Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I thought this was a pretty disappointing effort this year. Adam Gopnik's meandering, pretentious introduction is a painful reminder of just how much David Foster Wallace's brilliance, wit, and low tolerance for BS will be missed (DFW was last year's editor).
Really slim pickings this year. I'd break it down roughly as follows.
Brilliant essays:
Anthony Lane on the Leica camera;
Hugh Raffles on cricket fighting in Shanghai
Engaging:
Atul Gawande on geriatric medicine;
Emily Grosholz on necklaces
Moving personal reminiscence:
Separate essays by Patricia Brieschke and Bernard Cooper, though be warned that each documents the horrific suffering of a terminally ill child and life-partner respectively.
Personal reminiscences that were only mildly amusing:
Ariel Levy ("The lesbian bride's handbook");
David Sedaris mining his adolescence for yuks according to his standard formula (if you've read any of his previous books, you probably could have written the essay yourself).
There were also two personal reminiscences that came across as just whiny and self-indulgent.
A number of "quirky" essays just didn't succeed - the author simply failed to transmit his own enthusiasm to the reader:
Albert Goldbarth on science-fiction comics of the 1950's;
Sam Shaw on trying to attain transcendence through extreme long-distance running;
John Updike (?!) on dinosaurs (it's only my admiration for Updike as a critic that is keeping this out of the "embarrassing" category).
Three essays had a reasonable idea, but were poorly executed, marred by excessive cleverness, smugness, or implied condescension (the 'elite writing for the elite' tone):
Jonathan Lethem on plagiarism (some interesting points, buried in 30 pages of undisciplined prose);
Louis Menand ("Notable Quotables");
Ander Monson ("Solipsism" - a thin idea, pushed way too far)
Cringeworthy, embarrassing, annoying, and/or just plain stupid:
Rick Moody "On Celestial Music".
Rich Cohen on how his neighbors reacted when he grew a Hitler moustache
Joe Wenderoth on -- well, it's hard to know what it was about, actually. Something to do with a strip club; largely incoherent.
The remaining two essays, by Jamal Mahjoub and Charles Simic were inoffensive, but also completely unmemorable.
I am annoyed at Adam Gopnik for this subpar selection. He forces me to be mean in public.
Give this one a miss. 2 out of 21 home runs is pathetic. You may think I'm being unduly harsh. But there was very little joy in reading this book. Life is short. We have a right to expect more joy than is provided by this sorry collection.
Now, here's the good news. Probably right next to this volume, on the same shelf in the bookstore, you are likely to find a book called "The Best American Magazine Writing 2008". It's roughly twice the length of the Gopnik disappointment, and is introduced by Jacob Weisberg. It might cost you a few bucks more. No matter. Buy it!
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The college version of The Best American Essays, Fourth Edition, is a collection of essays for first-year composition courses, loosely arranged by broad aims of discourse, including narrative, informative, and argumentative essays. In addition to its rhetorical organization, the reader also offers flexibility for instructors who prefer a thematic or alphabetical organization. The editor introduces students to various types of essays, followed by commentary from well-known writers on such subjects as "Essayists Must Tell the Truth" and "Essays Are Not Scientific Documents."
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