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With My Trousers Rolled (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)

The personal or familiar essay is a distinguished if homely form, going back to Michel de Montaigne, whose essais (tests or trials) were occasions for him to indulge his curiosity and try out his judgment on the everyday features of his sixteenth century landscape. His now-famous question—“Que sais je?”—propelled him, as it has scores of other practitioners since, into endlessly fascinating reflections on himself and his world. “What do I think of that?” “Am I amused or distressed, moved or baffled by that?” “How do I make sense of that?” The “I” in such...

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