The essayist has to follow a certain intellectual pattern. The novelist has the advantage of using fantasy, of being subjective.
I knew how to write like an academic, so I knew how to write academic papers and essays and things. But the things that are great for an essay are unbearable in narrative writing.
The law of the innermost form of the essay is heresy
In the world of opinion writing, there's something called the 'to be sure' paragraph. A sort of rhetorical antibiotic, it seeks to defend against critics by injecting a tiny bit of counter-argument before moving on with the main point.
I think the pattern of my essays is, A funny thing happened to me on my way through Finnegans Wake.
Writing the perfect paper is a lot like a military operation. It takes discipline, foresight, research, strategy, and, if done right, ends in total victory.
I try to write an essay every time I speak.
One can imagine a world without essays. It would be a little poorer, of course, like a world without chess, but one could live in it.
I never liked writing concluding paragraphs to papers - where you repeat what you've already said with phrases like 'In summation', and 'To conclude'.
Roy Blount is so funny, and he sounds like he's just talking, and the next thing you know he has tossed off an essay as elegant and intricately structured as a birdsong. His ear for American speech is better than anybody's.
