Essay Assay

A few days back, I was sent a link to an essay by Neal Stephenson, (author of Anathem, The Baroque cycle, Cryptonomicon and other novels).  It is In the Beginning was the Command Line, and is an extended, detailed disquisition on operating systems and other stuff.  Like universes and so forth. 

And it kind of reminded me of The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond from around 1999 onwards (I think - it evolves).

Then, yesterday, while reading an entertaining book about typefaces and fonts ("Just My Type: A Book About Fonts", by Simon Garfield, 2010),  I came acros a strong recommendation for Eric Gill's "Essay on Typography" from 1931.

All of this made me want to essay some thoughts about Essays. 

It seems obvious from at least two of the examples above that the form is far from dead.  Rather, it has acquired a huge new lease of life via the Internet - but also some recent striking newspaper essays impressed me.   For exmple. a Simon Schama article for the NYT springs to mind from around six years ago, on radical American history and how it might act as a key for challenging right-wing responses to 9/11.

Essays are not just non-fiction books.  They - ideally - should be shorter, and more focused.  So neither On The Origin Of The Species nor The Principia Mathematica counts an essay.  For me, On Fairy Stories just scrapes under the wire.

And the latter also hints at another aspect of essays - they are usually colloquial, and accessible.  They may even, like On Fairy Stories, have begun as talks or lectures.  But typically not political speeches.  Repackaging the Gettysburg Address does not make it an essay.

And the really great essays may often be annoying.  They get under the skin, and you disagree with them -while at the same time being carried along by the prose.

They have influence - they live on, people remember them and cite them, continue to laugh along with them -or build scientific or other academic disciplines based upon them

So here then is a short, random selection of essays (loosely defined, some other short nonfiction is in it) that seem to me reasonably seminal, or interesting or something.  As a general note, I will admit to a gneral European rather than American bias.  For which no apologies. And for no readily discernable reason, they are arranged in date order.

Commentariolus, Copernicus, Nicholas, 1514.  This is his short outline/precis of what later became "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium." (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres).  In other words one of the most significant scientific works of the renaissance.

Of Friendship, Bacon, Francis, 1625. Bacon wrote many esays, of course, but this is one of the best.

Areopagitica, Milton, John, 1644.  On the freedon of speech - Milton's great anti-censorship polemic.

The Education of Women, Defoe, Daniel, 1719.  He's in favour, of course.

A Modest Proposal For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being A Burden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public, Swift, Jonathan, 1729.   OK so who hasn't read this?  Really?  Stop reading this blog now and go and read this essay at once.  It's essential.  Now read it again.  Good, isn't it?

Advice on the Choice of a Mistress, Franklin, Benjamin, 1745.  Just because it is funny...

And now it's time for Hazlitt - so much loved and eulogised by the late, great Michael Foot.  Many to choose from, but I limited the selection to three:

On Corporate Bodies, William Hazlitt, c.1821.  Marvellous splenetic rant. "Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill"

On Going a Journey, William Hazlitt, c.1821.  This is the witty, calm, poised iconoclastic Hazlitt grabbing a subject and dealing with it at length.

On The Pleasure Of Hating, William Hazlitt, c.1826.  For my own part, as I once said, I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about. 

The Chemical History of a Candle, Faraday, Michael, 1860.  I can't really claim this as an essay in all honesty, but what the hell..  Probably Faraday's most famous Christmas lecture series.

On The Decay of the Art Of Lying, Twain, Mark, 1882.   Lying nees to be done properly. No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted.

The Soul of Man Under Socialism, Wilde, Oscar, 1891.  Paradoxical, libertarian, artistic, witty, human and annoying in equal measures.

De Profundis, Wilde, Oscar, 1897.  Really, a letter to Douglas written from Reading jail.

Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown, Woolf, Virginia, 1923. A beautiful, great modernist blast against Arnold Bennet and the "realist" novel.

On Being the Right Size, Haldane, J.B.S, 1928.  A beautiful short piece and the origin of the notion  that a horse splashes.

A Hanging, Orwell, George, 1931.  Classic reportage and feeling. 

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Benjamin, Walter, 1936.  Still fresh and relevant, despite the fact that we are several generations of technology on.

Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, Tolkien, J.R.R., 1936.  It could be argued that this was the first piece of writing that really began to understand and sympathise with Beowulf.
 
If Hazlitt has to be limited to just three essays then the same must apply to Orwell. But it is hard, very hard.

Wells, Hitler and the World State, Orwell, George, 1941.  Timely, precise, astonishing.

Decline of the English Murder, Orwell, George, 1946.  Famous and rightly so.

On Fairy Stories, Tolkien, J.R.R., 1947.  Could be said to have been the piece that kicked off a whole industry of thinking and thought about fantasy and the fantastic.

There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, Feynman, Richard P., 1959.  The founding text, I think, of nanotechnology.

Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, Derrida, Jacques, 1966.  The real secret joy of this piece is just how impenetrable it is!

The Death of the Author, Barthes, Roland, 1967.  Arguifying against the establishment ways of seeing art and culture - and winning...

Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, Sokal, Alan D., 1994.  And finally, the only possible, and wholly necessary, corrective to the Derrida and his brethren.