At Large and at Small: Familiar Essays

by Anne Fadiman

  We tried again and again, back and forth between the worlds. Wet, dry, cold, hot, turbulent, still.

  At first I assumed that we would save him. He would lie on the bank and the sun would warm him while we administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. If we couldn’t get him out, we would hold him upright in the river; maybe he could still breathe. But the Green River was flowing at nearly three thousand cubic feet—about ninety tons—per second. At that rate, water can wrap a canoe around a boulder like tinfoil. Water can uproot a tree. Water can squeeze the air out of a boy’s lungs, undo knots, drag off a life jacket, lever a boot so tightly into the riverbed that even if we had had ropes—the ropes that were in the packs that were in the trucks—we never could have budged him.

  We kept going in, not because we had any hope of saving Gary after the first ten minutes but because we needed to save face. It would have been humiliating if the instructors had come around the bend and found us sitting in the sagebrush, a docile row of five with no hypothermia and no skinned knees. Eventually, they did come. The boats had been delayed because one of them had nearly capsized, and the instructors had made the students stop and practice backferrying until they learned not to lean upstream. Even though Gary had already drowned, the instructors did all the same things we had done, more competently but no more effectively, because they, too, would have been humiliated if they hadn’t skinned their knees. Men in wetsuits, belayed with ropes, pried the body out the next morning.

  Twenty-seven years have passed. My life seems too fast now, so obstructions bother me less than they once did. I am no longer in a hurry to see what is around the next bend. I find myself wanting to backferry, to hover midstream, suspended. If I could do that, I might avoid many things: harsh words, foolish decisions, moments of inattention, regrets that wash over me, like water.

  SOURCES

  I am an enthusiastic amateur, not a scholar. My bookshelves and file cabinets resemble the nest of a magpie that collects shiny objects, with diamond rings tucked next to tinfoil candy wrappers. Though the bibliography that follows contains some valuable standard works and some obscure gems, along with some oddities, I’m sure it leaves out many helpful books that I would have known about, and made good use of, if I were an expert on any of the topics below.

  PREFACE

  The best recent works on the personal essay—and its subset, the familiar essay—are, unsurprisingly, by two of its leading practitioners, Joseph Epstein and Phillip Lopate. Those interested in the history of the essay may enjoy the online roundtable, a transcription of a radio conversation with four participants, including Epstein. Readers who share my enthusiasm for the work of Lamb and Hazlitt may be charmed, as I was, by the elegance with which Marie Hamilton Law captures the essential characteristics of the familiar essay.

  Bryan, William Frank, and Ronald S. Crane. The English Familiar Essay. Boston: Atheneum Press, 1916.

  Epstein, Joseph. “The Personal Essay: A Form of Discovery.” In The Norton Book of Personal Essays, ed. Joseph Epstein. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.

  Epstein, Joseph, et al. “Roundtable: The History of the Essay.” Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, www.chsbs.cmich.edu/Robert_Root/background/Roundtable.html.

  Fadiman, Clifton. “A Gentle Dirge for the Familiar Essay.” In Party of One. Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1955.

  ———. Introduction. In Party of Twenty. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963. Hazlitt, William. Table-Talk: Essays on Men and Manners. London: Grant Richards, 1903.

  Law, Marie Hamilton. “The English Familiar Essay in the Early Nineteenth Century.” Ph.D. diss. University of Pennsylvania, 1934. Reprint, New York: Russell and Russell, 1965.

  Lopate, Phillip. Introduction. In The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. New York: Anchor Books, 1995.

  Robertson, Stuart. Familiar Essays. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1930.

  COLLECTING NATURE

  Both my essay and my childhood owe a great deal to Alexander B. Klots’s splendid field guide to butterflies. I am also particularly fond of—and drew many details from—David Elliston Allen’s charming and learned book on amateur natural history in Britain.

  Though the Darwin biography by Adrian Desmond and James Moore is admirable, those who know Darwin only from secondary sources should try the Voyage of the Beagle—and then move on to Darwin’s captivating contemporaries, Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates.

  Brian Boyd’s two-volume biography of Nabokov is thoughtful and comprehensive. Readers of my essay already know that I consider the sixth chapter of Nabokov’s Speak, Memory the holy grail of butterfly literature.

  ON BUTTERFLIES

  Antram, Charles B. The Collecting and Preservation of Butterflies and Moths, with Practical Hints for Collecting in the Field. Lymington, U.K.: Charles T. King, 1951.

  Harman, Ian. Collecting Butterflies and Moths. London: Williams and Norgate, 1950.

  Ingpen, Abel. Instructions for Collecting, Rearing, and Preserving British & Foreign Insects. London: William Smith, 1843.

  Klots, Alexander B. A Field Guide to the Butterflies of North America, East of the Great Plains. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951.

  Packard, A. S., Jr. How to Collect and Observe Insects. Reprint from The Maine Scientific Survey for 1862. Augusta, Maine: Kennebec Journal, 1863.

  ON COLLECTING IN GENERAL

  Elsner, John, and Roger Cardinal, eds. The Cultures of Collecting. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994.

  Muensterberger, Werner. Collecting: An Unruly Passion. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

  Pearce, Susan M. On Collecting: An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition. London: Routledge, 1995.

  Theroux, Alexander. “Odd Collections.” The Yale Review 86:1 (January 1998).

  ON NATURAL HISTORY, ESPECIALLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY

  Allen, David Elliston. The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

  Bates, Henry Walter. The Naturalist on the River Amazons. Intro. Alex Shoumatoff. New York: Penguin, 1989.

  Kastner, Joseph. A Species of Eternity. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.

  Ritvo, Harriet. The Platypus and the Mermaid: And Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997.

  Wallace, Alfred Russel. Island Life: Or, the Phenomena and Causes of Insular Faunas and Floras. London: Macmillan, 1902.

  ———. The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise, A Narrative of Travel, with Studies of Man and Nature. London: Macmillan, 1886.

  BY AND ABOUT CHARLES DARWIN

  Darwin, Charles. “Recollections of the Development of My Mind and Character.” In Frederick William Roe, ed., Victorian Prose. New York: Ronald Press, 1947.

  ———. Voyage of the Beagle. London: Penguin, 1989.

  Clark, Ronald W. The Survival of Charles Darwin. New York: Random House, 1984.

  Desmond, Adrian, and James Moore. Darwin. London: Michael Joseph, 1991.

  Huxley, Francis. “Charles Darwin: Life and Habit,” parts 1 and 2. The American Scholar 28:4 (Autumn 1959) and 29:1 (Winter 1959/60).

  Marks, Richard Lee. Three Men of the Beagle. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991.

  BY AND ABOUT VLADIMIR NABOKOV

  Appel, Alfred, Jr. Notes to The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated. New York: Vintage, 1991.

  Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.

  ———. Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

  Boyd, Brian, and Kurt Johnson. “Nabokov, Scientist.” Natural History, July–August 1999.

  Coates, Steve. “Nabokov’s Work, on Butterflies, Stands the Test of Time.” New York Times, May 27, 1997.

  Field, Andrew. Nabokov: His Life in Art. Boston: Little, Brown, 1967.

  Johnson, Kurt, and Steve Coates. Nabokov’s
Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius. Cambridge, Mass.: Zoland, 1999.

  Johnson, Kurt, G. Warren Whitaker, and Zsolt Bálint. “Nabokov as Lepidopterist: An Informed Appraisal.” Nabokov Studies 3 (1996).

  Nabokov, Vladimir. “The Aurelian.” In Nabokov’s Dozen: A Collection of Thirteen Stories. New York: Avon, 1973.

  ———. “Christmas.” In Details of a Sunset and Other Stories. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.

  ———. Pale Fire. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1962.

  ———. Speak, Memory. New York: Pyramid, 1968.

  Pick, Nancy. “Vladimir Nabokov’s Genitalia Cabinet.” In The Rarest of the Rare. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

  MISCELLANEOUS SOURCES

  Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. London: Penguin, 1985.

  Fowles, John. The Collector. Boston: Little, Brown, 1997.

  Jones, James H. Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.

  THE UNFUZZY LAMB

  Winifred F. Courtney’s biography of the young Lamb was especially useful. For contemporary perspectives, see the Hazlitt essay and the brief memoir by Thomas Noon Talfourd at the end of Lamb’s Literary Sketches and Letters, both of which vividly capture the weekly soirées Charles and Mary Lamb held in their lodgings at No. 4 Inner Temple Lane. Chapter 16 of Leigh Hunt’s autobiography also contains a graceful tribute to Lamb.

  BY CHARLES LAMB

  Lamb, Charles. Charles Lamb & the Lloyds: Comprising Newly-Discovered Letters of Charles Lamb, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Lloyds, Etc., ed. E. V. Lucas. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1899.

  ———. The Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Charles Lamb, ed. R. H. Shepherd. Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske, and Company. Undated.

  ———. The Essays of Elia. London: Edward Moxon and Company, 1867.

  ———. Everybody’s Lamb: Being a Selection from the Essays of Elia, the Letters and the Miscellaneous Prose of Charles Lamb, ed. A. C. Ward. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1933.

  ———. Literary Sketches and Letters: Being the Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, ed. Thomas Noon Talfourd. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1849.

  ———. The Life and Works of Charles Lamb. Vol. 1, The Letters of Charles Lamb, ed. Alfred Ainger. New York: International Publishing Company. Undated.

  ———. The Life and Works of Charles Lamb.Vol. 2, Poems, Plays and Miscellaneous Essays, ed. Alfred Ainger. New York: International Publishing Company. Undated.

  ———. The Works of Charles Lamb in Five Volumes. New York: A. C. Armstrong and Son, 1885.

  ON CHARLES LAMB

  Barnett, George L. Charles Lamb. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976.

  Burton, Sarah. A Double Life: A Biography of Charles and Mary Lamb. London: Penguin, 2004.

  Courtney, Winifred F. Young Charles Lamb, 1775–1802. New York: New York University Press, 1982.

  Cruse, Amy. “A Supper at Charles Lamb’s.” In Bouillabaisse for Bibliophiles, ed. William Targ. Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1955.

  Frank, Robert. Don’t Call Me Gentle Charles! Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1976.

  Hazlitt, William. “On the Conversation of Authors.” In The Essays of William Hazlitt, ed. Catherine MacDonald MacLean. New York: Coward-McCann, 1950.

  Hunt, Leigh. The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, ed. J. E. Morpurgo. London: Cresset, 1949.

  Johnson, Edith Christina. “Lamb and Coleridge.” The American Scholar 6:2 (Spring 1937).

  Prance, Claude A. Companion to Charles Lamb: A Guide to People and Places, 1760–1847. London: Mansell, 1983.

  ICE CREAM

  I could not have written the section on the history of ice cream without Elizabeth David’s exemplary book.

  A note for the pedantic: Several sources—including myself, in an earlier version of this essay—have erroneously cited 1700, not 1744, as the year of the first recorded ice-cream consumption in America. Thomas Bladen, one of Maryland’s colonial governors, served it to a group of Virginia commissioners on their way to a meeting with the Iroquois nation. Bladen was born in 1698 and is unlikely to have been a dinner host at age two.

  Burke, A. D. Practical Ice Cream Making. Milwaukee: Olsen, 1947. David, Elizabeth. Harvest of the Cold Months: The Social History of Ice and Ices. London: Michael Joseph, 1994.

  Dickson, Paul. The Great American Ice Cream Book. New York: Atheneum, 1973.

  “Flying Fortresses Double as Ice-Cream Freezers.” New York Times, March 13, 1943.

  Geeslin, Campbell, ed. The Nobel Prize Annual 1991. New York: International Management Group, 1992.

  Gilbert, Susan. “Headaches Come in Icy Flavors.” New York Times, May 14, 1997.

  Grimes, William. “In the Ice Cream Follies, Anything Goes.” New York Times, August 5, 1998.

  Herszenhorn, David M. “A Town’s Last Word to the Ice Cream Man: Quiet!” New York Times, March 4, 1998.

  Keeney, Philip G. “Ice Cream Manufacture.” Course 102, Correspondence Courses in Agriculture, Family Living and Community Development. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University.

  McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1984.

  Nieves, Evelyn. “Savoring Legal Success, an Ice Cream Vendor Calls the Tune.” New York Times, May 7, 1998.

  Skow, John. “They All Scream for It.” Time, August 10, 1981.

  NIGHT OWL

  Among the literary sources, my favorite is the Dickens essay. For atmosphere and eclecticism, the indispensable night author is A. Alvarez, who writes about everything from hypnagogic hallucinations to an all-night “ride-along” in a New York City patrol car. Although his book does not concentrate primarily on literary topics, he writes so beautifully that I believe Night itself is likely to be remembered as a work of literature.

  LITERARY SOURCES

  Alvarez, A. Night. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995.

  Carroll, Lewis. “Pillow Problems.” In Night Walks: A Bedside Companion, ed. Joyce Carol Oates. Princeton: Ontario Review Press, 1982.

  Dickens, Charles. “Night Walks.” In The Uncommercial Traveller. New York: Macmillan, 1896.

  Dreifus, Claudia. “A Conversation with John McPhee.” New York Times, November 17, 1998.

  Fadiman, Clifton. “It’s a Puzzlement.” In Worth a Jot (unpublished manuscript).

  Fitzgerald, F. Scott. “Sleeping and Waking.” In The Literary Insomniac, ed. Elyse Cheney and Wendy Hubbert. New York: Doubleday, 1996.

  Jackson, Holbrook. “Specimen Days.” In Bookman’s Pleasure. New York: Farrar, Straus and Company, 1947.

  Lamb, Charles. “Popular Fallacies: That We Should Lie Down with the Lamb.” In The Essays of Elia. London: Edward Moxon and Company, 1867.

  Proulx, E. Annie. “Waking Up.” In The Literary Insomniac, ed. Elyse Cheney and Wendy Hubbert. New York: Doubleday, 1996.

  Spender, Stephen. Interview. In Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Sixth Series, ed. George Plimpton. New York: Viking, 1984.

  Thomson, James. “The City of Dreadful Night.” In Poetry of the Victorian Period, ed. Jerome Hamilton Buckley and George Benjamin Woods. Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1965.

  Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself.” In Whitman, ed. Robert Creeley. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1973.

  Young, Edward. Night Thoughts, or, the Complaint and the Consolation. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 1975.

  MISCELLANEOUS SOURCES

  Blakeslee, Sandra. “Biologists Close In on the ‘Tick-Tock’ Genes.” New York Times, December 15, 1998.

  Goode, Erica. “New Hope for the Losers in the Battle to Stay Awake.” New York Times, November 3, 1998.

  Lamberg, Lynne. Bodyrhythms: Chronobiology and Peak Performance. New York: William Morrow, 1994.

  Melbin, Murray. Night as Frontier: Colonizing the World After Dark. New York: Free Press, 1987.

  Miller, Louise. Careers for Night Owls & Other Insomniacs. Chicago: VGM Career Horizons, 1995.<
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  Moore-Ede, Martin C., Frank M. Sulzman, and Charles A. Fuller. The Clocks That Time Us: Physiology of the Circadian Timing System. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982.

  PROCRUSTES AND

  THE CULTURE WARS

  This essay is loosely adapted from talks given to the Phi Beta Kappa chapters of Yale College, Harvard College, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and Gettysburg College. Part of it focuses on Ralph Waldo Emerson because the year I delivered the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Oration happened to be the 160th anniversary of Emerson’s 1837 Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Oration, “The American Scholar.”

  ON THE CULTURE WARS AND THE LITERARY CANON

  Anson, J. Cameron. Letter. Harper’s Magazine, April 1996.

  Arendt, Hannah. “The Crisis in Culture: Its Social and Its Political Significance.” In Between Past and Future. New York: Penguin, 1993.

  Arnold, Matthew. “Wordsworth.” In Criticism: The Major Texts, ed. Walter Jackson Bate. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1952.

  Denby, David. Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.

  Kaplan, Justin. “Selling ‘Huck Finn’ Down the River.” New York Times Book Review, March 10, 1996.