Word: essay
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...Personal Narrative. Inspired by 15 years of teaching personal nonfiction writing in Master of Fine Arts (MFA) programs, Gornick skillfully combines her own insight and experience from 30 years as a writer with models of nonfiction writing from some of the best writers of the modern essay...
While Gornick does have trouble turning the critic’s eye inward, she makes up for it with in-depth, critical analysis of some of the most important personal nonfiction of the twentieth century. She splits the writings into two categories: essays, in which the narrator explores a subject through his own relation with it, and memoirs in which the narrator explores herself through some external topic. Her discussion of the writings of Oscar Wilde, Edward Hoagland, Natalia Ginzburg, James Baldwin Orwell and Lynn Darling, among others, is done with the deft hand of an experienced teacher...
Garrison Keillor's essay about his emotions as he slowly recovered from major surgery [ESSAY, Aug. 13] still has me chuckling. It was right on the mark. I had a similar experience in January, when my heart's plumbing was altered and doctors and nurses looked after me for a week. As Keillor said, a day's work for them, a revelation of human kindness for me. After three days, I was feeling fine and was as flirtatious as any 62-year-old man could be under the same circumstances--that is, until I looked in the mirror the first...
Last year, in an essay titled "Are You Happy Yet?" Delbanco noted that "phrases like 'job satisfaction' and 'personal growth'...have become part of the language, while terms like commonweal, and even citizenship--in which there lingers a residual sense of public good and private obligation--sound archaic." Serious outward pursuits such as citizenship first require a hard look within, and we're not much for what Delbanco calls "strenuous self-reflection" these days. He notes that even Billy Graham wrote a 750-page autobiography in which he says almost nothing about his inner journey to God. "Inwardness," Delbanco writes...
SCHOOL MONSTER No one really looks forward to the first day of school, but at least the Fact Monster www.factmonster.com can ease the pain. It's a funky, cartoon-style website for kids, with features like the math-themed Bug Splat game, a dinosaur quiz and a learned essay on the history of the lunch box. Oh, and it also has an almanac, an atlas, a dictionary and an encyclopedia. It's so cool that kids will forget it's educational...