Roundtable: The History of the Essay

Roundtable The History of the Essay This issue's roundtable discussion is a transcription of the highUghts of a broadcast conversation conducted by MfltonJ. Rosenberg on theWGN radio program Extension 720 onJune 30, 1999. Three guests participated with him in a discussion on the history of the personal essay. Joseph Epstein, who teaches at Northwestern University, wasformerly the editor of The American Scholar, where he wrote under the name "Aristides"; in addition to several collections ofhis own personal and literary essays, he edited The Best American Essays 1993 and The Norton Book of Personal Essays. Thomas Kaminski, who teaches in the English Department at Loyola University of Chicago, wroteThe Early Career of Samuel Johnson. Robert L. RootJr., aprofessor ofEnglish at Central Michigan University and co-editor of The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction, recently published E. B. White: The Emergence of an Essayist. Listeners to the program were invited to submit comments and questions by either telephone or e-mail. Christopher Vallance, theprogram's executive director, who had originally proposed the topic and assembled the participants, recorded the program and provided the tapefrom which this roundtable was transcribed and edited by Robert Root. Rosenberg: We are tonight going to be talking about the art of essay. Gentlemen, I chaUenge any or aU of you to give me the etymology of the word "essay." Kaminski: It's the French word "essayer," is it not? To try, to attempt, and it's Montaigne's term, if I'm not mistaken. Rosenberg: True, but most French verbs derive from Latin verbs. "Essayer" comes from the Latin "exagium," which comes from "exagere," which means 219 220Fourth Genre to weigh, to sift and winnow. Montaigne is the first significant modern or pre-modern essayist, is he not? Root: He's the father of the essay. As so many people have observed, it aU begins with him and the idea of the personal voice, the idea of thinking about your ideas, what you feel, what your experience has been. It evolves over the course ofmany ofhis essays. He started out doing something fairly academic , quoting liberaUy from his reading, and eventuaUy he got more and more personal. Rosenberg: So personal that he ends up talking about his toilet habits, among other things, doesn't he? Epstein: Yes, he does. He had the stone, kidney stones. Imagine what that must have been like in the sixteenth century. But to go back a moment, not only was he the father ofthe essay, as Bob says, but he's reaUy the Shakespeare of it. I'm not sure anyone's done it better. Rosenberg: He stül hasn't been matched, you think?We need to estabUsh this instantly by reading a few paragraphs. Do we have any Montaigne to quote? Epstein: Yes, we do. I brought the first paragraphs of the great book, The Essays. In it he introduces the I, which he invented in literature—he invented and mastered at one stroke the tactical, delicate use of it. It starts: "This book was written in good faith, reader. It warns you from the outset that in it I have set myself no goal but a domestic and private one. I have had no thought ofserving either you or my own glory. My powers are inadequate for such a purpose. I have dedicated it to the private convenience of my relatives and friends, so that when they have lost me (as soon they must), they may recover here some features ofmy habits and temperament, and by this means keep the knowledge they have had of me more complete and alive. If I had written to seek the world's favor, I should have bedecked myself better, and should present myself in a studied posture. I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice ; for it is myself that I portray. My defects wiU here be read to the Ufe, and also my natural form, as far as respect for the pubUc has allowed. Had I been placed among those nations which are said to live stiU in the sweet freedom of nature's first laws, I assure you...