Over at the L.A. Times, David Ulin argues that the art of the contemporary essay is “in a renaissance.”
He praises the recent essay collections of Tom Bissell and Mark Dery, adding them to the ranks of books like Jonathan Lethem’s The Ecstasy of Influence, Geoff Dyer’s Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, Dubravka Ugresic’s Karaoke Culture, Jonathan Franzen’s Farther Away, and John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead, all of which walk “an exhilarating tightrope between the personal and the critical, their most fundamental inquiries those the authors make about themselves.”
One response
Am I the only one disturbed that–as far as I can tell–all of the references in this (linked) article are to pieces written by men? I’ve spent much of my professional life fighting the stereotype that women write about “feelings” and homey stuff while men write about the “real” things (and I don’t want to reinforce the dichotomy here). But wtf?
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