In college I studied essays with a poet, and so I think my interpretation of the genre was always going to be a little off-kilter.
You move your life across the country and make a commitment to a place, and to a genre, and then you realize that neither the place nor the genre mig… - John D'Agata
You move your life across the country and make a commitment to a place, and to a genre, and then you realize that neither the place nor the genre mig…
- John D'Agata
Sometimes the essay is where we end up when everything that we know must change. - John D'Agata
Sometimes the essay is where we end up when everything that we know must change.
Pedagogically, we need definitions and borders. They help us get our heads around what we're talking about. - John D'Agata
Pedagogically, we need definitions and borders. They help us get our heads around what we're talking about.
The best stuff that Cicero wrote, in the first century in Rome, were the Philippics, a series of speeches that he delivered against Marc Antony, whom… - John D'Agata
The best stuff that Cicero wrote, in the first century in Rome, were the Philippics, a series of speeches that he delivered against Marc Antony, whom…
An essay is something that tracks the evolution of a human mind. - John D'Agata
An essay is something that tracks the evolution of a human mind.
Of course it's possible for political essays to be artful. I just want to call into question the dominance of content over form in the history of the… - John D'Agata
Of course it's possible for political essays to be artful. I just want to call into question the dominance of content over form in the history of the…
In some ways we want definitions that can help protect our own interpretations of the genre. - John D'Agata
In some ways we want definitions that can help protect our own interpretations of the genre.
The whole movement of an essay is propelled by a fundamentally human impulse to want to figure things out. - John D'Agata
The whole movement of an essay is propelled by a fundamentally human impulse to want to figure things out.
You're often looking at writing from writers who, for the most part, are working in forms that traditionally fit into other genres. But sometimes, in… - John D'Agata
You're often looking at writing from writers who, for the most part, are working in forms that traditionally fit into other genres. But sometimes, in…
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