurtured her entire career—memoir—and considers the price that art demands be paid from life.”

A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause  by Shawn Wen

“In precise, jewel-like scenes and vignettes,  A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause  pays homage to the singular genius of a mostly-forgotten art form. Drawing on interviews, archival research, and meticulously observed performances, Wen translates the gestural language of mime into a lyric written portrait by turns whimsical, melancholic, and haunting.”

Acid West: Essays  by Joshua Wheeler

“The radical evolution of American identity, from cowboys to drone warriors to space explorers, is a story rooted in southern New Mexico.  Acid West  illuminates this history, clawing at the bounds of genre to reveal a place that is, for better or worse, home. By turns intimate, absurd, and frightening,  Acid West  is an enlightening deep-dive into a prophetic desert at the bottom of America.”

Sexographies  by Gabriela Wiener and Lucy Greaves And jennifer adcock (Translators)

“In fierce and sumptuous first-person accounts, renowned Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener records infiltrating the most dangerous Peruvian prison, participating in sexual exchanges in swingers clubs, traveling the dark paths of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris in the company of transvestites and prostitutes, undergoing a complicated process of egg donation, and participating in a ritual of ayahuasca ingestion in the Amazon jungle—all while taking us on inward journeys that explore immigration, maternity, fear of death, ugliness, and threesomes. Fortunately, our eagle-eyed voyeur emerges from her narrative forays unscathed and ready to take on the kinks, obsessions, and messiness of our lives.  Sexographies  is an eye-opening, kamikaze journey across the contours of the human body and mind.”

The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative  by Florence Williams

“From forest trails in Korea, to islands in Finland, to eucalyptus groves in California, Florence Williams investigates the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain. Delving into brand-new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and strengthen our relationships. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas—and the answers they yield—are more urgent than ever.”

Can You Tolerate This?: Essays  by Ashleigh Young

“ Can You Tolerate This?  presents a vivid self-portrait of an introspective yet widely curious young woman, the colorful, isolated community in which she comes of age, and the uneasy tensions—between safety and risk, love and solitude, the catharsis of grief and the ecstasy of creation—that define our lives.”

What are your favorite contemporary essay collections?

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About Contemporary Literature

Contemporary Literature  publishes scholarly essays on contemporary writing in English, interviews with established and emerging authors, and reviews of recent critical books in the field. The journal welcomes articles on multiple genres, including poetry, the novel, drama, creative nonfiction, new media and digital literature, and graphic narrative.  Contemporary Literature  published the first articles on Thomas Pynchon and Susan Howe and the first interviews with Margaret Drabble and Don DeLillo; it also helped to introduce Kazuo Ishiguro, Eavan Boland, and J. M. Coetzee to American readers. As a forum for discussing issues animating the range of contemporary literary studies,  Contemporary Literature  features the full diversity of critical practices. The editors seek articles that frame their analysis of texts within larger literary historical, theoretical, or cultural debates.

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• You have access Restricted access Contributors Contemporary Literature, April 2024, 64 (2) 256-257; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3368/cl.64.2.256

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• Volume 62, Number 1, Spring 2021

Contemporary Literature publishes scholarly essays on contemporary writing in English, interviews with established and emerging authors, and reviews of recent critical books in the field. The journal welcomes articles on multiple genres, including poetry, the novel, drama, creative nonfiction, new media and digital literature, and graphic narrative. Contemporary Literature published the first articles on Thomas Pynchon and Susan Howe and the first interviews with Margaret Drabble and Don DeLillo; it also helped to introduce Kazuo Ishiguro, Eavan Boland, and J. M. Coetzee to American readers. As a forum for discussing issues animating the range of contemporary literary studies, Contemporary Literature features the full diversity of critical practices. The editors seek articles that frame their analysis of texts within larger literary historical, theoretical, or cultural debates.

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• Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream : Watery Toxicity, Percolating Disquietude
• Olivia Vázquez-Medina

• This Disability Which Is Not One: Autistic Intermittency in Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
• Joseph Valente
• Cruising the Real Estate of Empire: Chris Kraus's Road Novels
• Myka Tucker-Abramson
• "My / Eye Locked in / Self Sight": The Self-Portrait Poems of Robert Creeley's Words
• Alexandra J. Gold
• Navigating the Ruins of Pax Americana
• A. J. Yumi Lee
• pp. 125-129
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The Contemporary American Essay

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TITLES CAN BE MISLEADING.  In one sense, The Contemporary American Essay is perfectly chosen. It describes with commendable exactitude the nature of this volume. But though it pinpoints period, country, and genre, its matter-of-fact plainness belies the verve and color of the contents. What Phillip Lopate has so skilfully assembled is “a vast and variegated treasure.” That description is taken from another brilliant anthology, Lydia Fakundiny’s The Art of the Essay (1991). Fakundiny says that essays “make the language of the day” perform the essential task of “saying where we are in the moment of writing.” In so doing, she reckons that—over the centuries—this form of writing has done no less than amass “the memorabilia of individual responsiveness to all that is.” This is the treasure she talks about and that anthologists tap into. Even limiting himself to a fraction of it—just one nation’s essays, written between 2000 and the present—Lopate lays a rare trove of riches before readers.

There are forty-nine essays. To attempt to list—still less summarize—them would be inappropriate in a review. In any case, essays are resistant to summary. While academic articles submit to abstracts of their main points, essays, where the voice of the individual is paramount, are a different matter. Reading a book like this is not dissimilar to taking a long, invigorating walk that winds its way through a variety of fascinating terrains. Without attempting to condense its 600-plus pages into a paragraph, noting a few of the landmarks that particularly struck this reader should give some indication of the ground covered.

Lina Ferreira, in “CID-LAX-BOG,” talks about taking part in medical trials that involve being injected with the rabies virus—and through this unlikely lens gives considerable insight into issues of immigration, deportation, and belonging, in particular as these affect international students in America who wish to prolong their stay. Floyd Skloot, in “Gray Area: Thinking with a Damaged Brain,” touches on the nature of mind, brain, and consciousness. He considers how boxing inflicted serious brain injury on his childhood hero, Floyd Patterson. With considerable honesty, courage, and self-awareness, his essay shows how he’s come to terms with his own neurological impairment. Meghan O’Gieblyn’s “Homeschool” poses a whole catalog of questions about education, particularly the ideas behind homeschooling. Her presentation of Rousseau’s Émile as “the vade mecum of modern homeschooling” is particularly revealing—and it’s useful to be reminded that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was written in part “as a critique of Rousseau’s pedagogy” rather than being simply the “parable about technological hubris” that it’s often presented as.

Aleksandar Hemon writes a heartbreaking account of a daughter’s death from a rare and virulent form of cancer, showing the power of words in a situation where they may seem powerless. Thomas Beller gives a luminously affectionate and atmospheric memoir about working in a bagel factory. Patricia Hampl’s “Other People’s Secrets” is an at times uncomfortable meditation on the ethics of writing. Joyce Carol Oates, in a rawly disturbing piece about imprisonment and execution, recounts her visit to San Quentin. Rebecca Solnit’s “Cassandra among the Creeps” deftly explores gender inequalities. There are also essays about disfigurement, revenge, race, vaccination, interior design, domestic abuse, and failure. And this is merely to skate over a fraction of what’s offered. Naturally, some essays appeal more than others. But all are finely written pieces. Lest the fluency of the writing make it seem easy, it’s good to have John McPhee’s “Draft No. 4,” a reminder of the sheer hard work involved in writing, and the many revisions that will have happened before each of these impressively polished essays emerged into publication.

In his short and moving “Invitation,” in which he reflects on what he learned from his years of traveling with Indigenous people, Barry Lopez suggests that “perhaps the first rule of everything we endeavor to do is to pay attention.” All of the pieces in The Contemporary American Essay are written by individuals who have followed that rule. Whatever their subject, no matter what stance they take, regardless of their background, or the cadence of the voice they elect to use, these essays are exercises in paying attention. Indeed, it’s almost as if Phillip Lopate used this first rule as his criterion for choosing what to include. It’s sad that Barry Lopez—surely one of the most accomplished nature essayists of our time—died before the book he contributed to appeared.

Unsurprisingly, given the quality of the writing that’s been assembled, the volume beautifully exemplifies many of the key features of the genre. In his influential book The Observing Self: Rediscovering the Essay , Graham Good argues that “anyone who can look attentively, think freely, and write clearly can be as essayist.” The forty-nine essays in Lopate’s selection are pleasingly varied—this is a richly diverse collection—but they all exhibit the attentive looking, freethinking, and clear writing that Good identifies as essential prerequisites. In another well-known characterization of the genre, Edward Hoagland says that essays “hang somewhere on a line between two sturdy poles: this is what I think, and this is what I am.” Again, these forty-nine essays could be arranged on precisely the line Hoagland identifies, some inclining more to one pole, some to the other, some almost dead center between them.

Many readers will be familiar with Phillip Lopate’s landmark 1994 anthology, The Art of the Personal Essay , which—deservedly—remains a key text. Putting it alongside his The Glorious American Essay: One Hundred Essays from Colonial Times to the Present (2020), The Golden Age of the American Essay, 1945–1970 (2021), and now The Contemporary American Essay makes for an impressive quartet. Each volume puts a treasury of first-rate writing before readers. Cumulatively, they constitute an important literary milestone, celebrating—demonstrating—the history, development, and present vigor of this mercurial genre. They also suggest a topic for a future essay: “On the Art of the Anthologist.” It is an art in which Phillip Lopate clearly excels.

Chris Arthur St. Andrews, Scotland

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The Contemporary American Essay Ed. Phillip Lopate

L.A. Weather María Amparo Escandón

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Muscogee writer  Cynthia Leitich Smith , winner of the 2021 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s & Young Adult Literature, headlines the January 2022 issue with a reflective essay on “Decolonizing Neverland” in YA lit. Also inside, essays, poetry, fiction, and interview, as well as more than twenty book reviews—plus recommended reads and other great content—make the latest issue of  WLT , like every issue, your passport to great reading.

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Contemporary American Literature since 1945 : Themes, Movements, and Influential Authors

Table of Contents

Contemporary American Literature since 1945 : Themes and Movements

Who are the authors in the contemporary period of American literature?,What is the theme of the contemporary period in American literature?.Which literary movement was from 1945 to the present?,Contemporary American literature since 1945 reflects the diverse, complex, and ever-changing landscape of American society and culture. From the aftermath of World War II to the present day, American writers have grappled with a myriad of themes, movements, and social issues, shaping the literary canon and capturing the essence of the American experience. This essay embarks on a journey through contemporary American literature, exploring key themes, notable movements, and influential authors that have defined the postwar literary landscape. Contemporary American Literature since 1945 : Themes and Movements

Postwar Realism and the Beat Generation:

The postwar period in American literature marked the rise of two significant movements: postwar realism and the Beat Generation. These movements mirrored the cultural shifts and societal concerns of the time, offering unique perspectives on the human condition and the American experience.

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Postwar realism emerged as a response to the disillusionment and uncertainty following World War II, capturing the intricacies of postwar American society with unvarnished realism. Writers such as J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, and Flannery O’Connor delved into themes of alienation, identity, and the quest for meaning amidst a rapidly changing landscape. Works like Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” and Cheever’s “The Swimmer” depicted individuals grappling with existential angst and the loss of innocence, reflecting the anxieties of the era.

Concurrently, the Beat Generation emerged as a countercultural force, rebelling against the conformity and materialism of mainstream society. Led by figures like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs, the Beats celebrated spontaneity, personal freedom, and spiritual exploration. Through seminal works such as Kerouac’s “On the Road,” Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and Burroughs’ “Naked Lunch,” they rejected societal norms and embraced a bohemian lifestyle, inspiring a generation to question authority and seek alternative paths to fulfillment. Contemporary American Literature since 1945 : Themes and Movements

While divergent in their approaches, both postwar realism and the Beat Generation captured the complexities and contradictions of the postwar era, reflecting the hopes, fears, and aspirations of American society. Their exploration of individual struggles, societal tensions, and the pursuit of authenticity left an enduring legacy in American literature, shaping subsequent generations of writers and influencing the cultural landscape for decades to come. Contemporary American Literature since 1945 : Themes and Movements

Civil Rights Movement and Social Change:

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s profoundly influenced American literature, as writers grappled with issues of race, identity, and social justice. Authors like James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison explored the African American experience with searing honesty and eloquence, challenging prevailing stereotypes and advocating for equality and dignity.

In works such as Baldwin’s “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” and Morrison’s “Beloved,” these writers illuminated the complexities of race relations in America, exposing the systemic injustices and enduring legacies of slavery and discrimination. Their contributions to literature not only captured the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement but also laid the foundation for a more inclusive and diverse literary canon.

Postmodernism and Experimentalism:

The latter half of the 20th century witnessed a proliferation of postmodernist and experimental literature, as writers pushed the boundaries of narrative form and language. Authors such as Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Kurt Vonnegut embraced fragmentation, metafiction, and absurdity in their works, challenging readers’ perceptions and expectations. Contemporary American Literature since 1945 : Themes and Movements

Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49,” DeLillo’s “White Noise,” and Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” are exemplars of this postmodernist sensibility, blurring the lines between reality and fiction, exploring the disintegration of traditional narratives, and interrogating the nature of truth and meaning in a fragmented world.

Contemporary Voices and Emerging Themes:

In the 21st century, contemporary American literature continues to evolve, with new voices and emerging themes shaping the literary landscape. Writers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Junot Díaz, and Jesmyn Ward explore themes of immigration, identity, and social inequality with nuance and depth, reflecting the changing demographics and cultural dynamics of modern America.

Adichie’s “Americanah,” Díaz’s “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” and Ward’s “Sing, Unburied, Sing” offer powerful insights into the immigrant experience, the complexities of race and ethnicity, and the enduring legacies of trauma and resilience in American society. These contemporary voices enrich and expand the scope of American literature, inviting readers to engage with the complexities and contradictions of the modern world.

Contemporary American literature since 1945 has traversed a diverse and dynamic terrain, reflecting the ever-evolving complexities of American society and culture. From the aftermath of World War II to the present day, American writers have grappled with a multitude of themes, movements, and social issues, shaping the literary landscape and offering profound insights into the human condition. Contemporary American Literature since 1945 : Themes and Movements

Through postwar realism, the countercultural rebellion of the Beat Generation, the social activism of the Civil Rights Movement, the experimentation of postmodernism, and the emergence of new voices in the 21st century, American literature has continued to evolve and adapt, capturing the essence of the American experience in all its complexity. As we reflect on the journey of contemporary American literature, we are reminded of its enduring power to provoke thought, inspire empathy, and illuminate the shared experiences that unite us as human beings.

1. What are some key themes in contemporary American literature since 1945?

Contemporary American literature explores a wide range of themes, including identity, social justice, race relations, immigration, the human condition, and the complexities of modern society.

2. Who are some influential authors in contemporary American literature?

Influential authors in contemporary American literature include J.D. Salinger, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Junot Díaz, and Jesmyn Ward, among others.

3. How has contemporary American literature evolved over time?

Contemporary American literature has evolved in response to changing social, cultural, and political dynamics, embracing new voices, experimenting with narrative form and style, and grappling with pressing issues of the day.

4. What is the significance of movements like the Beat Generation and postmodernism in contemporary American literature?

Movements like the Beat Generation and postmodernism have played a significant role in pushing the boundaries of literary expression, challenging conventional norms, and exploring alternative perspectives on reality, identity, and society.

5. How does contemporary American literature continue to resonate with readers today?

Contemporary American literature continues to resonate with readers today by offering insights into the human experience, sparking dialogue on pressing issues, and providing a mirror to society’s triumphs, challenges, and aspirations.

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American Mythologies: Essays on Contemporary Literature

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In its more than three decades of existence, the discipline of American studies has been reliably unreliable, its boundaries and assumptions forever shifting as it continuously repositions itself to better address the changing character of American life, literature, and culture. This book looks at the current reinvention of American studies, a reinvention that has questioned the whole notion of what ‘American’ – let alone ‘American studies’ – means. The chapters range widely in considering these questions, from the effect of Muhammad Ali on Norman Mailer's writings about boxing, to the interactions of myth and memory in the fictions of Jayne Anne Phillips, to the conflicted portrayal of the American West in Cormac McCarthy's novels. Four chapters in the collection focus on Native American authors, including Leslie Marmon Silko and Gerald Vizenor, while another considers Louise Erdrich's novels in the context of Ojibwa myth.

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Contemporary Literature. Elements of Short Stories Essay (Critical Writing)

Introduction.

There are several characteristics that make up a good story. One of the most important elements of a short story specifically is a fully developed protagonist who can be seen to develop through the course of the story. Development of the protagonist developed enough for us to care about is essential if the reader is to have any reason for completing the story, but this development doesn’t necessarily have to be positive, nor does it need to be confined to the protagonist alone.

Despite the relatively short space in which these writers work, they are nevertheless able to create characters with sufficient depth to convey a particular theme. In the short stories “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce, the characters are seen to be strangled by society finally finding release by mentally detaching from reality.

Comparison of stories “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the protagonist is never given a name, and her development is negative as she sinks into insanity as the story progresses. The entire story takes place within a single, yellow room on the upper floor of a Victorian country house. The woman recognizes something is wrong at the beginning of the story as she disagrees with the diagnosis of her husband and her doctor regarding her treatment for depression.

The two men determine she should be given plenty of rest and isolation as the best treatment. “Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?” Through the course of the story, the woman transforms from an individual who adores the outside and green growing things to becoming lost in the artificial world created by man as she obsesses over the grotesque pattern in the wallpaper of her room. “Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern – it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads” (Gilman, 1899).

Because she, like the women she imagines trapped within the wallpaper, cannot escape from the confining space in which she has been housed, the woman becomes completely insane, creeping around the walls after peeling the wallpaper off as high as she can reach in an attempt to find a way in to them. At the end, she even creeps over her husband, who has fainted against the wall, in order to continue her progress unimpeded. She no longer recognizes that there is something wrong with her actions.

The protagonist in Bierce’s story also suffers negative development as he lives through the final moments before he is hanged to death. This man is literally being strangled by society as the board beneath him drops and he falls to dangle under the bridge by the rope around his neck. “he was awakened … by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation” (Bierce, 5).

At this sense of suffocation, Peyton finds himself shifting into an alternate reality that only becomes clear in the end. During the moments it takes for him to actually die in the hangman’s noose, the character experiences an entire daring escape sequence based upon the only possible means of escape left available to him – the possibility that the rope might break and he could use the river to escape. Despite the fact that he is actually dying, part of his perception is related. “He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. … He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck” (6) while he believed himself in the river that he never actually touched.

The female protagonist in “Yellow Wallpaper” eventually determines that if she can’t free herself, she must find some means of joining the women within the wallpaper. By contrast, Peyton, discovering that he is finally and irrevocably unable to escape his present circumstances, is able to detach his mind enough to mentally live through a daring and nearly impossible escape before he dies. In both stories, the protagonist escapes their situation through the powers of their minds; however, they approach this ‘solution’ with different aims in mind – one to escape and the other to entrench.

Works Cited

Bierce, Ambrose. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Web.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. Boston: Small & Maynard, 1899.

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IvyPanda. (2021, August 15). Contemporary Literature. Elements of Short Stories. https://ivypanda.com/essays/contemporary-literature-elements-of-short-stories/

"Contemporary Literature. Elements of Short Stories." IvyPanda , 15 Aug. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/contemporary-literature-elements-of-short-stories/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Contemporary Literature. Elements of Short Stories'. 15 August.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Contemporary Literature. Elements of Short Stories." August 15, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/contemporary-literature-elements-of-short-stories/.

1. IvyPanda . "Contemporary Literature. Elements of Short Stories." August 15, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/contemporary-literature-elements-of-short-stories/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Contemporary Literature. Elements of Short Stories." August 15, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/contemporary-literature-elements-of-short-stories/.

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Contemporary Essays

THE English periodical owes its existence to the essay, the Spectator and Tatler having been the magazines of their day as well as the classics of their century, and it is by a sort of alternate generation in literature that the periodical in turn brings forth essays after its kind ; of all kinds, rather, for there are few topics that are not touched upon nowadays in neat little volumes of mosaic contents. With some readers, this connection of essay and periodical exposes the former to a certain disfavor, of the sort with which yesterday’s baking is regarded in the South. It is hard to judge rightly of a literature that is slipping past us, and it is well to keep a little of it, if only to find out whether it is worth keeping. Sir Edward Strachey, in the November Atlantic, quotes Maurice as saying “ that a man might bring greater honor to his name by writing a great book, . . . yet that he believed more real work was done in the world by having a part in, and writing on, the actual controversies of the day in which men were taking a practical interest.” Here the consideration is an ethical one, but even from a literary standpoint there is something to be said in favor of writing on a small scale and for the present moment. In an age when the creative gift is rare and the affirmative force weakened, some of the best and truest work can be done in a loose literary form like the essay, which is without pretension, almost in fact apologetic, lending itself equally to directness or subtlety of treatment. The form may be regarded simply as a vehicle for the expression of the thought, as is commonly the case with the political or speculative essay; or it may be cultivated daintily and for its own sake, as is more apt to be done in the social essay, which demands for its perfection something of the novelist’s outfit, or in the personal essay, which is next door to the journal or autobiography, but lays its author under less rigid vows as to accuracy of statement.

Many of the best modern essays are in the line of criticism, and here the supremacy of the French is incontestable. The English miscellaneous writers excel in the discussion of topics political, social, or speculative. The monthly and weekly reviews in England, manned by sturdy, well-informed writers, surpass the French, and leave our performance in that kind far behind. In our own literature, which is still, as a whole, pretty desultory, and about which it behooves us, under Mr. Gosse’s recent judgments, to be modest, the essay pure and simple, after the old models, seems to have found a congenial soil. Our high-water mark of thought or literary achievement is Emerson’s Essays ; and since Addison undertook to bring philosophy down to the club and the tea-table no one has brewed a finer combination of philosophy and tea than Dr. Holmes.

Mr. Myers 1 comes to hand as an example of the sturdiness of treatment which we have cited as an English trait. Even when he handles such an impalpable, not to say unprofitable subject as the ghost of psychological research, he does so with a definiteness, vigor, and intellectual conscientiousness that go far to clothe that marrowless creation with dignity, if they do not invest it with life. To speak first of sturdiness, however, in connection with Mr. Myers is to give a wrong impression of his literary personality. He is not a mere topical writer, but a man of letters, who began as a poet, and in whom the poet is still alive. His Saint Paul has passed a little out of sight, but still lingers in many memories. His Classical Essays are more widely known, and have a similar haunting attractiveness. In the present volume, which is made up of essays on both literary and speculative topics, or rather, on one subject viewed in both lights, the literary interest is throughout intended to be subordinate ; but the literary spirit is still dictator, giving to the book the stamp of individual charm, and of another unity than that of theme. It has the high earnestness of the author’s Saint Paul ; the intelligence, at once active and meditative, of the Classical Essays.

The spiritual attitude which it reveals is in a way a remarkable one. The melancholy but admirable essay on The Disenchantment of France shows how profoundly and sympathetically Mr. Myers has felt that spiritual void and desolation of which, as he acknowledges, France offers a spectacle, not solitary, but more complete than the rest of the world. The paper is poignant with the feeling of one to whom the loss of faith in the world at large is the subject of as deep a regret as the loss of his own. Science is the cause of this misery. Mr. Myers does not attack science nor revolt against its conclusions ; he does not, like Signor Valdes’s Father Gil, look to faith to give it the lie ; he does not, like Robert Elsmere or Mark Rutherford, cling to the best thought that disenchantment has left to him, and make of it a sort of Spartan broth for the nourishment of the spirit. He recognizes that one aspect of the later phases of skepticism is the distrust of emotional guidance, and the very energy of his own emotions quickens this distrust. “ Faith, the clinging of the soul to the beliefs and ideals which she feels as spiritually the highest,” he considers indispensable ; but he goes on to say, “ Whereas in all ages a certain nucleus of ascertained fact has been regarded as faith’s needful prerequisite, the only difference is that, in our own day, so much of that ancient nucleus has shriveled away that some fresh accession is needed before the flower of faith can spring from it and shed fragrance on the unseen.” In other words, it is not religion, but what he calls material for religion, that Mr. Myers feels to be lacking. This material he is determined to wrest from science. Science speaks now the only recognized language of authority. The highest science is psychology. In the study of psychology, therefore, lies the cure for our ills, and in psychological research, in scientific evidence of a return to this world after death, Mr. Myers sees the substantial nucleus needed for faith, and an encouragement for hope to spring eternal, as it has temporarily ceased to spring, in the human breast. A new cosmic law, that of interpenetration of spirit and matter, is to bring salvation, and Mr. Myers is confident that the proper material will at once produce the religion. He declares, with a gravity that is disturbed by no undertone of humor, “ The negative presumption will therefore be shaken if accepted notions as to man’s personality are shown to he gravely defective, while it will be at once overthrown ” (his own italics) “ if positive evidence to man’s survival of bodily death can in any way be acquired.” Without attempting to argue on supernatural grounds with the discoverer of a new cosmic law, we would venture to indicate the superiority in point of knowledge of the world of another prediction, made two thousand years ago, which says, “ Neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”

Nothing could be more unlike Mr. Myers’s lofty sadness and visionary ardor of hope than the temper with which Mr. Balfour 2 surveys the world as it is, and reckons the probabilities of its future. He, too, insists upon belief in immortality as necessary to stimulate energy and make life worth living, but he does not press the question of how this belief is to be maintained in a disenchanted world. The world is. after all, not so very disenchanted, to his mind. To Mr. Myers, who is a poet and a man of sentiment, science seems to have said the irrefutable word. Mr. Balfour, who has a more practical mind, finds assurance in an attitude of doubt, in the conviction that science has not yet proved her points; in other words, he keeps his mental balance by being skeptical as to skepticism. His Defence of Philosophic Doubt was a brilliant arraignment of scientific infallibility, an employment of the Scotch philosophers’ dialectic of common sense for ends the opposite to theirs, and with far more effect. Mr. Balfour does not discuss what would happen if a traveler were to return with absolute proof of immortality, because his interest in the future is in ratio to its probability. Such a traveler would have to deal, however, with human nature, and the Fragment on Progress, which formed Mr. Balfour’s rectorial address at Glasgow, shows what he thinks of the likelihood that any argument or proof would essentially alter that leaven. It is interesting, in this and in the entertaining essay on Berkeley, to note the interaction and harmony of the author’s political and philosophical creeds and observations. For Berkeley Mr. Balfour has a strong admiration, for which there is every reason, and a peculiar sympathy, for which there are perhaps two special reasons. Berkeley was the author of a system of philosophy which showed that the existence of matter could not be proved, and of a book on Ireland which proved that the Irish question did not exist.

The present collection of addresses and essays is a less elaborate performance than Mr. Balfour’s former book, although there are plenty of evidences of the same philosophic acuteness. The leisure product of a mind active in other directions, these essays are at once very able and very light in weight ; extremely well written without indicating any special literary gift. They are much more rational than the essays of Mr. Myers, but the impression which they leave upon the mind is much slighter. There is something a trifle Macaulayan in the extraneous and orderly manner in which. Mr. Balfour marshals his ideas; there is a touch of finality in the ideas themselves. He states available but not always over-popular truths dispassionately, and without flinching ; he utters with great readiness neat sayings which are compact morsels of good sense rather than brilliant witticisms ; and he is always readable and entertaining.

‘ In the first essay of the book, The Pleasures of Reading, he is on Miss Repplier’s familiar ground, making a plea for pure pleasure in reading, a protest againt university courses of literature, and an onslaught upon all who make their intercourse with books a mere means towards ambition, duty, or any other end. The arguments put forth are similar to those employed by Miss Repplier, 3 and the cause defended is practically the same as hers ; but the lady is the more stimulating and persuasive of the two writers,—partly, perhaps, because she is the more unreasonable.

Miss Repplier’s powers of persuasion are of the autocratic sort. She commands us to take pleasure in reading, and she summons so stirringly before us the old delights of romance, she brings up with such intimate touches those little joys of literature which, as Jean Paul says, “refresh us constantly, like house bread, and never bring disgust,” she speaks her mind in such a whole-hearted, racy, piquant way, that she bestows the pleasure in formulating the law. But if we presume to wander farther, and to take pleasure after our own fashion in other fields of literature, we are instantly made to feel as deserters from the flag. We must agree with the writer quickly, while we are in the way; and if our disagreement were to go so far as to impair the keenness and sympathy of our delight in her work, the penalty would certainly be ours, and the cost the loss of one of the choicest enjoyments that current literature in our own land and hour has to give.

Miss Repplier’s papers on literary subjects are hardly to be classed as critical essays. They belong rather to another genre which we may term the bookish essay. Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt wrote essays of this sort, the harvest of book-browsings, the distillation of individual perfumes from quiet gardens of literature, with no attempt at criticism beyond the report of the effect of a volume upon the personality of the essayist. It is in the lines of this bookish and personal tradition that Miss Repplier works. She has not the equipment for a critic, the perspective, the perception of relations; the power of being lost in other minds, and those the most widely divergent, without losing one’s literary bearings ; the sense of literature as an organic whole, and of its dependence upon life. She does not synthesize, nor find underlying agreement “ in many a heart-perplexing opposite.” She loves much, but not widely, and will neither run after new gods herself, nor allow her readers to do so. She is audaciously conservative, a free lance for the preservation of bounds. But in her own line, as a book-lover and personal essayist, she is admirable in endowment and performance. She has originality and art. She understands the manipulation of the essay, the amount of negligence permissible and even effective, and the requisite amount, of care. She says the most delightful and unexpected things, and says them in the happiest manner, with the exact measure of deliberation and unconsciousness, of humor and conviction. She quotes, as some of the old essayists loved to quote, with just that little stress of personality which is a new interpretation, an addition to the meaning such as may be given by a voice. It is probably one of the consequences of that decay in romantic interest for which Miss Repplier upbraids her public that our pleasure in reading has come to depend very much upon the stimulus of the moment, upon the turn of the phrase, the attitude of the author, upon the conversational powers of the hero and heroine rather than upon our hope of their ultimate happiness. Miss Repplier ministers to this pleasure in the detail. She is not always strong in construction. Her essay as a whole sometimes lacks backbone ; her phrase never does : it has strength, suppleness, precision ; moreover, it is a live phrase. To watch its movements, its dignity, its reserve, and its spring, above all to see these movements accommodated to those of Agrippina, is to get a little unstrenuous enjoyment out of the printed page. To find anything as good as Agrippina in the reproduction of cat attitude and of the mental domain of Tabhyland, one would have to turn to Gautier and to Pierre Loti; and in sheer litheness of description one would not find in their pages anything better. Agrippina is, on the whole, the deftest achievement of Miss Repplier’s vocabulary ; but we still remember Pleasure : a Heresy, as one of her most original and characteristic papers, and the one on Ennui, in the present volume, in which occurs the description of that “ small, compact, and enviable minority among us ” (a writer with less humor might easily have fallen into the blunder of calling it a majority) “ who, through no merit of their own, are incapable of being bored,” is a bit of writing calculated to afford satisfaction to the literary conscience of its author. The danger which seems to lie in the way of a writer like Miss Repplier is that of exhausting by limitation her range of subjects ; but the essential thing, after all, is to have found the right sphere, and Miss Repplier is by this time sufficiently mistress of her domain to extend it at her pleasure.

The want of material, of a substantial harvest of knowledge, with ideas vigorous enough to thresh and winnow it, has always been felt, and will long continue to exist in our literature, though it is a defect which time will probably make right. But if our prayer for more matter were granted with the condition of less art, we should be unfortunate. If Mr. James had gone into business in literature, and given up the unprofitable pursuit of writing as a fine art, we should have had less literature than we have had, although Mr. James’s own reputation might have been increased to an imposing extent by the sacrifice of a little subtlety, and the addition of some sawdust to his work. Mr. Barrett Wendell, in a volume of essays with the title Stelligeri, 4 taken from the mention of deceased alumni in the old Harvard catalogue, deals with the American literature of the past, and in his principal essay devotes himself to proving that there is no American literature, that our stars are all excellent rushlights. His main point, that we have no literature, is easily proved, but the test which he applies to each author in turn seems to us a doubtful one. The fact that we have produced nothing which Englishmen, living under less crowded conditions in a new country, could not have produced does not of itself prove that we have no literature. Is there any reason why we should have produced a literature Contradictory to our history, why we should write as Choctaws or redeemed Africans? Yet this is Mr. Wendell’s touchstone. Nor is there much light thrown upon individuals by this line-and-rule method of criticism. Emerson is not merely a mild, good man like Whittier, nor does Hawthorne come under the same head as Longfellow. They might, for the sake of the argument, be left temporarily in the same category, though it seems hardly worth while in this case. We cannot help thinking that Mr. Wendell lays too much stress upon the minor fact that our literature is not American, whereas the real trouble is that it is not a literature.

To Mr. James the publishing of many books, the daily reviewing, and the rarity of real literary interest are as melancholy signs of the times as the decay of faith is to Mr. Myers. “ The bewildered spirit,” he writes, “ may well ask itself, without speedy answer, What is the function in the life of man of such a periodicity of platitude and irrelevance ? ” But Mr. James’s courage and literary faith hold firm. From his point of view the prospect is most cheering in Paris, where Mr. Myers finds it most depressing; and as in times of unbelief the men who cling to work and to duty are the most inspiring, so there is cheer in the provisional creed, rather breathed than expressed in Mr. James’s work, that the way to get a literature is not to advertise for it as original or American, but to learn to look at things truly, and to write as well as possible. There are ethical as well as literary lessons in his essay on Criticism, a paper which goes very near to the heart of the subject, although its author has felt, obliged to employ part of his space in defending to his audience the very existence of his art.

Mr. James is so perfectly at home in criticism that we almost forget how small a portion of his work lies technically within this province. In reality it all belongs there. As a novelist, his achievement is all in the line of what we may call critical fiction, in which the same processes of analysis, comprehension, and restatement applied in literary criticism to books are brought to bear directly upon life. Mr. James can hardly be called the discoverer of this vein, but he has certainly worked it more consistently and thoroughly than anybody else. To appreciate his success in it we have only to remember how almost invariably true, from a critical point of view, are those scenes and personages in his books which, judged by a purely dramatic standard, are so easily found wanting. His characters talk too uniformly well for dramatic truth ; they are framed, the fine and the vulgar, in a setting of culture which is sometimes too rich for realism. But how exactly the right critical light is thrown upon them, how carefully the type and the variety are selected, what an immersion in observation and the study of life is shown on every page ! The dramatic power, that of bringing real living creatures into a book, must always be counted as the supreme gift in fiction ; but if we demand, with impartial rigor, from every writer the same forms of truth, we shall lose many truths, and get mostly conventionalities.

Mr. James’s literary criticism cannot be considered superior to his novels, for there is more room for originality in working from life, but it is submitted to the same law of literary progress which is to he seen in his novels. His work has always been abundantly clever, but he has constantly turned his cleverness to more and more account. The present volume 5 shows an advance upon Partial Portraits, not in brightness, but in mellowness, and in the power so essential to a critic of finding the true equilibrium of his subject. The essay on Pierre Loti is an admirable example of the qualities which Mr. James has cited in the paper on Criticism as forming the special outfit of the critic. It is an illustration of that interpretation and recasting of the work of another which make criticism analogous to acting as an art. It is at once sympathetic and unexaggerated, and it gives in passing a general picture of the French literature of the day, of its qualities and tendencies, which has a truth and justness of perception not often arrived at in our much writing about that literature. Of Flaubert Mr. James, of course, writes with appreciation, though his optimism is a little severe upon Flaubert’s boisterous melancholy. The paper on the Goncourt Journals is a just and gentlemanly notice of a performance neither gentlemanly nor just. That on Ibsen is probably the most complete and illuminating that has been written about that much discussed and not easily understood dramatist. There are two biographical sketches (we had almost added London as a third, she is so personified) which are among the best things in the book : one, originally printed in The Atlantic, on James Russell Lowell, in which Mr. James shows how possible it is to write with affection and admiration of a man without lending him all the virtues that any other man ever possessed; the other on Fanny Kemble, written con amore and con brio , and giving us a sense as of the whole vivid presence of that great personality. One has something of the pleasure in reading it that there would be in coming across a Landor conversation that had really taken place. In his representation of another lady of great traditions, London, Mr. James seems to us a little perfunctory, as a man almost inevitably must be now and then who writes so much and so well.

Folia Litteraria 6 is made up largely of short reviews on points of literary scholarship which have no direct connection, but are strung along on a straight chronological line from the old romances to the nineteenth century, giving the reader the feeling of going through a familiar country on a train that stops only at way stations. They are written in a pleasant tone of light scholarship, and with a warm feeling for poetry. Sometimes the points discussed are tolerably slight, as in an unexplained passage in Comus, where the subject is Miltonreason for having made Echo dwell

Mr. Hales sets down as far fetched Keightley’s suggestion that the winding course of the river resembles the repercussion of an echo, and with justice; but his own interpretation, that the Meander was a classic haunt of the swan, the bird of sweet song in the ancient poets, seems, though certainly less absurd, hardly more conclusive. Tennyson, when asked by Mr. Knowles what he meant by the lines in Maud,

made the grave reply, gravely accepted by Mr. Knowles, that a daisy trodden upon would be turned over, bringing the rosy under petals uppermost. The older poets are not on hand gently to extract the poetry from their lines for the benefit of prosaic commentators and friends ; else Milton might have told Mr. Hales that his allusion to Echo meant the song of the swan. But was he not as capable as Leconte de Lisle of bringing in a name for the sake of its sound ? And is not classic association joined here to one of the most beguiling bits of alliteration in literature ? If the verse brings up to the reader the thought of a river in a lovely vale, with now and then an echo flying from hill to hill across its waters, is there any reason why it should have meant something more recondite to the poet ? In the essay on Milton’s Macbeth, showing that Milton had planned a tragedy of Macbeth, and discussing his probable reasons for wishing to enter the lists against Shakespeare, Mr. Hales seems to us to have found a more tangible theme, and executed a careful piece of conjectural criticism.

The volume contains two longer papers, — one on The Last Decade of the Eighteenth Century, a very happily chosen subject, the other on Victorian Literature. Both bear the mark of the lecture in the ground covered and the necessity of constant summarizing, but they are very well arranged, critically sound, and pleasantly written. Folia Litteraria is a book to keep on hand as a collection of extra notes with which to interleave other books rather than one to be taken up and re-read for its own sake. And that, after all, is the best test of essays. They may or may not be classics, but they must prove themselves good comrades.

• Science and a Future Life . With Other Essays. By FREDERICK W. H. MYERS. London and New York: Macmillan. 1893. ↩
• Essays and Addresses . By the Right Hon. ARTHUR J. BALFOUR, M. P. Edinburgh: David Douglas. 1893. ↩
• Essays in Idleness . By AGNES REPPLIER. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1893. ↩
• Stelligeri, and Other Essays concerning America . By BAEKETT WEXDELL. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1893. ↩
• Essays in London and Elsewhere . By HENBY JAMES. New York : Harper & Brothers. 1893. ↩
• Folia Litteraria . Essays and Notes on English Literature. By W. W. M. M. A., Professor of English Literature in King’s College. New York : Macmillan. 1893. ↩

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