The Essay Club

Who agrees? — Essays are an under-appreciated art form. If you do, well, join the club.

But maybe you don’t. For some, the term may conjure memories of blinking cursors and brain fog. We all learned to write them and then neglected to read them.

I’ve started reading essays again, and to my surprise, I’m hooked.

The best ones are treats I didn’t know I longed for — sticky, colorful pops of thought that quickly catch, hold, and then release me back to my day. Except two things stay with me — the idea, and a relationship with the writer.

The treasure of the essay is the presence of the person writing it.

Not a short story, not an article, the essay shares a writer’s personal encounter with an idea, and challenges the reader to hold it with them. For centuries, brilliant authors, journalists, academics, and poets have stepped away from their daily craft and turned to the essay to explore their voices. To bear witness to their own transformation at the mercy of an idea.

Essay experts, Rebecca Solnit, Roxane Gay, and Jia Tolentino, grapple with mansplaining, being a feminist, and our obsession with the Internet. Greats like Toni Morrison and Mary Oliver shine a light on bias and the fading beauty of Earth’s forests. Modern wonders, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and David Sedaris, breathe new life into topics like cultural representation and the humor in the human condition. Think of each gifted writer as a tour guide, their words granting passage into the ideas we crave to explore.

Perhaps our appreciation of the essay has withered as we’ve drifted away from communities to discuss them with.

Without communities, we seldom participate in active conversation about ideas. Our friends no longer gather around tables in dorm dining halls or small seminar rooms, minds fluttering from the day’s reading. Most of us barely gather around the dinner tables in our homes without pre-selected entertainment.

Instead, we consume information in in short bursts. We share our opinions to draw out opposition or affirmation. Our minds are often too taxed to learn about ideas outside our domain. Our attention spans require short-form.

The delight of the essay is that it challenges us to hold our attention — baring insights too rich for a multi-tasking mind.

With that, I present a challenge — to meditate over essays, and engage in conversation about the ideas they bring up.

A group of us are reading essays to start conversations about ideas. I’d love you to join us.

Add your name here if you’d like to get involved in 2020. Or comment with an essay recommendation. I’ll be in touch as we experiment with a reading list, live conversations, and maybe even a podcast.

UPDATE 12/3

I’m blown away.
Within 24 hours we got responses from all over the world, including Israel, Singapore, Vietnam, Argentina, and Germany.

Here’s what you shared:

• 88% wanted to read about “Identity, psychology, and relationships.”
• 74% of you wanted to participate in live discussions or group chats.
• 68% wanted to practice writing essays, too.
• 52% shared your favorite essays
• 1 of you added that you’d like to read about Astrology ;)

Here’s the plan.
We’ll start grassroots with some Google Hangouts over the next few weeks, and formalize a reading list, community, and discussion group for 2020.

Join the first discussion this Saturday, 7 Dec, at 1pm ET; 6pm GMT.
This week, we’re reading an essay that explores our sense of self in the age of the internet. It’s called, “The I in Internet,” the first essay in Jia Tolentino’s new book, Trick Mirror. Let me know if you’d like the Hangout invite. For those of you in Asia, we’ll look for more convenient times in 2020.