Understanding the Essay (Paperback)

Acknowledgements

Introduction: “A History and Poetics of the Essay,” Jeff Porter

Introduction to David Foster Wallace
Reading “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” Jeff Porter

Introduction to Anne Carson
Reading “On Trout,” Eula Biss

Introduction to Jamaica Kincaid
Reading A Small Place, Donald Morrill

Introduction to Scott Russell Sanders
Reading “Under the Influence,” James McKean

Introduction to Joy Williams
Reading “The Case Against Babies,” Sara Levine

Introduction to Joan Didion
Reading “Georgia O’Keeffe,” Patricia Foster

Introduction to John McPhee
Reading Encounters with the Archdruid, Adam Hochschild

Introduction to Cynthia Ozick
Reading “A Drugstore in Winter,” Sven Birkerts

Introduction to James Baldwin
Reading “Notes of a Native Son,” Honor Moore

Introduction to Seymour Krim
Reading “For My Brothers and Sisters in the Failure Business,”Vivian Gornick

Introduction to Ralph Ellison
Reading “The Little Man in Chehaw Station,” Gayle Pemberton

Introduction to George Orwell
Reading “A Hanging,” Carl H. Klaus

Introduction to F. Scott Fitzgerald
Reading “The Crack-Up,” Patricia Hampl

Introduction to Virginia Woolf
Reading “Street Haunting,” Marilyn Abildskov

Introduction to Mark Twain
Reading “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” Robin Hemley

Introduction to William Hazlitt
Reading “On the Pleasure of Hating,” Phillip Lopate

Introduction to Charles Lamb
Reading “New Year’s Eve,” David Lazar

Introduction to Jonathan Swift
Reading “A Modest Proposal,” Xu Xi

Introduction to Michel de Montaigne
Reading “On Some Verses of Virgil,” David Hamilton

Key Terms for the Essay

Contributors