The Best American Essays 2001

Rating:
Summary: Another valuable collection of essays
Review: I have been reading the Best American Essays from 1997 to this present collection. Although I found the 1999 and 2000 to be more valuable to me and have used them in the college classroom, I find this volume to be quite good.

I particularly liked "Brain Cell Memories" which gives a poignant account of a patholigist who studies brain tumors that have life and death consequences for people unknown to him directly. As he describes the samples he is examining, Spencer Nadler reminds the reader that he is detached from the lives of those from whom they were taken. (Or is he?) As many of us, he wonders what his own future will be based on his family medical history.

Then there is Stephen King's descriptive account of his accident near his summer home in Maine, "On Impact" is worth reading. I find King's essays more to my particular liking than his fiction, but only because that genre is not my "cup of tea."

Ashraf Rushdy's "Exquisit Corpse" is necessarily disturbing. His accounts of lynchings in the mid-twentieth century sets the macabre but unfortunately real stage for a detailed description of the murder of James Byrd in Jasper. Texas in 1998. Unpleasant indeed, but truly what is needed to tear us away from complacency.

These essays are not escapist reading. There are those too, but I find these types of essays, which are plentiful in this series to be valuable in opening the mind to a more balanced view of reality and making the reader face the issues that unfortunately continue to plague us today. An educator can do so much with them.

Rating:
Summary: Collection as a whole feels unispired
Review: Moving contributions from Diane Ackerman, Charles Bowden, Stephen King, Rebecca McClanahan, and Mary Oliver distinguish this year's "best of" compilation of essays for me. Editor Kathleen Norris links the twenty-six essays collected here with the theme of "inner resources" and its variations (p. xii). "In the essays in this book," she writes in her Introduction, "we are invited to take time to notice how the world goes on, and how often it is the simple things--a student's letter, the memory of a first job, the markings left in a library book, an old friend's recipe for yellow pepper soup, or a glimpse of night sky--that allow us to dwell on the issues of life and death that concern us all" (p. xvi).

In the opening essay, "In the Memory Mines," Diane Ackerman wanders through the "knotted jungles" of her memory to "the lost kingdoms" of her childhood (p. 1). "The world seemed without boundary," she remembers, "unimaginable and infinite" (p. 11). She recalls following her distant father "like a tropic flower the sun, needy, riveted, always open for warmth" (p. 12). In my favorite essay of the bunch, "The Bone Garden of Desire," Tucson writer Charles Bowden describes cooking machaca for a friend dying of cancer: "The beef was tender, the chiles hot, but not too hot, just enough to excite the tongue, and the seasonings bite, the garlic licks the taste buds, and I began to float on the sensations as Art drank his beer and the plants grew and stirred, the hummingbirds whizzed overhead and then hovered before my face, my tongue rubbed against the roof of my mouth, and it is all a swirl of sensation as I remember that day cooking" (p. 31). "I don't trust the answers or the people who give me the answers," Bowden writes. "I believe in dirt and bone and flowers and fresh pasta and salsa cruda and red wine. I do not believe in white wine; I insist on color. I think death is a word and life is a fact, just as food is a fact and cactus is a fact" (p. 44). Bestseller writer, Stephen King shines in his vivid account, "On Impact," in which he recalls nearly being killed in June, 1999 "by a character out of one my own novels. It's almost funny" (p. 122). Avid readers will relate to Rebecca McClanahan's fascinating essay about marginalia, "Book Marks." "Life is a river," she observes, "and you can't step into the same book twice" (p. 172). In her short but profound contribution, "Dust," poet Mary Oliver writes: "The silky brant, the scarf of chiffon, the letter, the empty envelope, the black ducks, the old shoes, the little white dog fall away, and all the music of our lives is in them. The gods act as they act for what purpose we do not know, but this we do understand: the world could not be made without the swirl and whirlwind of our deepest attention and our cherishing. And if I mean the god of the sky, I mean also the god of the river--not only the god of the gold-speckled cathedral but the lord of the green field, where people pause casually and snap each other's picture; where thrushes pump out their darkling songs; where little dogs bark and leap, their ears tossing, joyously, as they run toward us" (p. 220).

For anyone eager to experience essays that resonate with some really fine writing, this collection should not be missed.

G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: Collection as a whole feels unispired
Review: Publisher's Weekly states that "In most cases, these writers leave behind at least one image to forever haunt the reader." I think they meant this as a good thing. For the essay, the single haunting image as the residual force is simply not enough. I found that each essay has plenty to offer, but most of them favor the exceptionally long, personal explanation that is unrelated to image, to wandering through ideas and seeing where a strange turn of the mind can go. I felt that many of the essays began with what they already knew, and then spent the time telling the reader how they got there. I love the essay form for the homage it pays to journey. But this collection felt largely pre-planned, which I think was also felt in the range of selections itself. As Publisher's Weekly also states, "The drawbacks of this collection are negligible, mainly that Norris verges on thematic repetition." This is not a negligible drawback. The thematic repetition should at least be used to show a variety of approach, but the essays seem to come from the same place, know the same approaches, and make the same discoveries. This year has been a big one. I had hoped that the best essays of the year would carry some of the diversity with which we approach this huge century before us. Also, the introduction by Norris seemed a bit self serving--"So you're a real writer!" And then we learn what a 'real writer' is, but in terms of what the writer expects. I think that what the piece of writing expects of the reader and where it takes the reader is a more important consideration.

Rating:
Summary: doesn't disappoint
Review: This is my first time to pick up the best american essays series, and i wasn't disapointed. there were a few essays that i struggled to finish (i remember skipping them when they were first published in their respective magazines), but there are many strong essays in the collection: Anne Fadiman's essay "Mail", which warns of the dangers of email; Heiman's touching "Vin Laforge"; Stephen King's essay "On Impact" is not surprisingly the best of the bunch; Yusef Komnkyaka has a very interesting piece in here; Marcus Laffey, the anonymous new york policeman's insightful piece, "The Midnight Tour" is included; rebecca mcclanah's essay closely follows king's as the best included; Reynolds Price's "Dear Harper" is one of the finest spiritual pieces i've seen in a long time; and Carlo Rotella has a great essay on boxing. there are a few that shouldn't have been included and a few that are iffy, but that is more personal opinion than the quality of the essay. it's a good sampling of the year.