Essay #1 – Draft #1
Everyone has different tastes – in music, in art, in food, and in architecture, to name just a few. Until this course, I’ve never thought much about my tastes in terms of “personal essays,” essays written by writers about their personal lives, events, and people they are close to. But, after reading ten personal essays from The Writer’s Presence, I now have more of a sense of the wide range of personal essays and of some of the more well-known writers. I have also come up with what I consider to be some “qualities” of good personal writing.
After reading these ten essays, the first thing I’d offer as a characteristic of good personal writing is the author’s sense of humor. In some of these essays, the author’s sense of humor was readily apparent and very enjoyable. James Thurber’s satirical portrait of his “University Days” provides an excellent example; his sense of humor is apparent in everything from his innocence in enraging his biology professor to his sketch of the agricultural student who wanted to be a journalist but couldn’t type and had no sense of an interesting story. Nora Ephron’s essay, “A Few Words About Breasts,” provides further examples of an enjoyable sense of humor. In one sentence, she writes: “I leaned over, with the fleeting hope that my breasts would miraculously fall out of my body and into the puffs. Nothing” (119). Her hopes for developing breasts has led her to naïve and humorous hopes that they will someday magically appear. In addition, once they don’t appear to be developing, she decides to buy three padded bras, but she explains to us that “every single one of them [contained] different-sized breasts . . . nice perky . . . medium-sized slightly pointy . . . [and] knockers, true knockers” (121). The humor is clearly that she bought three different sized padded bras, and I admire her sense of humor and self that she can actually admit this to us.
It is important to note that authors can and should also have a sense of humor when dealing with topics that are more serious than the absurdity of college or the adolescent desire for breasts. Zora Neale Hurston’s essay, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” is a reflective essay on her self image as an African American, a serious subject, both to her and to us, especially since it was written in 1928, a time well before the Civil Rights movement. Even though Hurston mentions the seriousness of slavery and the slavery in her heritage, she is also able to say that “The operation [the Civil War] was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you” (152). This sense of humor doesn’t simply make light of a serious topic; instead, her sense of humor allows the reader to see that Hurston is positive about herself and her future, in spite of having a history which doesn’t seem to allow for hope. Another writer who also uses a sense of humor combined with a serious topic is another African American writer, Maya Angelou. In her essay, “’What’s Your Name, Girl?’” Angelou writes of her confrontation with a white woman who decided to change Angelou’s name from Margaret (it was actually Marguerite) to Mary, a very serious topic for African Americans. In spite of the gravity of the situation, Angelou is able to describe this woman, Mrs. Cullinan, in a humorous way: “The doctor had taken out all her lady organs. . . . so if Mrs. Cullinan was walking around without these essentials, it explained why she drank alcohol out of unmarked bottles. She was keeping herself embalmed” (75). Obviously, the sense of humor is used to poke fun at the object of her scorn, but it is also enjoyable for the reader as well, particularly later when Angelou writes, “I smiled at her. Poor thing. No organs and couldn’t even pronounce my name correctly” (76). Again, Mrs. Cullinan has done an atrocious thing, in Angelou’s eyes, and in her sense of humor Angelou takes her revenge.
In addition to exhibiting a good sense of humor on the part of the writer, a good personal essay should also contain vivid detail, and every essay we read could be used to provide examples for this important characteristic. However, E.B. White’s essay, “Once More to the Lake,” probably has the best examples. In describing the lake, White writes: “A school of minnows swam by, each minnow with its small individual shadow, doubling the attendance, so clear and sharp in the sunlight” (283). A simple sentence of 23 words, yet I can easily picture myself looking into the water with the sun shining over me, seeing minnows swim by and seeing their shadows cast on the sandy bottom of the lake, giving the appearance of more minnows. Later, White brilliantly describes a thunderstorm: “Then the kettle drum, then the snare, then the bass drum and cymbals, the crackling light against the dark, and the gods grinning and licking their chops in the hills” (286). The comparison of the different sounds of nature to the different sounds of a percussion section in a band gives a strong sense of uniquely different sounds, all joining together to produce something beautiful. The details in David Mamet’s essay, “The Rake: A Few Scenes from My Childhood,” are also quite vivid, which serve to clearly illustrate the abuse suffered by his sister at the hands of their stepfather. In one scene, their stepfather “turned around and say her and picked up a hairbrush from a dresser that he passed as he walked toward her, and he hit her in the face and slammed the door on her” (195). In another scene, his sister saw their stepfather “throw open her door, bat the book out of her hands, and pick her up and throw her against the far wall, where she struck the back of her neck on the shelf” (196). Some readers could have done without this vivid detail, but it is necessary to illustrate the physical abuse his sister had to suffer through. In spite of its unpleasantness, it provides much more information than “My stepfather hit her” or “He threw her against a wall.” The beauty of White’s details is enjoyable, but the horror of Mamet’s details also deepens my appreciation of his essay.
Finally, a good personal essay should serve to shed new light on an old topic, or should present a common topic in an unusual way, or should lead us to think of current topics in a broader perspective. To turn to Thurber once again, most people who attend college will have their share of absurd experiences, but what makes Thurber’s essay stand out is the satire that he uses in addition to the simply absurd. We read of the economics professor who went to great lengths to ensure the star football player would remain eligible to play, and we think of present-day examples of scholastic dishonesty on the part of athletes and athletic programs. Thurber tells us of studying “the tactics of the Civil War even though the World War was going on at the time” (269), and we think of the present gulf war and wonder if the tactics our soldiers studied are enough to carry them through combat. White also puts a spin on a typical “vacation essay,” leading us away from a simply reminiscence of the good old days to a meditation on his relationship with his son and his own mortality. Even though this seems to be common sense, I’d argue that most people simply don’t think of things like this until they read an essay, and then they can put themselves in White’s place. At one point, White writes: “It was the arrival of this fly that convinced me beyond any doubt that everything was as it always had been, that the years were a mirage and there had been no years” (283). To me, this is the ultimate characteristic of a good personal essay: its writer should make us think, he or she should take a common experience and carry it further, present it to us in a new way, one which forces us to make our way through it and then make our own connections in our own lives.
A good personal essay will be written by someone with a keen sense of humor, by someone unafraid to poke fun at himself, at herself, or at others, by someone unafraid to point to the lighthearted in the midst of the serious. A good personal essay will be written with vivid detail; the writer should force us to see what she or he has seen and to experience what he or she has experienced. Finally, a good personal essay will shed new light on old topics, or it should make us think about things in new ways. What’s the point of telling us something we already know? We should be able to laugh, see, and learn something from a good personal essay.
(1507 words, 6 paragraphs, Arial 11-point font)