essay

The essay has always made me nervous. The essay purports to be a mere attempt, an experiment (the French verb "essayer" means both these things), but is all too often a display of mastery, a display that masquerades as modesty but which is really a high-wire act. "Look at me, look at me," the essay says. "I know and feel such complex THINGS, I am in truth QUITE important. And I won't fall. Nope. Read me walk the tightrope. Aren't I great and quite fascinatingly amazing? Wheee!"


Blogs make me nervous for the same reason. A blog is all about "me" as "I" ponder the great unknown, comment on literature, and critique the movies, the tv, the music, the political and cultural scenes. One should blog -- apparently. And as a literature person -- once a critic, now a student (ah! there "I" am! look at me look at me!) -- I have been told I should do one.

Montaigne, the father of the essay does not seem to have suffered from such anxieties about the presentation of self. He called his essays forthrightly "le livre de Moi" -- the book of me, and there is something very charming about that appelation. But the essay as it currently exists does not feel very charming to me as a form. It is for others, though. Very much so.

So this is my 3rd attempt at a personal blog. or else it's my second. I don't remember. But I want to register my anxiety about the procedure.

Perhaps the essay is good for registering such anxieties.

Michel Foucault remarked that we live in an age where everyone thrills to confess, to be heard, to tell secrets. Blogging may be part of this urge. What does it mean? As I write this paragraph, I feel the authenticity of my own speech act drain away. I "think" I want to talk about Derrida and the death of the book versus the birth of writing, but I feel, in my heart (mine! mine!), that Foucault is closer to it -- our mania for self-disclosure.

and with that mania, at least partially, expulsed and released, "I" will close this first, somewhat strange (but fascinatingly complex?) attempt.