The Methodically Chanced Thought

Reading critical essays of the essay form has been a little uncomfortable to me in some ways. It seems the notion is a little bit ironic, especially since we have placed particular emphasis on personal essays rather than on formal essays, to write an almost academic paper about the theory, structure and history of the essay. R. Lane Kauffmann claims that theessay itself is an "unmethodical method," and to a certain extent I think he's right. It's quite a task to define what makes an essay an essay, especially as methods and structures have become more and more experimental.

For Montaigne, Kauffmann claims, "the purpose of method was to facilitate knowledge by reducing all subjects to the bare essentials...." He wrote with one eye looking outward, the other inwarrd, to apply his observations to himself and enlightenment. Supposedly, the modern essayist has progressed to a method that is less personal, that is more critical and based in commentary. While this idea absolutely does not apply to all modern essayists-- I think it cannot-- Kauffmann says the method of contemporary essayists "is no longer 'co-extensive with life.' He needs other works, other lives, to give meaning to his own." This is an opinion to which I take serious umbrage, even in the critical sense.

It's rather an offensive idea to me as a fledgling writer to be faces with the implication that my attempts at essaying, or my academic papers for school for that matter, are infused with meaning only because the lives of others. I think that there is much to be learned from other writers, particularly reputable ones who have apparently stood the proverbial "test of time." To me, this is not to say my methods, even as a student still learning, are less credible because they are not purposefully influenced by the works of others.

Kauffmann goes on to site Auden's opinion that,

Today tastes have changed. We can no longer derive any pleasure from the kind of essay which is a fantasia upon whatever chance thoughts may come into the essayists head.

I'm not sure that this is actually true. In fact, it confuses me. While some of our class members have shown obvious distaste for "old fashioned" writers and styles, the fact that essays continue to be studied, and continue to be written, though the tribe is small, should be an indication that someone derives pleasure from "chance thoughts." I fail to see what a personal essay is except the result of chanced thought. On an even more basic level, doesn't blogging tend to reflect the "chanced thoughts" of its blogger (since I am of the opinion that blogs are a contemporary forum for widespread essaying, though bloggers are mostly unaware-- but that is somewhat unrelated to this point). I would argue, not only does pleasure continue to be derived from essays of chanced thought, "chance thought essays" are a method in their own right.

But who am I to argue, since I'm apparently only giving meaning to my own work through Kauffmann's.

The plight of the long-winded essayist and the questioning of his right to be such

In class once, we had a somewhat passionate discussion questioning the detail to which essayists do and should delve into the subjects of their essays. While the "point" of the debate was not exactly whether an essayist has the right so speak with such thorough authority to support their claims, the exhaustive exploration of a theme was the coren--responses with varying levels of agreement were expressed.

While I can sympathize with the idea that an essayist may sometimes prove self-indulgent, I am incline to argue that such potentially comprehensive examination is inherent to the genre; it is to be expected, and while personal preferences certainly contribute to the enjoyment of an essay, lengthy discourse and even redundancy does not negate the validity of an essay, nor the skill of the essayist. If given the same topic, an essayist and an academic writer will approach the deconstruction of the subject completely differently, from an informal and a formal view respectively. Should they each produce a produce a paper 15 pages long, eyebrows might be raised that the academic's paper was not, in fact, lengthier, while the essayist (according, apparently, to some in our class) may be regarded as long-winded and perhaps egocentric.

Since we have agreed that an essay is something personal and conversational, it would seem natural that essays can, and will, be as long as the essayist cares to continue talking about a thing. As Arthur Benson notes in his The Art of the Essayist,

The essay is the reverie, the frame of mind in which a man says,...'Says I to myself, says I.'

Frankly, though an essayist should aspire to write for an audience of some kind, why shouldn't he write on and on about a meditation as long as he has something new to say? OF course we would hope that a good essayist would show some signs of self-restraint, lest his reflection become an obvious platform merely to hear his own thoughts, but if he continues to discover new and interesting facets of a subject, why restrict him from continued enlightenment for the sake of a few less pages? Benson also wrote that

the appeal of the essayist to the world at large will depend upon the extent to which he experiences some common emotion, sees it in all its bearings, catches the salient features of the scene, and records it in vivid and impressive speech.

In order to do so, a few extra paragraphs may be required--and so what? All too often I think we demand a kind of instant gratification, rather than letting ourselves meander through the thoughts of someone else, happy to take in all the twists and turns and contemplations that may lead to deeper meaning.

The good essayist is the man who makes the reader say: 'Well, I have often thought all those things, but I never discerned before any connection between them, nor got so far as to put them into words.'

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm sure my unbridled thoughts are not so neatly conveyed as even a lengthy essay may present, and I am more than happy to let an essayist talk on, as long as he has something valuable to say.