Today’s Montaignes

At heart, a personal essay is an attempt to arrest oblivion by wrestling into some kind of shape, or purpose, the mess of life. After all, its progenitor, Michel de Montaigne wore a medal around his neck, when attempting such a feat, bearing the motto — what do I know? Today’s Montaignes attempt to figure it out. They try, anyway — try to bring to the page a perspective that helps its readers see anew. Not only examine situations anew, but come appreciatively to view life’s richness, its fullness. The key to pulling off such an endeavor, for the essayist, is to transfer consciousness — right!, easier said than done.

“It is our job to transfer what we’ve seen, remembered, reasoned, or imagined. If the reader does not comprehend, we have failed to do our task well,” writes Dinty W. Moore in Crafting The Personal Essay. Reader comprehension comes in the logical unfolding of the essayist’s attempt, logic which places readers in a place, a time, with a goal (however hazy) in mind and a sense of direction toward reaching a destination. The essayist is both Baedeker and guide to those who might otherwise be lost.

So, personal, yes, but not insular, not too private. The personal essay is a public performance, some would say akin to playing violin, for the first time, in a public square; naked. With this in mind, the essayist prepares her material carefully. The essayist comes to the attempt with new eyes themselves, scanning over the experiences and considerations with acute skepticism. And he does not attempt to capture the entirety of a life — that’s autobiography — but rather some small observance. A moment in the essayist’s life.

Personal essays become memoir essays when reflection upon the past because the raison d’être of the attempt. The distinction between pure memoir and the memoir essay isn’t simply semantics, it’s approach, says Moore. An essayist enters into a memoir essay by proclamation: “This happened and it gave me occasion to ponder…” And ponder, she does, the details of her past experience; she “ruminate[s], consider[s], explore[s],” offers Moore. She interprets.

This interpretation can be of memory or simple meditation on some question or something he does not understand.

In 1922, A.C. Benson offered this essayists’ creed: “We may follow any mood, we may look at life in fifty different ways — the only thing we must not do is to despise or deride, out of ignorance or prejudice, the influences which affect others; because the essence of all experience is that we should perceive something which we do not begin by knowing, and learn that life has a fullness and a richness in all sorts of diverse ways…”