We’re moving from writing about the self to writing about the world — from memoir to reportage. Your assigned reading was Kathleen Jamie’s Pathologies, a long piece that explores our bodies, the idea of nature, grief, and curiosity — among other things.
What I want you to do is look through the piece again, and then post one line — a sentence or a few words — in the chat from the piece that particularly struck you. Quote it directly, without comment.
When we’ve all done this, we’re going to write for 6 minutes in response to this piece. Remember, this is creative nonfiction. So what we write should be true, and a story, and well-told!
A Little History of the Literary Essay
Jamie is famous for her literary essays. These are very different from scholarly or academic essays, although they share the same source. To understand what is meant by an esasy in literary terms, let’s look at a bit of history. The term ‘essay’ in English comes from the French, Essais. And the great originator of the essay form in French was the philosopher and writer Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592).
Montaigne’s collected essays fill a substantial volume. And you might think that a bunch of essays written in the sixteenth century would be a bit of a slog to read through, but nothing could be further from the truth. Montaigne was one of those writers who was interested in everything. He wrote about prognostication and death and cowardice. He wrote about the new world, and took a sceptical view of French culture as it might be seen by the indigenous peoples of America. He wrote about friendship and idleness. He wrote about sleep and dreams. He wrote about the sense of smell, and the nature of prayer, and inequality, and malingering, and the art of conversation. And in all these topics, he managed to blend his wide reading, his awareness of the world around him, and his own personal experience. And these essays are marked by all kinds of sudden shifts of perspective, or flashes of insight (famously, Montaigne asked “When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?”).
Montaigne chose the name “Essays” (Essais, in French) for this collection of writings. The term comes from a root in Latin meaning “to weigh” or “to test.” So Montaigne was weighing up or testing ideas. These were not writings where he was setting out his final views on things. They were experimental forms of writing. They were ways of trying out ideas. In English, the idea of writing Essays was taken up by the philosopher Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626), himself an admirer of Montaigne.
But if we see an essay as a piece of writing that tries out or tests ideas, that is inherently experimental, then we can see that as a form of writing, it doesn’t just go back to Montaigne. Instead, writing like this has existed in many different literary cultures - from Rome to China, Korea and 10th century Japan, where Sei Shōnagon wrote her famous collection of essays, The Pillow Book.
An essay is simply a piece of writing where the writer is trying out ideas, and paying attention to the world, in an attempt to make sense of life, or of one aspect of their life. An essay is a laboratory for testing out new ideas.
The Host’s Eye, The Guest’s Eye
In some ways, the essay is a bridging form, in that it moves between subjective and objective poles. Let’s use a metaphor to make sense of this. In Chinese the word for “subjective” is zhuguan, which means “the view of the host” (this term originally entered Chinese from Japanese, where it was coined as a way of translating terms from Western philosophical traditions). Conversely, the word for “objective” is keguan, which means “the view of the guest.”
This is an interesting way to think about objectivity and subjectivity. When it comes to writing about our own subjective experience, it is as if we are showing the reader around the place where we live. We are hosting them, inviting them in, asking them to make themselves at home. And there’s an element of being in control here, but the host’s-eye view has disadvantages. The sheer familiarity of your own life can make you overlook things. Being constantly in control can mean that you are never surprised by anything.
The opposite is true of the guest’s-eye view. As a guest, you don’t have quite the same control that you have as a host: the world you find yourself in is not fully your own world. For this reason, as a guest you may find yourself to be more alert, more vigilant, paying closer attention to things. There’s a Kazakh proverb that says ‘A guest sits briefly, but notices a lot.’ As a guest somewhere, you need to be on your guard, more fully attentive to the world you find yourself in.
Who has the most complete or accurate view? Host or guest? The answer is neither. The complete story is found by putting together both the subjective and the objective views, the view of the host and the view of the guest.
So what does all this have to do with writing creative nonfiction? This metaphor is useful, because it can help us navigate our way to more interesting writing. When are we playing the host in our writing, taking charge of things, showing the reader around? And when are we playing the guest, sitting attentively and noticing a lot?
In the Streets of Sofia
Here’s an example from a class that I was teaching in the city of Sofia in Bulgaria. I asked students to make notes about things that annoyed them: because where there is irritation there is energy, and where there is energy, then you can write. One student from Italy had an idea, but was worried it was too trivial to write about. What annoyed her about Sofia, she said, was that the pavements were so uneven it was hard to navigate the streets: there were always potholes, and weird bits of street furniture in the way. So she walked around town staring at her feet all day. So that was the objective, external pole of her essay.
Then we asked her why this was so annoying, and she said, ‘Well, my grandmother always told me that a woman should walk down the street with pride. She should have her back straight, and look straight ahead.’ In this way, she made a connection between walking the streets of Sofia, and her memories of her grandmother. And here she had the seeds of a beautiful essay: about walking down a street in Sofia; about her memories of her grandmother; but also about gender and pride and self-worth, about differences between cultures and generations. Here there was a rich cauldron of themes to explore. And how better to explore them than by writing an essay?
Subjectively, the writer was inviting us into her world, the world of her grandmother, her experience in the streets of Sofia. But objectively, she was talking about everything from urban architecture to gender and how gender expectations are learned as a part of how we hold our body, how we present ourselves in everyday life.
Sketching out an essay
Let’s try to put together some ideas for a possible essay. We can start with the subjective pole. This could be:
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Something you experience daily
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Something that annoys you
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A recurrent memory
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Something you can’t stop thinking about
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Something you are always puzzled by
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Something your mind always catches on.
Write this thing down. This is what you want to explore through your essay. Make a few notes about this thing and why it preoccupies you. Take about five minutes.
Now pair up with a writer friend, and talk about:
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What this concern or preoccupation is (this is the ‘objective’ pole of your essay).
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Why it matters to you and how this concern or preoccupation is reflected in your everyday life, or in the life of your community (this is the ‘subjective’ pole)
Homework
For your homework, do the following.
Give your essay a title, and post to the discussion board, using this title to start. Then write notes on:
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If I was writing an academic essay on this topic (being objective) what would I say?
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If I was sitting in a teashop / café telling my friends stories about this topic, what would I say?
We’ll discuss your notes next time.