In “On the Writing of Essays”, the essayist’s “main gift” is described as “an eye to discover the suggestiveness of common things” and their habit as being able to show you “by what alchemy the ruder world becomes transmuted into the future.” It is in this magic of the essay that the writers Didion, Dillard, and Wallace are well versed. For Didion, the simple act of notebook keeping, a unique and personal item, is more than a record of what happens around her, as  “for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable ‘I.’ ” Didion is unable to record the truth of an event, as she only sees and records it through her self and what she sees of herself in the event. Though I believe that her descriptions of the liberties she takes are in some sense “whimsical”, Didion, in true essayist form, takes part in this “perpetual reference to self” that is so vital to the essay. There is, ironically, a great honesty in Didion’s half-truths in her notebook, and that in “keeping in touch” one is keeping in touch with the self– certainly what the essay’s purpose and goal is and has continued to be. Dillard’s essay regarding a partial solar eclipse describes an immense experience through the essayist’s own deep and personal experience with the event. Certainly not as mundane as Didion’s daily observations made personal or Wallace’s trip to the county fair, the eclipse for Dillard is intense, and not initially the topic of interest in the essay– this aspect continues to rise up and the essay flows in and out of these short references to previously mentioned events in the writer’s life, both unrelated yet somehow entirely related to the matter at hand. The bizarre painting, the hotel lobby, the sad and unrelenting life of the miner, for me all seemed deeply involved in the “complex interior junk you carry with you wherever you go” as described by Dillard. This is a fine example of what Benson describes as “all the unexpected, inconsistent, various simple stuff of life”, woven into this great tale of a not so simple planetary event. Finally, we have Wallace and his lengthy and almost gonzo journalist endeavor into a county fair. For me, Wallace is the “wise, humorous, kindly observer of life” written of in the Murdoch piece, painstakingly taking the reader through his entire adventure start to finish. Not a detail is left out, though we may not know that entirely, and though partial and hilariously judgmental it is highly personal and an obvious “quiet talk”. It does not digress greatly into many political or social explanations for the phenomenon– Wallace’s essay just simply is.

 

References:

Essayists on the Essay: Montaigne to Our Time, Carl H. Klaus and Ned Stuckey-French

From, “On  the Writing of Essays”, Alexander Smith
From, “The Art of the Essayist”, A.C. Benson
From, “The Essay”, Walter Murdoch

“On Keeping a Notebook”, Joan Didion
“Total Eclipse”, Annie Dillard
“Ticket to the Fair”, David Foster-Wallace