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The Best American Essays 2013
Selected and introduced by Cheryl Strayed, the New York Times best-selling author of Wild and the writer of the celebrated column “Dear Sugar,” this collection is a treasure trove of fine writing and thought-provoking essays.
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
About the author
Cheryl Strayed
33 books13.2k followersCheryl Strayed is the author of four books: Tiny Beautiful Things, Torch, Brave Enough, and the #1 New York Times bestseller, Wild. She's also the author of the popular Dear Sugar Letters, currently on Substack and the host of two hit podcasts--Sugar Calling and Dear Sugars. You can find links to her events and answers to FAQ on her web site: http://www.cherylstrayed.com/
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 149 reviews
December 22, 2013
So many great essays in this collection. Cheryl Strayed has assembled a treasure chest of essays that lean heavily to the personal, transformative, life-altering side of the genre and it makes for a heavy and rewarding reading experience. My favorites are Tod Goldberg'sessay on Duk Koo Kim, Vanessa Veselka's serial killer meditation, the essays by Megan Stielstra and Michelle Mirsky about their children, the Steven Harvey essay about his mom's suicide, and so many others (already feeling guilty for not mentioning show stoppers by Ander Monson and Charles Baxter). This book also includes my essay, I'm Jumping Off the Bridge. It's such an honor to be in this book and it's something that I'll be proud of forever.
October 19, 2013
When did The Best American Essays become The Best American Personal Essays? I was eager to read this anthology edited by Cheryl Strayed, and though I enjoyed the essays she selected, I found it very perplexing, indeed disturbing, that all the essays anthologized in this volume hued to the strictly personal narrative. Remember Jo Ann Beard’s “Werner” from the 2007 volume? A great essay with no “I” in sight. What happened? The essay is a wonderful elastic form. And though, I repeat, I loved the essays included, they did not by any stretch of the imagination; give full expression to the form.
Read
June 28, 2023With such a varied collection of essays, I wouldn't presume to award any rating stars for the book as a whole. Instead, for this review I would prefer to share my thoughts about one of these essays, just one.
"My Father's Women," by Mako Yoshikawa could have been written to entertain, to share, or mainly to show off her writing technique. For sure, here's the impression it made on me: This essay has been important, alright; noteworthy due to being one of the few published articles or books I have ever read... that actively hurt my feelings. In my view, the brilliant Mako Yoshikawa managed to dishonor two relatives whom I remember with affection.
Here at Goodreads, I'd like to do a bit of cautionary reviewing, to set the record straight on this particular essay. Maybe this could be useful in case any of you are planning to turn family business into creative nonfiction, calling out your relatives or friends by name, rather than turning them into fictional characters.
Suppose that my review here will encourage you to pause for an ethical moment, pausing to wonder, "What am I telling a world of strangers about these people who've been in my life?"
IN CASE IT'S RELEVANT, HERE'S MY TRUE CONFESSION
On my Goodreads Author Page you can find a memoir of my early years: "Bigger than All the Night Sky." It does contain many explicit references to family members; not all were as sweet as apple pie, but I took care to avoid gratuitously insulting anyone.
By contrast, oh Lordy!, there's what Mako Yoshikawa wrote about her father Shoichi and his "women." One of those "women" happened to be my beloved Aunt Ellie. After their marriage (after Mako was already an adult), this couple lived together until Ellie's death.
Might I suggest to my fellow writers?
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU INCLUDE, WHAT YOU LEAVE OUT
* Calling Ellie "a large, fleshy woman"?
* Emphasizing her private mental health struggles?
* Describing Shoichi's worst moments in voyeristic detail?
Seemed to me, Mako gratuitiously emphasized their personal struggles for what purpose: Shock value? Entertainment?
TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT
Dr. Shoichi Yoshikawa taught at Princeton. An innovator in the specialty of nuclear fusion, his professional accomplishments included this, as summarized in a "Memoriam" article at The Free Library:
Over the course of his career, he wrote seven books on subjects that included mathematical physics, atomic physics, plasma physics and fusion energy, and was a contributing author to several other technical books. He received the Mainichi-Shinbun Award for "Distinguished Publication" in 1974 for his popular book on fusion. He was a Fellow in the American Physical Society and retired from Princeton University in 2000.
As for my Aunt Ellie, like her husband, she was active in the Presbyterian Church in Princeton. Although my wise and loving aunt wasn't a famous scientist, in my view she could have taught graduate courses at Earth School's Survivor School of Life.
In case you're wondering I don't flatter myself that our close-and-loving relationship was due to my specialness. Rather, knowing this remarkable aunt, I suspect that she offered every family member and potential friend the gift of a close-and-loving relationship.
My Aunt Ellie had one of the biggest hearts of any person I've known; I'd call it a golden heart. Twice married-and-divorced, and then marrying the remarkable Shoichi, Ellie did a lot to hold her extended family together.
Incidentally, Mako's idea of Ellie being "large and fleshy" is probably not how most people would describe my aunt's appearance. To put it plainly, she was voluptuous, augmented by a larger-than-life presence because she was so very alive. Possessing a beautiful singing voice, for a time my Aunt Ellie even sang in the chorus at New York's Metropolitan Opera.
As a feminist, as well as somebody who loves this relative of mine, I find it offensive that Mako's essay failed to mention anything to balance her limited portrayal of a woman who was no less than her stepmother.
At Ellie's memorial service, hundreds of people attended, filling that huge church in Princeton to capacity. Seems to me, Mako Yoshikawa might have written a more interesting essay had she interviewed some of those people and then recounted how that service-oriented church member, my Aunt Ellie, had helped them; personally and unpretentiously. You see, there's no doubt in my mind that she inspired and helped many in her church family.
IN CONCLUSION
For my fellow reading fans here at Goodreads, I leave you with this thought. Mako Yoshikawa might have begun her essay with this lede:
"When my father, Shoichi, went to the memorial service for my stepmother Ellie, both of her two former husbands attended as well. Such was the power of her love."
Rather, Mako began her essay thus:
"When I drove my sisters back to town from the lawyer's three days after our father's death, it took a while for us to arrive at the subject of his women."
Cleverness and shock value can win admiration for a writer. In the long run, however, cleverness attained through cruelty... might be a hollow triumph.
"My Father's Women," by Mako Yoshikawa could have been written to entertain, to share, or mainly to show off her writing technique. For sure, here's the impression it made on me: This essay has been important, alright; noteworthy due to being one of the few published articles or books I have ever read... that actively hurt my feelings. In my view, the brilliant Mako Yoshikawa managed to dishonor two relatives whom I remember with affection.
Here at Goodreads, I'd like to do a bit of cautionary reviewing, to set the record straight on this particular essay. Maybe this could be useful in case any of you are planning to turn family business into creative nonfiction, calling out your relatives or friends by name, rather than turning them into fictional characters.
Suppose that my review here will encourage you to pause for an ethical moment, pausing to wonder, "What am I telling a world of strangers about these people who've been in my life?"
IN CASE IT'S RELEVANT, HERE'S MY TRUE CONFESSION
On my Goodreads Author Page you can find a memoir of my early years: "Bigger than All the Night Sky." It does contain many explicit references to family members; not all were as sweet as apple pie, but I took care to avoid gratuitously insulting anyone.
By contrast, oh Lordy!, there's what Mako Yoshikawa wrote about her father Shoichi and his "women." One of those "women" happened to be my beloved Aunt Ellie. After their marriage (after Mako was already an adult), this couple lived together until Ellie's death.
Might I suggest to my fellow writers?
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU INCLUDE, WHAT YOU LEAVE OUT
* Calling Ellie "a large, fleshy woman"?
* Emphasizing her private mental health struggles?
* Describing Shoichi's worst moments in voyeristic detail?
Seemed to me, Mako gratuitiously emphasized their personal struggles for what purpose: Shock value? Entertainment?
TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT
Dr. Shoichi Yoshikawa taught at Princeton. An innovator in the specialty of nuclear fusion, his professional accomplishments included this, as summarized in a "Memoriam" article at The Free Library:
Over the course of his career, he wrote seven books on subjects that included mathematical physics, atomic physics, plasma physics and fusion energy, and was a contributing author to several other technical books. He received the Mainichi-Shinbun Award for "Distinguished Publication" in 1974 for his popular book on fusion. He was a Fellow in the American Physical Society and retired from Princeton University in 2000.
As for my Aunt Ellie, like her husband, she was active in the Presbyterian Church in Princeton. Although my wise and loving aunt wasn't a famous scientist, in my view she could have taught graduate courses at Earth School's Survivor School of Life.
In case you're wondering I don't flatter myself that our close-and-loving relationship was due to my specialness. Rather, knowing this remarkable aunt, I suspect that she offered every family member and potential friend the gift of a close-and-loving relationship.
My Aunt Ellie had one of the biggest hearts of any person I've known; I'd call it a golden heart. Twice married-and-divorced, and then marrying the remarkable Shoichi, Ellie did a lot to hold her extended family together.
Incidentally, Mako's idea of Ellie being "large and fleshy" is probably not how most people would describe my aunt's appearance. To put it plainly, she was voluptuous, augmented by a larger-than-life presence because she was so very alive. Possessing a beautiful singing voice, for a time my Aunt Ellie even sang in the chorus at New York's Metropolitan Opera.
As a feminist, as well as somebody who loves this relative of mine, I find it offensive that Mako's essay failed to mention anything to balance her limited portrayal of a woman who was no less than her stepmother.
At Ellie's memorial service, hundreds of people attended, filling that huge church in Princeton to capacity. Seems to me, Mako Yoshikawa might have written a more interesting essay had she interviewed some of those people and then recounted how that service-oriented church member, my Aunt Ellie, had helped them; personally and unpretentiously. You see, there's no doubt in my mind that she inspired and helped many in her church family.
IN CONCLUSION
For my fellow reading fans here at Goodreads, I leave you with this thought. Mako Yoshikawa might have begun her essay with this lede:
"When my father, Shoichi, went to the memorial service for my stepmother Ellie, both of her two former husbands attended as well. Such was the power of her love."
Rather, Mako began her essay thus:
"When I drove my sisters back to town from the lawyer's three days after our father's death, it took a while for us to arrive at the subject of his women."
Cleverness and shock value can win admiration for a writer. In the long run, however, cleverness attained through cruelty... might be a hollow triumph.
December 2, 2013
Anthologies are always hard to rate and review, but this one I liked a lot. While few of the essays blew my mind, I enjoyed most of them largely because of Strayed's aesthetic, which favors the personal. Some of the best ones were by Matthew Vollmer, Mako Yoshikawa, Eileen Pollack, Jon Kerstetter, Ander Monson, and Tod Goldberg. The standout essay was the last, Steven Harvey's "The Book of Knowledge," and I think the editors considered it the standout as well since they let it conclude the collection; Strayed forewent BAE's tradition of alphabetizing by author, and this gave the collection a distinct shape and emphasis. It's also pertinent to note that this volume featured more women writers than have many BAEs, and I hope this better ratio will continue to improve. Lastly, I'll say that Strayed's introduction was the best I've read in a while; many BAE editors abuse their introduction privilege, but Strayed shows her artistry and conscientiousness in writing a pithy, smart intro that does all it should while keeping its focus not on the editor's lofty views and accomplishments but on the forthcoming essays.
July 2, 2015
I have to admit I skipped some of the last essays by men because they seemed a little too repetitive in their excessive manliness (you know that kind of deeply manly sentimental writing where men are super sad but they only express it through elaborate metaphors about manly stuff like boxing and basketball). But I think I enjoyed most of the essays in this and I enjoyed that unlike the previous collection of these I read (I think that was the 2014 BAE), this one had fairly clear recurring themes (such as childbirth / infants / childhood) which echoed between the essays and kept me reading the whole collection rather than just dipping in and out based on interesting titles.
I especially enjoyed Vanessa Vaselka's "Highway of Lost Girls", Steven Harvey's "The Book of Knowledge" and Angela Morales's "The Girls In My Town".
I especially enjoyed Vanessa Vaselka's "Highway of Lost Girls", Steven Harvey's "The Book of Knowledge" and Angela Morales's "The Girls In My Town".
Read
May 31, 2019I have some brief notes on several of the essays here, though I enjoyed them all to varying degrees. "His Last Game" is, I think, my favorite.
"The Girls In My Town" -- Angela Morales, Southwest Review
Structured by 13 numbered sections. Set in Merced, California, in the valley between the Sierras and the coast; the town has a significant Latino population. Morales devotes section 1 to a description of the town, especially its depressed economy and moves in like manner through sections about a boy in her composition class who is a likely candidate to impregnate one of the eponymous girls and leave her to care for the baby by herself, the prevalence of meth in the area, the local Teen Parent Program, Morales' own experiences being pregnant (at 32) in the same town with so many teenage mothers, the sad and horrifying legend of La Llorona as well as one of Llorona's real-life counterparts in Merced, and ends with Morales' thoughts about her daughter, now 14, and the daughter of a teenage mother who gave birth on the same day as Morales: what has life been like for that other girl, now 14 as well? What are her chances of overcoming economics and family history?
"Sometimes A Romantic Notion" -- Richard Schmitt, Gettysburg Review
Begins when a member of the writer's department mentions that his grandfather "ran off" to join the circus. Schmitt has fun with this phrase, and uses his 10-years of life in the circus to describe how virtually impossible it is to "run off" and join the circus. Gradually widens to analyze how preposterous and unlikely romantic notions are when seen in reality and why we cling to them anyway. Slightly anticlimactic ending when he draws a parallel to his own romantic notion that fiction writers "simply [make] things up out of thin air," rather than finish on the idea of romantic notions as anodyne to banality, or some similar conclusion.
"His Last Game" -- Brian Doyle, Notre Dame Magazine
Powerful three-page essay. Doyle and his brother, in their fifties, drive to the pharmacy for his brother's prescriptions but take a meandering route by an arboretum and stop at a park at dusk to watch a 3-on-3 pickup basketball game. The capsule descriptions of each player are little gems. Then, in the midst of the hoops analysis, including a bet made on the game, this: "You owe me a dollar. We better go get my prescriptions. They are not going to do any good but we better get them anyway so they don't go to waste. One less thing for my family to do afterward. That game was good…." The essay pivots on that sentence and a sadness that the reader sensed but wasn't sure of begins to seep into the tone. The closing paragraph is perfect.
"When They Let Them Bleed" -- Tod Goldberg, Hobart
Tod works outward from November 13, 1982, when as an 11-year-old he watched the Ray Mancini-Duk Koo Kim bantamweight title fight, which ended with Kim in a coma from which he would die within days. He alternates analysis of the boxing culture at the time, the coverage of boxing in Sports Illustrated, with his home life at the time, his habit of cutting himself, his mother's live-in boyfriend--one of those people who manage to be horrible without committing any crime--and his mother's death 28 years almost to the day after that of Kim.
"Pigeons" -- Eileen Pollack, Prairie Schooner
Pollack revisits her old elementary school after four decades, and explores the memories it conjures: the different expectations for girls and boys, especially where math was concerned, and how frustrating she found this double standard; the school psychologist and how utterly he failed to understand elementary-age children; the casual use of corporal punishment to maintain order, especially in the case of the black students. She is haunted by one particularly brutal incident that she accidentally caused: "I watched in horror as he tugged Walter by the ear into that dreadful belfry--the darkroom, I suddenly thought--and we listened to the sounds of a grown man throwing a boy half his size against a wall."
"Highway of Lost Girls" -- Vanessa Vaselka, GQ
Harrowing account of her years as a teenage runaway, circa 1985, her survival mechanisms hitching rides from truckers, the extraordinary misogyny of that culture and that culture's role as a sort of petri dish for cultivating serial killers. The stats are terrifying: "In 2009 the feds went public with a program called the Highway Serial Killings Initiative in response to the rising number of dead bodies found along the interstates….Narrowing the field to those last seen around truck stops and rest areas, the bureau counted over five hundred bodies, almost all women. Of the two hundred people on a suspect list, almost all of them were long-haul truckers." Vaselka details her effort to see if her most chilling hitch was with incarcerated serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades. The answer, though not definitive, is probably "yes."
"The Exhibit Will Be So Marked" -- Ander Monson, The Normal School
This wonderful example of an essay with associative structure begins with a mix-CD project Monson launched for his 33rd birthday. One of the offerings he receives is a micro-cassette without a case from an anonymous source and the essay follows his attempt to fix the cassette and listen to it, as well as to figure out who sent it. In doing so, it ranges across Nebraska City, Nebraska, the differences between desert and semiarid environments, fruit tree grafting, the Alabama-Auburn football rivalry, a Belle & Sebastian cover of "Sweet Home Alabama" at an Atlanta concert, and more. He does hear what's on the tape and figures out who sent it, by the way.
"Some Notes on Attunement" -- Zadie Smith, The New Yorker
Smith contrasts her openness to the new and to change in fiction with her resistance to the same in music, taking as a case in point her "not getting" Joni Mitchell until, suddenly, she did, at Tintern Abbey, of all places. She analyzes this epiphany and in so doing calls on Wordsworth, Seneca, what it means to be a connoisseur, Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, and Mitchell's wariness of being pigeonholed by the expectations of her audience.
"Free Rent At the Totalitarian Hotel" -- Poe Ballantine, The Sun
Documents Ballantine's time in Eureka, California during the late 1980s, right when the stock market crashed in 1987. Sharply observed details of life among his artists friends, all of them poor, contrasting the panicked speculations among pundits about what the crash might mean with how little the vanishing of so much phantom money meant to people who had almost no actual money.
"Epilogue: Deadkidistan" -- Michelle Mirsky, McSweeney's
Mirsky, who works for a children's hospital advising its administration and doctors on what it's like being the parent of a patient, describes the year her own young son, Lev, was a patient there, his death, and the two years following. She does an excellent job; the experience is exactly as awful as you imagine it must be.
"The Book of Knowledge" -- Steven Harvey, River Teeth
His parents' purchase in 1952 of the ten-volume Book of Knowledge, and specifically his mother's use of it to fill in perceived gaps in her education after the family moved from Kansas to a suburb of New York City, is the springboard for Harvey's essay. He uses this set of encyclopedias as well as a cache of family photographs--photographs he didn't look at for 50 years--and letters his mother wrote to her own mother, to understand his mother's suicide when he was twelve.
"Keeper of the Flame" -- Matthew Vollmer, New England Review
Describes a recent outing with his father, a dentist, to visit a patient on a social call in the man's Blue Ridge Mountain castle. The man, whom Vollmer's father refers to as "the Nazi"--though the man might or might not actually sympathize with the National Socialist agenda of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s--has built an actual castle in southwestern North Carolina and gathered a unique collection of World War II German Army artifacts. The visit is eerie; Vollmer can't bring himself to ask any of the questions that might discover whether the man is simply an odd collector or is an actual Nazi sympathizer, and the man is coolly noncommittal during the entire visit. Vollmer then gets a surprise when the man opens a ledger with the names of hundreds of SS officers and places his finger on one name: Vollmer.
"He didn't say, 'See, you do have Nazis in your family.' He just tapped the name with his finger. It was as if he wanted this--the fact that people with the same surname as ours had served under Hitler--to sink in on its own."
"The Girls In My Town" -- Angela Morales, Southwest Review
Structured by 13 numbered sections. Set in Merced, California, in the valley between the Sierras and the coast; the town has a significant Latino population. Morales devotes section 1 to a description of the town, especially its depressed economy and moves in like manner through sections about a boy in her composition class who is a likely candidate to impregnate one of the eponymous girls and leave her to care for the baby by herself, the prevalence of meth in the area, the local Teen Parent Program, Morales' own experiences being pregnant (at 32) in the same town with so many teenage mothers, the sad and horrifying legend of La Llorona as well as one of Llorona's real-life counterparts in Merced, and ends with Morales' thoughts about her daughter, now 14, and the daughter of a teenage mother who gave birth on the same day as Morales: what has life been like for that other girl, now 14 as well? What are her chances of overcoming economics and family history?
"Sometimes A Romantic Notion" -- Richard Schmitt, Gettysburg Review
Begins when a member of the writer's department mentions that his grandfather "ran off" to join the circus. Schmitt has fun with this phrase, and uses his 10-years of life in the circus to describe how virtually impossible it is to "run off" and join the circus. Gradually widens to analyze how preposterous and unlikely romantic notions are when seen in reality and why we cling to them anyway. Slightly anticlimactic ending when he draws a parallel to his own romantic notion that fiction writers "simply [make] things up out of thin air," rather than finish on the idea of romantic notions as anodyne to banality, or some similar conclusion.
"His Last Game" -- Brian Doyle, Notre Dame Magazine
Powerful three-page essay. Doyle and his brother, in their fifties, drive to the pharmacy for his brother's prescriptions but take a meandering route by an arboretum and stop at a park at dusk to watch a 3-on-3 pickup basketball game. The capsule descriptions of each player are little gems. Then, in the midst of the hoops analysis, including a bet made on the game, this: "You owe me a dollar. We better go get my prescriptions. They are not going to do any good but we better get them anyway so they don't go to waste. One less thing for my family to do afterward. That game was good…." The essay pivots on that sentence and a sadness that the reader sensed but wasn't sure of begins to seep into the tone. The closing paragraph is perfect.
"When They Let Them Bleed" -- Tod Goldberg, Hobart
Tod works outward from November 13, 1982, when as an 11-year-old he watched the Ray Mancini-Duk Koo Kim bantamweight title fight, which ended with Kim in a coma from which he would die within days. He alternates analysis of the boxing culture at the time, the coverage of boxing in Sports Illustrated, with his home life at the time, his habit of cutting himself, his mother's live-in boyfriend--one of those people who manage to be horrible without committing any crime--and his mother's death 28 years almost to the day after that of Kim.
"Pigeons" -- Eileen Pollack, Prairie Schooner
Pollack revisits her old elementary school after four decades, and explores the memories it conjures: the different expectations for girls and boys, especially where math was concerned, and how frustrating she found this double standard; the school psychologist and how utterly he failed to understand elementary-age children; the casual use of corporal punishment to maintain order, especially in the case of the black students. She is haunted by one particularly brutal incident that she accidentally caused: "I watched in horror as he tugged Walter by the ear into that dreadful belfry--the darkroom, I suddenly thought--and we listened to the sounds of a grown man throwing a boy half his size against a wall."
"Highway of Lost Girls" -- Vanessa Vaselka, GQ
Harrowing account of her years as a teenage runaway, circa 1985, her survival mechanisms hitching rides from truckers, the extraordinary misogyny of that culture and that culture's role as a sort of petri dish for cultivating serial killers. The stats are terrifying: "In 2009 the feds went public with a program called the Highway Serial Killings Initiative in response to the rising number of dead bodies found along the interstates….Narrowing the field to those last seen around truck stops and rest areas, the bureau counted over five hundred bodies, almost all women. Of the two hundred people on a suspect list, almost all of them were long-haul truckers." Vaselka details her effort to see if her most chilling hitch was with incarcerated serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades. The answer, though not definitive, is probably "yes."
"The Exhibit Will Be So Marked" -- Ander Monson, The Normal School
This wonderful example of an essay with associative structure begins with a mix-CD project Monson launched for his 33rd birthday. One of the offerings he receives is a micro-cassette without a case from an anonymous source and the essay follows his attempt to fix the cassette and listen to it, as well as to figure out who sent it. In doing so, it ranges across Nebraska City, Nebraska, the differences between desert and semiarid environments, fruit tree grafting, the Alabama-Auburn football rivalry, a Belle & Sebastian cover of "Sweet Home Alabama" at an Atlanta concert, and more. He does hear what's on the tape and figures out who sent it, by the way.
"Some Notes on Attunement" -- Zadie Smith, The New Yorker
Smith contrasts her openness to the new and to change in fiction with her resistance to the same in music, taking as a case in point her "not getting" Joni Mitchell until, suddenly, she did, at Tintern Abbey, of all places. She analyzes this epiphany and in so doing calls on Wordsworth, Seneca, what it means to be a connoisseur, Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, and Mitchell's wariness of being pigeonholed by the expectations of her audience.
"Free Rent At the Totalitarian Hotel" -- Poe Ballantine, The Sun
Documents Ballantine's time in Eureka, California during the late 1980s, right when the stock market crashed in 1987. Sharply observed details of life among his artists friends, all of them poor, contrasting the panicked speculations among pundits about what the crash might mean with how little the vanishing of so much phantom money meant to people who had almost no actual money.
"Epilogue: Deadkidistan" -- Michelle Mirsky, McSweeney's
Mirsky, who works for a children's hospital advising its administration and doctors on what it's like being the parent of a patient, describes the year her own young son, Lev, was a patient there, his death, and the two years following. She does an excellent job; the experience is exactly as awful as you imagine it must be.
"The Book of Knowledge" -- Steven Harvey, River Teeth
His parents' purchase in 1952 of the ten-volume Book of Knowledge, and specifically his mother's use of it to fill in perceived gaps in her education after the family moved from Kansas to a suburb of New York City, is the springboard for Harvey's essay. He uses this set of encyclopedias as well as a cache of family photographs--photographs he didn't look at for 50 years--and letters his mother wrote to her own mother, to understand his mother's suicide when he was twelve.
"Keeper of the Flame" -- Matthew Vollmer, New England Review
Describes a recent outing with his father, a dentist, to visit a patient on a social call in the man's Blue Ridge Mountain castle. The man, whom Vollmer's father refers to as "the Nazi"--though the man might or might not actually sympathize with the National Socialist agenda of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s--has built an actual castle in southwestern North Carolina and gathered a unique collection of World War II German Army artifacts. The visit is eerie; Vollmer can't bring himself to ask any of the questions that might discover whether the man is simply an odd collector or is an actual Nazi sympathizer, and the man is coolly noncommittal during the entire visit. Vollmer then gets a surprise when the man opens a ledger with the names of hundreds of SS officers and places his finger on one name: Vollmer.
"He didn't say, 'See, you do have Nazis in your family.' He just tapped the name with his finger. It was as if he wanted this--the fact that people with the same surname as ours had served under Hitler--to sink in on its own."
August 14, 2014
This collection is dominated by the kind of personal narrative that is very close to memoir. Creative non-fiction. Something like that anyway. Some of them are beautiful and moving, while others are more humorous. All of them are shadowed by various gradations of darkness. I wished there'd been one without that shadow. Still, all of the essays in this collection are beautifully written and compelling.
March 5, 2016
As an author, Cheryl Strayed tends toward the personal, as her memoir and Dear Sugar attest. It turns out that her taste in essays is also for the personal and the transformative, Although I can imagine that some readers may not like the heavy emphasis on personal essays, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Virtually all the essays held my attention in a vise; only a few were less than intriguing to me, and I'm again incredibly happy to have read this installment of the essays.
June 9, 2017
The Best American Essays series is one of the best things that is happening in the already exciting area of creative nonfiction. The 2013 issue edited by Cheryl Strayed didn’t disappoint. I am thinking of purchasing all, or most, of the volumes I don’t yet own. In this issue it was wonderful to read yet another essay of the writer I first discovered through the 2006 anthology – Poe Ballantine. In this volume, I discovered another writer with equally darkly powerful voice (and just bought his book) – J.D. Daniels. Other highlights were – Zadie Smith’s complex, philosophical essay on what she calls ‘attunement’ (it’s mostly about the mechanisms by which we connect to artworks), heartbreaking essays about lost girls by Vanessa Veselka and Angela Morales, and another devastating essay about the death of a child by Michelle Mirsky. Overall, there were only about two essays which I haven’t finished. What a great collection.
December 23, 2021
Didn’t read all the way thru but enjoyed bits and pieces. Thanks Mr Ziegler
August 11, 2016
This annual released on a Tuesday. Two days later, Alice Munro was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2013 as a "master of the contemporary short story." Her essay "Night" appears in this volume.
Out of the 26 essays in this volume, six noteworthy ones, including two about music:
4 stars
— Some Notes on Attunement, about the writer's hate then love for Joni Mitchell's music — an attunement. The girl hated Joni, the woman loves her.
— The Exhibit Will Be So Marked, about the mix CDs that the writer solicited then received for his 33rd birthday, including a mysterious microcassette tape. Musings on mix tapes and mix CDs.
— What Happens in Hell, about a limo ride that fishtailed then rolled over four times. The driver, an expert on hell, almost got his passenger killed. The passenger, the author, became a character in one of his own stories.
— Field Notes on Hair, deals with the writer's stroke, then radiation, then hair loss.
2.5 stars
— I'm Jumping Off the Bridge, by a bookseller at Powell's Books, Portland.
— Triage, by an army surgeon who described that difficult process in combat.
Notable Essays of 2012 lists over 400 others.
Out of the 26 essays in this volume, six noteworthy ones, including two about music:
4 stars
— Some Notes on Attunement, about the writer's hate then love for Joni Mitchell's music — an attunement. The girl hated Joni, the woman loves her.
— The Exhibit Will Be So Marked, about the mix CDs that the writer solicited then received for his 33rd birthday, including a mysterious microcassette tape. Musings on mix tapes and mix CDs.
— What Happens in Hell, about a limo ride that fishtailed then rolled over four times. The driver, an expert on hell, almost got his passenger killed. The passenger, the author, became a character in one of his own stories.
— Field Notes on Hair, deals with the writer's stroke, then radiation, then hair loss.
2.5 stars
— I'm Jumping Off the Bridge, by a bookseller at Powell's Books, Portland.
— Triage, by an army surgeon who described that difficult process in combat.
Notable Essays of 2012 lists over 400 others.
August 9, 2016
Last year I was very disappointed in this series--the essays seemed to be almost exclusively reviews, which is not representative of what a good essay can do. Similar to last year's editor, Cheryl Strayed tends towards a certain form of the essay, the personal essay. Luckily for Strayed, the personal essay does have a wide breadth of approaches and I was much more taken with this edition. Strayed mentions that she chose essays that transported her, and these personal essays do. They are poignant and funny, researched and reflective. The publications that Strayed drew from were a bit more representative of the wide variety of essay venues that exist than last year's edition. The essayists seem to be more diverse in age, cultural background, and gender, than previous years. Definitely a good read and a great way to explore the personal essay. I still would like to see an editor pull together a collection of personal essays, and reviews, and thought pieces, and lyrical rumination, and experimental work. Let 2014 be that year!
August 15, 2024
I am not a steady reader of this series as I am of the stories, but like the stories, this series varies considerably according the the tastes and interests of the guest editor. Most of these were new to me, though I'd read Zadie Smith's essay about discovering Joni Mitchell and a couple of others. Several were tedious and annoying and hard to finish. One redeemed itself at the end, but not in the way the author may have realized. I found many essays about death, dead children and parents and despair and terrible, ridiculous life choices. I suppose that makes sense. But there is also a good essay about the circus (you have no idea how rare that is) and the last essay in the collection is, all by itself, worth the price.
September 4, 2014
This series is a great way to stay linked to the best essay writing in America. This particular volume is full of really good pieces. My favorite is "The Book of Knowledge" by Steve Harvey, "Highway of Lost Girls" by Vanessa Veselka and Night by Alice Munroe.
October 9, 2013
Very readable. Interesting how each made me think of something in strayed's work and appreciate how her preferences worked when choosing pieces for the book.
March 6, 2015
"The Art of Being Born" was a particularly good read
August 20, 2021
Good:
"Night" by Alice Munro
"Highway of Lost Girls" by Vanesa Veleska
"My Father's Women" by Mako Yoshikawa
"Confessions of an Ex-Mormon" by Walter Kirn
"Pigeons" by Eileen Pollack
"The Exhibit Will Be So Marked" by Ander Monson
"When They Let Them Bleed" by Tod Goldberg
"Field Notes on Hair" by Vicki Weiqi Yang
"Channel B" by Megan Stielstra
"Epilogue: Deadkidistan" by Michelle Mirsky
"The Book of Knowledge" by Steven Harvey
Less Good:
"Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel" by Poe Ballentine
"Sometimes a Romantic Notion" by Richard Schmitt
"Keeper of the Flame" by Matthew Vollmer
"Breeds of America" by William Melvin Kelley
"I'm Jumping Off the Bridge" by Kevin Sampsell
"Triage" by Jon Kerstetter
"The Art of Being Born" by Marcia Aldrich
"What Happens in Hell" by Charles Baxter
"The Girls in My Town" by Angela Morales
"Some Notes on Attunement" by Zadie Smith
"His Last Game" by Brian Doyle
"Letter From Majorca" by J.D. Daniels
"Ghost Estates" by John Jeremiah Sullivain
"A Little Bit of Fun Before He Died" by Dagoberto Gilb
"El Camino Doloroso" by David Searcy
"Night" by Alice Munro
"Highway of Lost Girls" by Vanesa Veleska
"My Father's Women" by Mako Yoshikawa
"Confessions of an Ex-Mormon" by Walter Kirn
"Pigeons" by Eileen Pollack
"The Exhibit Will Be So Marked" by Ander Monson
"When They Let Them Bleed" by Tod Goldberg
"Field Notes on Hair" by Vicki Weiqi Yang
"Channel B" by Megan Stielstra
"Epilogue: Deadkidistan" by Michelle Mirsky
"The Book of Knowledge" by Steven Harvey
Less Good:
"Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel" by Poe Ballentine
"Sometimes a Romantic Notion" by Richard Schmitt
"Keeper of the Flame" by Matthew Vollmer
"Breeds of America" by William Melvin Kelley
"I'm Jumping Off the Bridge" by Kevin Sampsell
"Triage" by Jon Kerstetter
"The Art of Being Born" by Marcia Aldrich
"What Happens in Hell" by Charles Baxter
"The Girls in My Town" by Angela Morales
"Some Notes on Attunement" by Zadie Smith
"His Last Game" by Brian Doyle
"Letter From Majorca" by J.D. Daniels
"Ghost Estates" by John Jeremiah Sullivain
"A Little Bit of Fun Before He Died" by Dagoberto Gilb
"El Camino Doloroso" by David Searcy
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 19, 2019
Great collection of essays, much better than some other editions in this series, especially the 2015 one.
Highlights include "Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel" by Poe Ballantine, an essay about his formative years and how he got by when he was first starting out, "Triage" by Jon Kerstetter, an essay dealing with the author's time spent as a combat medic and how he had to decide sometimes which soldiers got care and could live and who was too injured and would have to die, and "The Book of Knowledge" by Steven Harvey, the bookend to the collection where Harvey explores his mother's suicide and his lack of attention to it until the age of sixty, diving deep into his personal family history and discovering why she did the thing she did.
Overall, awesome collection with very few duds, and I would say this was the best year of the series that I've read so far (2013-2015).
Highlights include "Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel" by Poe Ballantine, an essay about his formative years and how he got by when he was first starting out, "Triage" by Jon Kerstetter, an essay dealing with the author's time spent as a combat medic and how he had to decide sometimes which soldiers got care and could live and who was too injured and would have to die, and "The Book of Knowledge" by Steven Harvey, the bookend to the collection where Harvey explores his mother's suicide and his lack of attention to it until the age of sixty, diving deep into his personal family history and discovering why she did the thing she did.
Overall, awesome collection with very few duds, and I would say this was the best year of the series that I've read so far (2013-2015).
July 2, 2017
This was my first time reading a 'Best American Essays' collection. I chose this one as Cheryl Strayed was the editor, despite disliking her book 'Wild'.
I really enjoyed reading this, and found most of the essays fascinating, moving, or an interesting experience into culture. I particularly enjoyed: Sometimes a Romantic Notion, Highway of Lost Girls, Keeper of the Flame, My Father's Women, Triage, Pigeons, Channel B, and The Book of Knowledge. I personally did not enjoy: Some Notes on Attunement, and A Little Bit of Fun Before He Died.
Overall, most of the essays really grabbed my attention and I loved this good read. I will definitely be reading future volumes of this (and going back through previous ones too).
I really enjoyed reading this, and found most of the essays fascinating, moving, or an interesting experience into culture. I particularly enjoyed: Sometimes a Romantic Notion, Highway of Lost Girls, Keeper of the Flame, My Father's Women, Triage, Pigeons, Channel B, and The Book of Knowledge. I personally did not enjoy: Some Notes on Attunement, and A Little Bit of Fun Before He Died.
Overall, most of the essays really grabbed my attention and I loved this good read. I will definitely be reading future volumes of this (and going back through previous ones too).
March 10, 2017
I'm really surprised that this is my first time reading any collection of Best American Essays. I picked this as my starting attempt to try to clear all the anthologies I have in my possession.
It's daunting but hey, goals!
As always, I'll point out the essays I found interesting. A number of essays started off good but fishtailed as they went along---sometimes you don't really need to go in five different directions or wax poetic about everything to make your point.
Out of 26 essays, I found the following 9 especially interesting/moving/intriguing:
Sometimes a Romantic Notion by Richard Schmitt
Schmitt analyzes (and busts) the over-romanticized myth of "running away to join the circus" by telling his own tale of joining a circus. Evokes a bygone time.
Highway of Lost Girls by Vanessa Veselka
When hitchhiking was the norm decades ago it was easy for girls to be exploited or killed, and Veselka recounts and investigates a close call she had with a suspected serial killer.
Breeds of America by William Melvin Kelley
What happens when you don't conform to other people's assumptions about "your" race?
Triage by Jon Kerstetter
A doctor examines the meaning of triage in relation to the death of a soldier in Iraq.
The Girls in My Town by Angela Morales
Morales reflects on her life in central California in relation to others similar, but not so similar, to herself.
Letter from Majorca by J. D. Daniels
A bit of a ramble but has one of the funniest lines: "...Jeff, a bartender who was blind in one eye and drunk in the other..."
Channel B by Megan Stielstra
Short but affecting essay by a mother who unexpectedly finds catharsis because of a baby monitor fluke.
Epilogue: Deadkidistan by Michelle Mirsky
A mother learns how to deal with the unthinkable, as well other people's reactions to her reactions.
The Book of Knowledge by Steven Harvey
After decades, a son revisits the actions of his mother through her letters and a kid's encyclopedia set. A little overlong and overwritten, but worth the read.
It's daunting but hey, goals!
As always, I'll point out the essays I found interesting. A number of essays started off good but fishtailed as they went along---sometimes you don't really need to go in five different directions or wax poetic about everything to make your point.
Out of 26 essays, I found the following 9 especially interesting/moving/intriguing:
Sometimes a Romantic Notion by Richard Schmitt
Schmitt analyzes (and busts) the over-romanticized myth of "running away to join the circus" by telling his own tale of joining a circus. Evokes a bygone time.
Highway of Lost Girls by Vanessa Veselka
When hitchhiking was the norm decades ago it was easy for girls to be exploited or killed, and Veselka recounts and investigates a close call she had with a suspected serial killer.
Breeds of America by William Melvin Kelley
What happens when you don't conform to other people's assumptions about "your" race?
Triage by Jon Kerstetter
A doctor examines the meaning of triage in relation to the death of a soldier in Iraq.
The Girls in My Town by Angela Morales
Morales reflects on her life in central California in relation to others similar, but not so similar, to herself.
Letter from Majorca by J. D. Daniels
A bit of a ramble but has one of the funniest lines: "...Jeff, a bartender who was blind in one eye and drunk in the other..."
Channel B by Megan Stielstra
Short but affecting essay by a mother who unexpectedly finds catharsis because of a baby monitor fluke.
Epilogue: Deadkidistan by Michelle Mirsky
A mother learns how to deal with the unthinkable, as well other people's reactions to her reactions.
The Book of Knowledge by Steven Harvey
After decades, a son revisits the actions of his mother through her letters and a kid's encyclopedia set. A little overlong and overwritten, but worth the read.
September 30, 2022
This collection of short non-fiction didn’t impress me as much as the 1991 and 1999 volumes from this series. I was somewhat puzzled as to why several of the essays herein were considered “best” of 2013. There were, however, seven essays in this volume which made its reading well worthwhile:
“Keeper of the Flame” by Matthew Vollmer;
“Breeds of America” by William Melvin Kelley;
“I’m Jumping Off the Bridge” by Kevin Sampsell;
“Pigeons” by Eileen Pollack;
“The Girls in My Town” by Angela Morales;
“His Last Game” by Brian Doyle;
and “The Book of Knowledge” by Steven Harvey.
“Keeper of the Flame” by Matthew Vollmer;
“Breeds of America” by William Melvin Kelley;
“I’m Jumping Off the Bridge” by Kevin Sampsell;
“Pigeons” by Eileen Pollack;
“The Girls in My Town” by Angela Morales;
“His Last Game” by Brian Doyle;
and “The Book of Knowledge” by Steven Harvey.
August 24, 2019
By and large this was quite an interesting set of essays. Remarkable essays, diverse stories, thrilling tales. My standout essay from the bunch is “My Father’s Women.” Others that deserve a mention include “Sometimes a Romantic Notion, When They Let them Bleed, The Art of Being Born, The Book of Knowledge, Highway of Lost Girls” among other titles. This collection truly has some of the best essays.
December 1, 2017
After starting out the series with Danticat as the editor, I was disappointed with the selections in this series. I had read Strayed before and realized that I only connect with Strayed from that one book and moment in her life.
January 17, 2018
This is the second of this collection that I have read. It was an awesome reading experience like the other one. Quoting Cheryl Strayed, when reading a great essay, “the reader should feel the ground shift” and most of these did not fail. I cannot get enough of reading essays these days.
March 16, 2020
Favorite essays:
“Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel” - Poe Ballantine
“Highway of Lost Girls”- Vanessa Veselka
“I’m Jumping Off the Bridge” - Kevin Sampsell
“When They Let Them Bleed” - Tod Goldberg
“Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel” - Poe Ballantine
“Highway of Lost Girls”- Vanessa Veselka
“I’m Jumping Off the Bridge” - Kevin Sampsell
“When They Let Them Bleed” - Tod Goldberg
October 27, 2021
A collection of American essays.
It's a mix bag. Some of them impacted me more than others. Found most of them of interest which is a good thing. Worth picking up if you are looking to read essays.
It's a mix bag. Some of them impacted me more than others. Found most of them of interest which is a good thing. Worth picking up if you are looking to read essays.
December 5, 2021
I read this book for the ATY 2021 Reading Challenge Week 33: a collection of short stories, essays, or poetry.
Essays allow the author to write their opinion of any subject. How interesting! Pre-Covid viewpoints also made it very interesting.
Essays allow the author to write their opinion of any subject. How interesting! Pre-Covid viewpoints also made it very interesting.
October 23, 2017
Always love the essays in these books. The last one in this one was AMAZING!
August 6, 2018
This collection of American essays from 2013 reveals the true essence of the American people in its rawness, and ends with unforgettable morals that stay with the reader.
December 31, 2018
Another excellent collection of essays. 2015's offering was great and this one is even better.
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