## Metadata - Author: [[Alexander Chee and Robert Atwan]] - Full Title: The Best American Essays 2022 - Category: #books ## Highlights - “I am not fooled about the place of the essay in twentieth-century American letters—it stands a short distance down the line. The essayist, unlike the novelist, the poet, and the playwright, must be content in his self-imposed role of second-class citizen.” ([Location 41](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCGDF5L9&location=41)) - “writer who has his sights trained on the Nobel Prize or other earthly triumphs had best write a novel, a poem, or a play. . . .” ([Location 57](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCGDF5L9&location=57)) - The sine qua non of those chestnuts was E. B. White’s short personal essay “Once More to the Lake.” ([Location 70](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCGDF5L9&location=70)) - he frequently points out small details that challenge it: for one thing, the lake is far noisier than it was in 1904, thanks to outboard motors having replaced the sleepy-sounding old one- and two-cylinder inboard engines he fondly recalls. “This was the note that jarred, the one thing that would sometimes break the illusion and set the years moving.” ([Location 84](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCGDF5L9&location=84)) - But noise is just one break in the illusion. The roads are now tarred; the waitresses “were still fifteen” but now “their hair had been washed,” as “they had been to the movies and seen the pretty girls with the clean hair”; arriving at camp now lacked the excitement it once had when the farmers’ wagons waiting at the train station dropped you off after a bumpy ten miles (now you simply drove in and parked); the road leading up to the farmhouse for dinner once had three tracks—one ([Location 87](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCGDF5L9&location=87)) - Earthly time doesn’t ever stand still; it moves forward, or, in terms of human life, it oscillates between forward and backward as we live both in the moment and in our memories. ([Location 96](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCGDF5L9&location=96)) - the culmination of all the creepy sensations of time and identity that persisted during White’s return to the lake. ([Location 120](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCGDF5L9&location=120)) - The eerie feeling that time has stopped has all along alleviated a core anxiety—namely, a growing fear of his impending death, or what psychologists call “thanatophobia.” ([Location 127](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCGDF5L9&location=127)) - Poe, Irving, Hawthorne, Melville, and Twain—accomplished ([Location 153](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCGDF5L9&location=153)) - Cord Jefferson, writing in 2014 at Medium, identified what he called “The Racism Beat,” a path by which writers of color could make a career of a kind responding to current events, with essays usually written quickly and published later the same day or the next day, and which he had used, by his own admission, to make a name for himself. ([Location 255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCGDF5L9&location=255)) - He introduced us to a quality in the writing he admired regularly, often asking in class after what he called wetness. Was the writing wet? Could you feel the rain, the blood, the tears? ([Location 277](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCGDF5L9&location=277)) - Note: Wetness. Feel the rain. Gotta remember than. - I had the right to say nothing at all. ([Location 364](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCGDF5L9&location=364)) - THREE DAYS BEFORE he died, my husband got out of bed. ([Location 462](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCGDF5L9&location=462)) - Note: A really strong opening sentence!