The Best American Essays 2012

Starred review from September 10, 2012
A creature from an alternative universe arriving in the United States in 2012 wanting to understand what is on the American mind should rush to the nearest bookstore and buy a copy of this distinguished anthology, now in its 27th year. The 24 selected by New York Times columnist Brooks arrive after publication in a wide range of journals and magazines. Highlights include Lauren Slater’s “Killing My Body to Save My Mind,” a brave and disquieting discussion about the extreme side-effects of various psychopharmaceuticals on her body. The volume’s range of styles include the sharp and coolly intellectual (Alan Lightman’s “The Accidental Universe”) and the acutely personal

September 15, 2012
Well-told pieces on a narrow range of subjects define the latest iteration of the Best American Essays franchise. This year's batch of selections tends toward informative--sometimes wonkish--works of reportage and memoir. That should come as no surprise given that proudly egghead-ish New York Times columnist Brooks is doing the selecting. (As ever, series editor Robert Atwan performs the initial cull.) Brooks makes his intentions clear in his introduction, writing that "I want to be improved by the things I read"--much of which includes writing on medicine and health care: Eight of the 25 selections deal with the topic in some matter--nine if you include Jonathan Franzen's "Farther Away," featuring some musings on his friend David Foster Wallace's depression and suicide. Some writers attack the subject in dry expository prose, as in Marcia Angell's "The Crazy State of Psychiatry," which condemns the overdiagnosis of mood disorders. More often, though, the topic gets a personal touch, as in Miah Arnold's "You Owe Me," an essay on teaching writing to children in a cancer ward, or David J. Lawless' brutal recollection of his wife's descent into Alzheimer's, "My Father/My Husband," masterfully told almost entirely in dialogue. America's education system is another pressure point for Brooks, who picks a clutch of pieces on the subject, the best being Garret Keizer's straight-talking memoir of his time teaching poor elementary school kids, "Getting Schooled." The downside of Brooks' improvement agenda means humor is in short supply, notwithstanding Sandra Tsing Loh's raucous meditation on menopause, "The Bitch Is Back." Provocation and invention are rare too, though Mark Doty's beautifully turned "Insatiable" savvily merges the friendship between Walt Whitman and Bram Stoker with the author's own obsessions and fetishes. Other notable contributors include Francine Prose, Joseph Epstein, Malcolm Gladwell and Alan Lightman. A trove of fine writing on big issues, albeit at the expense of more playful exemplars of the contemporary essay.

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November 15, 2012

Why do you read? In his essay "Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?" Mark Edmundson reveals that he reads for one reason: "In reading, I continue to look for one thing--to be influenced, to learn something new, to be thrown off my course and onto another, better way." It's such gems that make it important to read this book. As with the other books in the series, the editor read hundreds of pieces and selected the most outstanding, essays of literary achievement that show an "awareness of craft and forcefulness of thought." In "My Father/My Husband," David J. Lawless (president emeritus, St. Mary's Univ., Calgary, Canada), details the daily, repetitive conversations he had with his wife who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and dementia. Miah Arnold (Sweet Land of Bigamy) explains why she continues to work at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Not to be missed is "The Bitch is Back," by Sandra Tsing Loh (Mother on Fire), a funny essay on menopause and women of a certain age. VERDICT This is required reading. The 24 selections here do in fact throw the reader off course.--Joyce Sparrow, Kenneth City, FL

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