Sunday, January 14, 2007

This is a bit complicated ...

... Dave Lull sends along this link: Thoughts About Essays...Well, Sort Of, which links to this: Best American Essays 2006--I Don't Think So - and which also tells a story about one of the essayists cited, Sam Pickering.
The post about the essays seems about right to me. But regarding the Pickering tale, Dave alerts me that Pickering himself doesn't remember saying quite what he is quoted as saying. So,as Dave puts it, caveat lector.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous4:04 PM

    Very interesting article -- I, too, read the BAE every year and just buy it (or get a review copy of it) as a matter of course. Usually, there's a fair sprinkling of fine, scientific writing in addition to the personal essays about love and loss and death. Sounds like Slater has simply chosen the ones that touched her the most and *all* the ones she chose were about death. Whoops. And obviously the series editor noticed it, hence Slater's comment in her intro., acknowledging the uniformity of the subject.

    Still, I've been enjoying Slater's prosal forays into mental illness and truth/lies/fiction for years and if there's one thing I know about her, it's that she has a tremendous sense of humor. Something tells me these will be lighthearted essays about death -- if that's not an oxymoron. Slater's doubtless stamping her own black-humor trademark on the BAE by this selection.....

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