Rodriguez 1 Josejuan Rodriguez ENC 3311 February 02, 2014 Major Assignment 1: The Occasional Essay There seems

to be no genre as ubiquitous as the essay. The essay can be seen in a number of different mediums: blogs, scientific journal articles, and newspapers to name a few. They can vary in length and discuss a myriad of topics. It has persevered for centuries as a major genre of writing; initially it was written by the literate elite, but over time and with improving technology that expanded to the general populace. At its core, an essay represents an idea held by its author. While arguably this is true of most any work, the essay also adheres to conventions and sub conventions that are unique to its genre and subsequent subgenres. That is not to say that the definition implies a fixed systemcertainly there are conventions that are not unique to the essay (that are vital to any genre of writing). These conventions also are not immune to a changing culture and mindset and some of these conventions may not adhere in the future. This essay will examine some of the core features of the essay as a genre, as well as an important subgenre, the occasional essay. One of the most important conventions that an essay adheres to is that it is nonfiction. With this convention comes the idea that what one writes is a story that is re-told, not imagined or embellished. Robert Atwan seems to be wholly opposed to the idea that writing an essay is like telling a story, noting that writing students in non-fiction, perhaps, need to back off a little on showing and reconsider that art of telling.(Atwan xiv) He states much of what current students write as non-fiction as being highly influenced by creative writing strategies. Phillip Lopate seems to agree with this sentiment. He writes, the nonfiction should be conscious of constructing an artefact, an artfully shaped entity,all the better. But if he means that you should try as much as possible to render everything in scenes youve

Rodriguez 2 stayed away from thoughtful analysis because its abstract then, no, I dont agree.(Lopate 5) They both admonish the idea that one should make a work of nonfiction with fiction strategies, and focus on the meat of the matterthe writers ideas, in an organized, yet engaging manner. For essays, this means that the writer explores their ideas through a sort of unadulterated stream of consciousness, another important convention of the essay. Essays are representative of the writers innermost ideasthis may be through a thesis, a dialogue, or other such form of discourse. The reason the essay encompasses such a large variety of discourse is that the essay is not restricted to a form of exposition; the essay is free to take the form that the writer wishes to mold it into. Take, for instance, Mark Twains the art of inhumation. Most of the essay is presented in the form of a dialogue between himself and a previous cohort, and the career change of the aforementioned cohort. It is only in his first, and last two paragraphs does Twain have any input other than the dialogue. The dialogue, however, stood as an example of his innermost ideainhumation. Its possible that Twain could have presented the same idea in a different form, but it seems that he found this form the most acceptable for the examination of his idea. While a dialogue-heavy work hardly seems like material for an essay, it still effectively portrays the ideas presented by its writer. It stands as an outlier, but a great example of an essay nonetheless. David Foster Wallace also takes an unorthodox technique of representing his innermost ideas in his essay, Consider the Lobster. Rather than simply stating a thesis and having his ideas flow from there, he takes readers on a journey through a lobster festival in Maine, noting sights, sounds, and in some cases little tid-bits of his opinion. After more observations, he finally comes to his dilemma, his innermost idea: should we boil lobsters alive? His arguably moral dilemma does not come into play in the essay until much later, and afterwards he begins to dissect and examine his proposed question with a true focus. While he does jump from observations of the festival to an ethical dilemma, his ethical dilemma is

Rodriguez 3 intricately tied to his observations, and a vital piece of his commentarySo then here is a question thats all but avoidable at the Worlds Largest Lobster Cooker, and may arise in kitchens across the US: Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?(Wallace 243) While giving readers an interesting lens to read from, Wallace here is able to channel his innermost thoughts and express them without straying too far from the subject matter and his chosen occasion. Both the art of inhumation and Consider the Lobster do not follow what one would imagine of an essay, and yet they examine a dilemma, a question, posed by their respective authors. The essays lack an established form and function; a very important, though complicated convention of the essay. The form and function of an essay has not remained a static property since the beginning of essay writing. In the beginning, when essays were restricted to the literate elite, essays were often written with a certain topic in mind, such as Montaignes Of Idleness and Bacons Of Praise. Early essayists examined topics such as these through their own eyes, reflecting their own thoughts and opinions on all sorts of matters. In later centuries, particularly the nineteenth century, writers employed older works to support their ideas The nineteenth century essayist could ruminate on jealousy by citing Othello and other and other relevant literary or historical works and sprinkling personal observations on human behaviour into the mix.(Atwan xi) David Brooks explains that the early-mid twentieth century was the golden age of American nonfiction, That was the moment between Victorian pomposity and modern academic professionalism.(Brooks xvii) At this time, much of the grandiose style of writing remained, but it wasnt yet ailed with the scientific and heavily academic jargon of the later essay writing era, post 1965. Topics were explored with vigour and carried a wisdom with them that, according to Brooks, was matched by very few writers since.

Rodriguez 4 The information age, as some call it, brought about the rise of scientific writingand with it jargon, terminology, and a characteristic stiffness that can became the bane of existence for educators around the United States. During this era, the essay killed the essay; it led them to pen impenetrable, jargon-laden essays for tiny academic journals that only nine people can understand, essays that, if they were written in plain prose, would seem incredibly banal because the ideas underlying them are so unimaginative. The essay hit a bad patch for a while.(Brooks xxiii) The rise of the internet has helped to curb this style of bland, dry, and unimaginative writing by providing a space where anyone is free to write at their leisure, where experts and new essay writers alike can engage and share their ideas more casually than in other mediums. The essays of each era are a reflection of the writers life experiences and cultural context and with each differing aspect of technology and education came a new style of essay. It cannot be said what will be of the essays of the future, but in the present the essay is seeing a revitalization, with people of all walks of life trying their hand at writing the essay. The essay, of course, is simply an umbrella termthere are a number of subgenres within it, all of which adhere to their own set guidelines and writing constraints. The academic essay, for example is constrained by the lack of informal language; slang and other such colloquialisms are generally frowned up in this subgenre. Academic essays also have a tendency to favour facts and statistics more than personal observations and anecdotes, though the latter is sometimes accepted, so long as they are few and far between. The journalistic essay is quite similar, though it is constrained by the tone an editor prefers, and the use of anecdotes is accepted slightly more than its academic counterpart. Subgenres tend to adhere to the standards imposed by the writers audience, though their environment (employers, professors, etc) can also impose standards as well. The subgenre that invites the most freedom when written, however, is the occasional essay.

Rodriguez 5 The occasional essay is purely a construction of the whims of its writer, and is only constrained by the limitations the writer imposes on his or her self. It can be an essay that is simply a warning to a reader, who may not fancy or even care what the author has written (Montaignes To the Reader, for example), or even an essay that begins as an observation of the Maine Lobster Festival, and ends with the ethical question of boiling live lobsters (Wallaces Consider the Lobster). The occasional essay can borrow aspects from other genres, though they dont employ any subgenres conventions in its entiretyin many respects it is the universal receiver of essay subgenres. At the same time, it is the essay at its most pure, though of course, the form and function are not static in nature and can be altered as to the writers preference. Straying away from the more abstract notions, the occasional essay stands as a writers observations into a subject, idea, or event that is relevant to either themselves or their perceived culture (although the two often intermingle). More often than not, the observations are usually of an immediate happening. Occasional essays are unique in this regard. As commentary on an aspect of a writers culture, occasional essays are kairotic in nature. The commentary is a direct and (to an extent) instantaneous response to what the writer has experienced. Revisiting Wallaces Consider the Lobster, its easy to see that he is writing in response to a cultural event, albeit because he was assigned to do so by his employer at the time, Gourmet. A more obvious example can be seen in another of Wallaces essays, The View from Mrs. Thompsons. The essay concerns itself with the events going on in his immediate vicinity during the attacks on September 11, 2001. As a response piece, Wallace chronicles some of experience during and after that traumatic eventhis occasion shaping his occasional essay. The essay has stood as a written vessel for its master, though it stands for much more than simply the ideas of a writer, with the occasional essay standing as a reflection into the human mind and thought processcapturing the essences of a writers culture, worldview,

Rodriguez 6 and context in which the writer lived. It is a snapshot, both historically and individually, and immortalizes the writer through his or her words. This snapshot can be high-brow and pompous like the essays of Frances Bacon, have an air of quirkiness as can be seen in Twains essay, or perhaps a blog post written by a passionate individual. The occasional essay builds upon the core conventions of the essay genre and combines with a kairotic response to provide a poignant commentary on a writers cultural experience. Works Cited Atwan, Robert. "Foreward: Of Topics." The Best American Essays 2012. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade & Reference, 2012. Ix-Xv. Print. Brooks, David. "Introduction." The Best American Essays 2012. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade & Reference, 2012. Xvii-xiv. Print. Lopate, Phillip. "Curiouser And Curiouser: The Practice Of Nonfiction Today." Iowa Review 36.1 (2006): 3-15. Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 28 Jan. 2014.