*Ten Favorites from The Oxford Book of Essays
27 February 2022
The Haunted Mind, 1835, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
On the experience of waking in the night, the accompanying thoughts, and going back to sleep. A very nice evocation of the varying dimensions of the hypnagogic state.
“In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your griefs may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Haunted Mind, 1835,
The Acorn-Gatherer, 1884, Richard Jefferies (1848-1887)
More of a short story than an essay; striking in both its use of imagery and movement, and in the malign and macabre nature of its storyline. I particularly liked the opening figure of the rooks in the oak, and their acorn gathering and interaction.
“The happiest creatures in the world are the rooks at the acorns. It is not only the eating of them, but the finding: the fluttering up there and hopping from branch to branch, the sidling out to the extreme end of the bough, and the inward chuckling when a friend lets his acorn drop tip-tap from bough to bough. ”
—Richard Jefferies, The Acorn-Gatherer, 1884, Richard Jefferies
Cordova, 1898, Arthur Symons (1865-1945)
A beautiful short evocation of Cordova. I found it notable for its artfully constructed long sentences, which often, implicitly or explicitly, trace paths or lines of connection through the city that weave together people and places and streets and buildings. Also notable was the occasional sentence that provided a burst of color – amongst all the other sensory qualities.
“Seen from the further end of the Moorish bridge by the Calahorra, where the road starts to Seville, Cordova is a long brown line between the red river and the purple hills, an irregular, ruinous line, following the windings of the river, and rising up to the yellow battlements and great middle bulk of the Cathedral.”
– Arthur Symons, Cordova, 1898
A Clergyman, 1918, Sir Max Beerbohm (1872-1956)
A beautifully constructed essay which envisions the mortifying experience of a young clergyman who, in his attempt to contribute to a conversation with Samuel Johnson, and was devastated by a crushing retort. The essay is notable for the author’s facility in creating, entirely from his imagination, a compelling account of the situation and its precursors and aftermath, and of doing so in a way that showed compassion for both the clergyman and Johnson.
“I see the curate’s frame quiver with sudden impulse, and his mouth fly open, and — no, I can’t bear it, I shut my eyes and ears. But audible, even so, is something shrill, followed by something thunderous. Presently I re-open my eyes. The crimson has not yet faded from the young face yonder, and slowly down either cheek falls a glistening tear.”
– Sir Max Beerbohm, A Clergyman, 1918
The Death of the Moth,” 1925, Virginia Woolf (1882 -1941)
A transcendent essay that moves easily between a view of a numinous arcadian landscape and a moth fluttering against the window pane, the moth being an exemplar the life-energy that flows through the world.
“The rooks too were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring round the tree tops until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air; which, after a few moments sank slowly down upon the trees until every twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it. ”
— Virginia Woolf , The Death of the Moth,” 1925
“It was if someone had taken tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zigzagging to show us the true nature of life. Thus displayed one could not get over the strangeness of it.”
— Virginia Woolf , The Death of the Moth,” 1925
Insouciance, 1928, D H Lawrence (1885-1930)
This explores the discordance between direct appreciation of sensuous reality and intellectual immersion in abstract problems. Moreover, it does this in an amusing manner, through the figure of a little old lady, determined to engage the author in a discussion of international relations.
“A hot, still afternoon! the lake shining rather glassy away below, the mountains rather sulky, the greeness very green, all a little silent and lurid, and two mowers mowing with scythes, downhill just near: slush! slush! sound the scythe-strokes. ”
[…]
“Before I know where I am, the little white haired lady has swept me off my balcony, away from the glassy lake, the veiled mountains, the two men mowing, and the cherry trees, away into the troubled ether of international politics.”
— D H Lawrence, Insouciance, 1928
The Toy Farm, 1927, J. B. Priestly (1894-1984)
A vivid and whimsical description of a child’s toy farm, segueing into a consideration of the attraction of toys and play and imagination.
“Here is the bright epitome, not of the country we can find where the tram lines come to an end and the street lights fade out, but of the country that has always existed in our imagination, so clean, trim, lavishly colored.”
—J. B. Priestly, The Toy Farm, 1927
The Snout, 1957, Loren Eiseley (1907 – 1977)
A fanciful account of the conditions and manner in which life moved from water to land, that also makes the point that evolution continues all around us. It is marked by a synecdochic use of humble terms – “ooze,” “snout” – for abstract evolutionary processes and results, and by its vivid portrayal of how unpleasant evolution — the “stealthy advance made in suffocation and terror” — was for the ‘snouts’ involved. The marshaling of words with unpleasant connotations – reek, corruption , strangled gasping, fetid, oily, foul, hobbled, stumps, heavy, swamps, monstrous, forbidden, fermenting, ooze, desperation, noisome, uncomfortable, oxygen-starved, rotting, dripping – makes the description impressive and powerful.
“There are two ways to seek the doorway: in the swamps of the inland waterways and along the tide flats of the estuaries where rivers come to the sea. By those two pathways life came ashore. It was not the magnificent march through the breakers and up the cliffs that we fondly imagine. It was a stealthy advance made in suffocation and terror, amidst the leaching bite of chemical discomfort. It was made by the failures of the sea.”
—Loren Eiseley, The Snout, 1957
The Crisp at the Crossroads, 1970, Reyner Banham (1922 – 1998)
Reyner Banham, a noted Architectural critic, demonstrates that one can apply one’s skill at analyzing the aesthetics of form and the systems and context in which it is situated to seemingly disparate constructions: in this case, the humble crisp. From the sensory qualities of crisps, to their packaging, to their social uses, Banham provides a brilliant examination of how the crisp is changing in response to evolving technologies and social needs.
“The sense that there is no diet-busting substance in crisps is reinforced by their performance in the mouth. Apply tooth-pressure and you and you get deafening action; bite again and there is nothing left. It’s a food that vanishes in the mouth so, I mean, it can’t be fattening, can it? It certainly isn’t satisfying in any normal food sense; the satisfactions of crisps, over and above the sting of flavor, are audio-masticatory — lots of response for little substance.
— Reyner Banham, The Crisp at the Crossroads, 1970
“The pack is analogous in its performance. […] What with the crisps rattling about inside, and the pack crackling and rustling outside, you got an audio signal distinctive enough to be picked up by childish ears at 200 or 300 yards.”
— Reyner Banham, The Crisp at the Crossroads, 1970
La Paz, 1963. Jan Morris (1926 – 2020)
A wonderful description of La Paz; rich and beautiful phrasing that captures the energy of the place. And an interesting ending that ought to, but does not, subvert what came before.
“For sixty miles the road plods on through this monotony and then it falls over a precipice. Suddenly it crosses the lip of the high plateau and tumbles helter-skelter, lickety-split into a chasm: and as you slither down the horse-shoe bends you see in the ravine below you, secreted in a fold of the massif, the city of La Paz.” — Jan Morris, 1963
— Jan Morris, La Paz, 1963
“But here’s an odd thing. When you come to La Paz from the north over the escarpment, it seems a very prodigy among cities; but if you drive away from it towards Lilmani and the south, looking back over your shoulder as you cross the last ridge, why, all the magic has drained from it, all the color has faded, all that taut neurosis seems an illusion, and it looks like some drab old mining camp, sluttish among the tailings.”
— Jan Morris, La Paz, 1963
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