Essays

I like essays -- writing and reading them.  In law, the essay is kind of a hybrid creature and a still-emerging stylistic form.  The essay is missing some of the stolidly self-conscious seriousness of the article but it's so much more fun than the review.  For me, the distinguishing feature of the essay -- what separates it from the prideful autonomy of the article -- is its reactive quality.  It's a writing form that is somehow more socially connected, as what begins as a discrete counterpoint can blossom into broader, but still comparatively narrow, reflections.

For Christmas, my dear mother-in-law gave me the "Best American Essays of the Century" (a little late, you say?  Maybe, but I still prefer it to similar collections of the past decade).  Most of the essays are by American-born writers, but not all (e.g., John Muir).  I have not read many of the essays and have only really read the work of about half the authors.  Some of my favorites are in the book -- T.S. Eliot's Tradition and the Individual Talent, Henry Adams's A Law of Acceleration, Susan Sontag's Notes on "Camp."  Others I care less for (Updike's The Disposable Rocket is the usual from him: "From the standpoint of reproduction, the male body is a delivery system, as the female is a mazy device for retention.").

With only a few exceptions, I noticed that there are almost no Catholic essayists on the roster (difficult for me to count Mary McCarthy or Annie Dillard).  One is Richard Rodriguez -- a new author for me -- here's something from his essay, Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood, "Supporters of bilingual education imply that students like me miss a great deal by not being taught in their family's language.  What they seem not to recognize is that, as a socially disadvantaged child, I regarded Spanish as a private language." 

But how about it, knowledgeable MOJ writers and readers: who are your favorite Catholic essayists?  Definitions are always tricky, so please construe the labels broadly -- writers of short, non-fiction pieces who have been influenced by their Catholicism in one way or another.  Fire away!