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The Best American Essays 2012 (2012)

by Robert Atwan(Favorite Author)

3.83 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0547840098 (ISBN13: 9780547840093)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Mariner Books

review 1: Favorites in this edition: Marcia Angell's "Crazy State of Psychiatry," one of a handful of notable essays of late which have sought to explain the problems with our for-profit health care system; Mark Doty's "Insatiable," which tempers confession with literary investigation; Garrett Keizer's "Getting Schooled," parts of which I read out loud to professors in my life; and Josa Antonio Vargas "Outlaw," which I hope to use in upcoming classes due to what it reveals about immigration, memoir, and working in and against "the system."
review 2: I love reading essays. I enjoy seeing someone investigate a subject without taking the oblique approach of fiction. Not to disparage being oblique--I do a lot of that in my own work--but I like to see how other people approac... moreh directly, more by way of reason than intuition. Watch someone else do something I can't, like hit a high C, or run the 100 in under 10 seconds. When I see someone excel at something with which I'm familiar, there's an appreciation of the achievement, a sympathetic thrill; but when I see someone excel at something that is beyond my experience, I'm amazed. I'm shown something entirely new--new information, a new way to think about things, a new way to turn language into an experience. Every year for Christmas, I ask someone for the current year's collection. less

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