Best American Essays 2002 (Best American (TM))

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking and absorbing
Review: I had the false impression that the writing and thoughts in this year's Best American Essays would be overwhelmed by the events of September 11, but this book provides a lot of breadth and depth. Gould's selections are excellent; I can't think of a single essay here that does not have some kind of redeeming value. Jacques Barzun's The Tenth Muse and Mario Vargas Lhosa's "Why Literature?" are the requisite but eloquent pieces about the nature and necessity of art. Danielle Ofri's "Merced" is a standout piece: about how a young doctor learns about the fallibility of medicine through a patient's unsolvable illness. I disagree with the reviewers here who found Gore Vidal's "The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh" unworthy of inclusion in the volume; the essay shows another view on the perpetrator of the Oklahoma City bombing that warrants us to consider why some people commit acts of terror, though the piece ultimately fails when Vidal utilizes tired and trite anti government rhetoric. Nicholas Delblanco's "The Countess of Stanlein Restored" is an absorbing history of the origins and restoration of a Stradivarius cello. Adam Mayblum's "The Price We Pay" does not have the polish and pyrotechnics we expect from some of these essayists, but his straightforward telling of his escape from the World Trade towers on September 11 makes for a harrowing recounting of the events.

Rating:
Summary: Very timestamped, some powerful pieces
Review: I stumbled upon this gem a few weeks ago at a used book store. What made me buy it (I didn't have time to finish reading it in-house) was the essay "Winner Take Nothing." It's a poignant tale of a middle age man coming to terms with the nature of his relationship with his father, particularly in light of his fahter's aging. It alone is worth the price of admission: it really lingers with you, and does what good literature should, it may alter the way you view your world, and even your parents.

Unlike the editor, I love confessional, stream of conscious, intensely personal narratives, and post 9/11 2002 (the year in which the essays were taken from) are loaded with them. Being that we are away from September 11, you may find the 9/11 essays enlightening in a long-term context, or you may just be a little saturated (like I was). It depends on the person.

The essays that really stand out in my mind of a non WTC variety are "My Father's Brain" and another one on a woman's journey with her son with a debilitating illness. These both haunt you and give a satisfying commentary on the nature of love, family, memory, human self-preservation and the darker aspects of duty: guilt, selfishness, fatigue and even resentment. I found "My Father's Brain" to be particulary well written and structured.

I think what's so great about these essays is: they're alive. Essays can have all the stimulating quality of warm milk. But these essays are *essays,* but they do more than just prognosticate and drone on in correct format. They educate, they emote, they live and they entertain. And I think that is why this volume was so enjoyable.

Rating:
Summary: Average But Still Worthy
Review: Is it not odd that one of the most competent and serious of the seemingly endless number of Houghton Mifflin's "Best American Series" so far, in 2002, has but one other Amazon review three months after publication and after a holiday-advertising blitz? (I know Eggers' AMERICAN NONREQUIRED READING 2002 is supposed to seem whimsical and therefore attractive--but along with "Best American Recipes," I question Houghton Mifflin's sagacity. What's new for 2003--"Best American Greeting Cards"?)

I agree with the sole other Amazonian that this is far from the strongest volume in the series. Gould, in his last act of editing, admits in the introduction that he spent most of his time writing, not reading. Here, it seems his editorial judgment was more swayed by authorial track records and the Topic of the Moment (9-11) than by the enduring nature of the essays' prose itself. Or perhaps Gould simply had a tin ear with respect to style, so intrinsic to the success and timelessness of creative nonfiction.

Taste is personal, too. I concur with the other reviewer that Franzen's "My Father's Brain" and Vidal's "The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh" are lackluster essays--but unlike him, I wasn't bowled over by Delbanco's "The Countess of Stanlein Restored," about a cello's restoration.

My favorite essay by far was Mario Vargas Llosa's "Why Literature?" Filled with bon mots and wisdom, this essay is the one I found most enduring and worth rereading. "Good literature, while temporarily relieving human dissatisfaction, actually increases it, by developing a critical and nonconformist attotude toward life." This, and dozens of other quotable lines, made me sigh with recognition and underline/bracket the text.

My next favorite was Andrew Levy's portrait of Robert Carter III, "The Anti-Jefferson." I never had heard of Carter and was convinced by Levy that he should be better known and revered in American history.

My remaining favorites are as follow: Jacques Barzun's "The Tenth Muse," a critique of popular culture; Rudolph Chelminski's "Turning Point," my favorite of the many 9-11 essays, which focuses on the artist Philippe Petit, who tightrope-walked between the Twin Towers in 1974; Bernard Cooper's "Winner Take Nothing," about the writing life and father/son relationships; Atul Gawande's "Final Cut," about the dwindling popularity of autopsies; Sebastian Junger's "The Lion in Winter," about war reporting, the Taliban, and Afghanistan; Amy Kolen's "Fire," a disturbingly memorable exploration of the 1911 Triangle factory fire; Adam Mayblum's "The Price We Pay," a first-hand account of 9-11 which, despite its rawness, maintains vitality and relevance; Louis Menand's "College: The End of the Golden Age," an insightful critique of higher education in America; Danielle Ofri's "Merced," a poignant reflection by a physician; Darryl Pinckney's sociologically-astute "Busted in New York," about being jailed for pot smoking; Joe Queenen's brief and wry "Matriculation Fixation," about parental obsessions with childrens' educational paths; John Sack's illuminating "Inside the Bunker," which examines the psychology of Holocaust-deniers; and, finally, Penny Wolfson's haunting, impressionistic, poetic meditation on life, disability, and art entitled "Moonrise."

Six remaining essays go unmentioned. I found them ordinary. However, if you take this reviewer's word for it, there remains prose worth perusing in this less-than-stellar but still-worthwhile addition to a series worth perpetuating.

Rating:
Summary: Middling effort in an excellent series
Review: The essays are for the most part dull and poorly written and - even worse for essays - insincere. The material is, again, dull and seemingly selected by Gould to bother his readers. There are two uncomfortable essays about death made more discomforting in the one case (Franzen's essay about dementia) by his sad lack of sympathy for his subject (his own father). Then there's Gore Vidal's apology for Tim McVeigh: a simple agenda piece that has no place in an essay collection.

There is one notable exception. The essay on cellos is surprisingly warm and funny and finally tender. It was a fine example of the form and may well turn up in the Century's Best, come 2101.

Rating:
Summary: a chance to have CANCERLAND essay by barbara ehenreich
Review: this essay was printed in Harpers and isn't available ANY WHERE else but in this book. It is easier to buy this book than to look for an old issue of Harpers. This is the BEST essay on breast cancer imho. It is wise and perceptive and cuts through a lot of the pink stuff of breast cancer activism. elsa dorfman, NoHairDay collective. Cambridge, MA

Rating:
Summary: still going strong
Review: This year's installment of the Best American Essays is a great selection (but then aren't they always). It was one of the last projects Stephen Jay Gould finished before he died last May. Of course there are all kinds of arguments that can be made for and against certain selections being included and not included.

Three essays really got to me as the best of the bunch (and essays that I imagine I'll reread again and again in the future). The first is Franzen's essay on his father's decline in Alzheimer's. It's a touching essay that is well-written, humorous at times, and helps to understand the 'human' reaction to the disease. The other essays is Bernard Cooper's "Winner Take Nothing" which is a very funny interplay between a father and son who don't understand each other. I remember reading it in GQ, and thinking that this essay surely would be selected for the Best American series. Nicholas Delbanco's essay "The Countess of Stanlein Restored" is a wonderfully written essay that covers the history of violin making and the restoration of one of the more famous violins, and anyone who loves music will love this essay.

Barbara Ehrenreich has an essay discussing her ordeal with breast cancer, and what makes this essay so good is that it isn't all the hopefulness and joy you find in others of its type, rather she deals with the real emotions she felt-the bitterness. And with an almost tongue-in-cheek humor. Sebastion Junger has his 'typical' style essay dealing with the fight for freedom in Afganistan. It's well-written, like his work tends to be. Andrew Levy's essay on Robert Carter III shows why we don't know who Carter is-he just isn't quite interesting enough to write about. There's also an interesting essay by Danielle Ofri on one incident in her medical school training (this essay has convinced me to pick up her collection of memoir essays on med school). There's a great essay by Darryl Pinckney dealing with a middle-aged, middle-class black man getting busted for marijuana possession. It's funny and frightening at the same time. Typical New Yorker material though. Gore Vidal has an essay on McVeigh-which is at times well-written, but at other times borders on the paranoid and juvenile. It is an interesting read though. And the final essay of the collection is Wolfson's "Moonrise" which is another autobiographical essay dealing with the illness of a relative-this one of her son. It's a touching essay that fills the reader with sadness and joy.

Some of the weaker essays are: Jacques Barzun's "The Tenth Muse" which is part biography of Clifton Fadiman and part question on culture, but doesn't ever say anything. And there are the group of obligatory 9-11essays, though not the best I've seen. Amy Kolen has an extremely dull essay, "Fire," which I found so boring, I couldn't even finish it.