Pushing the bounds of form in ‘The Glorious American Essay’
Dec 23, 2020
3 minutes
When it comes to essay anthologies, there’s a tradition so iron-clad and long-standing that it’s remarkably daring of editor Phillip Lopate, in the foreword of “The Glorious American Essay: One Hundred Essays from Colonial Times to the Present,” to natter for 16 whole pages before he gets around to asking “But wait: what is an essay?”
This question is practically constitutionally required when writing about essays. In a narrative tradition going all the
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