What exactly are essays? I always thought the academic essay is a shorter form of a term paper; analyzing a topic or question within a strict structure: introduction, main part and conclusion. The more I think about it I realize that I have actually never written a simple essay, neither in school nor at university. I always have to write long paper about 20 pages, a torture for me because I am more of a “keep it short and simple” type. So when I decided to attend this multimedia essay course, I thought “Great, writing papers about 8-10 pages is fun!” But this class, or rather the literature we have to read, totally changed my (actually nonexistent) knowledge about essays. It starts with the topic. According to Smith, Benson and Murdoch, the essay is a very personal piece of writing about the author’s thoughts and believes. They write about simple stuff from everyday life, or as Smith phrase it: “The world is everywhere whispering essays, and one need only be the world’s amanuensis.” (Klaus, Stuckey-French: 26).

It is interesting that apparently the aim or function of an essay is not to inform, but rather to entertain the reader; “[…] the charm of the familiar essayist depends upon his power of giving the sense of good-humored […] personality and establishing a sort of pleasant friendship with his reader. One does not go to an essayist with the desire for information […]” (ibid: 40).  Smith, Benson and Murdoch compare the essay even to poetry: “The essay is to prose what the lyric is to poetry; it is intensely personal” (ibid: 66). As a matter of fact, Murdoch states that the essay might replace the novel as the most popular form of writing in the future.

One the one hand, the authors mentioned above say that essays reflect the personal likes and dislikes of the writer. On the other hand, they also compare the essay to poetry and the novel, therefore to fictive writing. But they do not mention whether the essay should represent the true biography or a fictional story of the author, a credible diary or a fictive short story.

The only ones who actually use the format of an essay in order to remember the past (whether true or fiction) are Didion, Dillard and Wallace. Their essays consist of diary-like entries, which should probably emphasize their credibility. But in my opinion, their essays seem pretty much like fictive short stories, due to their poetic language (use of anaphora, rhetoric question) and non-chronological narrative time.

I am really excited what future readings will add to the vague definition or explanation of the essay.