Accessible Essays

After that deep dive into philosophy on the last post, we need to come back up for air. So, I thought I would do that by talking about a few writers who write extremely accessible essays. In simple terms, this means easy to read and understand. However, after being an academic for over two decades, I find it difficult to use language that normal people can understand.

You may have heard of Robert Fulghum's All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things . It first came out over three decades ago and is still relevant and continues to sell today. In addition, if you like it, he has written several follow up collections. The beauty of this book is that Fulghum manages to find comfortable simplicity in the agonizing complexity of life and in doing so provides perspectives that we need to be reminded of. In addition, as an aspiring writer his folksy accessible style makes you believe that you could have written those essays just as well. I have to acknowledge that Fulghum has a gift and what he does is a lot more difficult than it may seem on the surface. Nonetheless, anything that emboldens you to sit down and write something is a good thing. Pick an essay from one of Fulghum's books, rewrite it from your own perspective or in your own voice and you are on your way.

If you enjoyed Fulghum's essays and want to continue in that direction, you can try something by Dinty W. Moore. Yes, when I first heard that name, I thought of the beef stew too. However, I have since discovered that both the author and the stew derived their names from a 1920's cartoon character. Nonetheless, Moore has written a couple of accessible collections of essays for people who want to write essays. They are The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction and Crafting The Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Non-Fiction .

At the risk of going off the deep end again with philosophical observations, I have to point out a couple of phrases in the title of Moore's book and tie them in with the previous post. First, we have the phrase "personal essay" which acknowledges that there is no objective reality, only difference subjective impressions of it. I express my experience or reactions. You express your experience or reactions. Hopefully, there is some overlap. Second, we have the phrase "creative nonfiction". Isn't fiction supposed to be creative and nonfiction is supposed to be objective. Not so fast. If there is no single objective reality then one might resort to more creative techniques to express a reality as they perceive or experience it.

But, fear not. I may go off the deep end from time to time, and you are welcome to ignore me when I do. But, Moore stays at a level where you can easily understand him. So, you are safe trying his works. You can also pick one of Moore's essays and rewrite it in your voice to see how that goes. And, if you are looking for more ideas for your daily writing, just Google 'personal essay prompts' and you will find more suggestions that you can possibly imagine. 

Finally, if you have gotten on a roll with these two and want to keep rolling I would suggest Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem. First of all, Joan Didion is a wonderful, deceptively accessible writer. By that I mean that her writing is easy to understand and yet there is more to it than is seen on the surface. You can read an essay once and enjoy it, then read it again and realize that there were things you missed the first time around.

The essay from which the books gets its name describes some of Didion's experiences in California during the 1960's, a time when many people found it difficult make sense out of what was going on, especially in California. In fact, a lot of people thought the world was falling apart. Perhaps it was. The title Slouching Towards Bethlehem is borrowed from a line in a poem The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats which says (heavily edited for emphasis):

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

There is an obvious religious interpretation to these lines. But, that is far from the only interpretation. Many people who lived through the 1960's felt that the world was tearing itself apart; that the center may not hold. But, wait, don't a lot of people today feel that the world is tearing itself apart; that the center many not hold? Can we learning anything from the turbulence of the 1960's that would be useful to help us understand what is going on today? What if we go back further? Weren't the 1920's turbulent as well? Did the world tear itself apart or did the center hold? Is there a pattern here? Can we use that pattern to gain some perspective?

I will leave that there and make one more point before closing. There is another book, that I know of, that also borrows its title from that poem. It is Does the Center Hold? An Introduction to Western Philosophy by Donald Palmer. It is a truly delightful and extremely accessible introductory book on Western Philosophy. But, the point I wanted to make was that these two books are connected by a hundred year old poem which suggests that the turbulence we experience is not new. It has been going on a long, long time.

There is a tried old joke about a person who groks the interconnections between everything and says "everything is connected" while blowing out a cloud of pot smoke. Whether that person is experiencing a cosmic epiphany or a cannabis rush is not for me to say. But, things are a lot more connected than most people realize. Somebody does something that influences somebody else. They in turn do something that influences yet another person. This happens in art, literature, philosophy, music and even science. In fact, it would be hard to find any creative effort where this does not occur. Digging down a little more deeply and finding connections between things often puts the world in a different, more satisfying and more meaningful perspective.