Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy: Advice and Confessions on Writing, Love, and Cannibals, Dinty W. Moore, 10 Speed Press, Berkeley, pps. 200.
Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy,
I learned so much from reading your book.
For example, the inventor of the essay was frenchman Michael de Montagne. He did not write his first essay on a cocktail napkin because cocktail napkins did not exist in the 1500s when he lived. He would have had to write it on a cloth napkin ''and the ink would cause a terrible mess.''
Dear ExcitingWriting Advisory Reader,
I wanted to write a letter to Mister Essay Writer Guy, but got sidetracked wondering if that letter would help you, my E.W.A. readers, figure out whether you should pick up and actually, truly, really read Dinty W. Moore's book and thereby participate with me in the author's conspiracy.
''Conspiracy?'' you ask. Yes, I affirm, conspiracy! Vast conspiracy!
Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy, J'accuse you of writing a non-fiction book of essays about the joy, wonder and commodious feelings that come from writing essays. Yes. Commodious feelings. I infer from what you imply: If everyone followed their essay bliss, they would go home right nowthis very momentand begin writing essayspersonal statements of longing, joy, love, separation, hate, brokenness, and cannibalism. Fact: One of Michael de Montagne's essays was on the subject of cannibalism.
I remain true to my thesis: Dinty Moore's book is a conspiracy, designed to cause everyone to become fabulously lost in the passionate act (in flagranti essai) of writing and reading essays. (No-surprise spoiler: Dinty W. Moore teaches non-fiction writing at Ohio State.)
Here's the setup of Dinty Moore's subterfuge: Imagine (''Why just imagine? Read!'') twenty famous writers of essays, that is ''essayists,'' who write sincerely curious, funny, gotta-know-now, and philosophically engaging letters that just happen to sum up in one form or another each essayist's writing style, area of concern, cultural angst, hangover, whatever.
Not only did each of the twenty authors write Dinty Moore the letter of inquiry (''with tongue firmly in cheek'') but then Dinty goes on to answer the question and write an essay-ette (A short essay. We owe so much to the French) which is more or less in the style of the essayist, sort of. Call it a parody. So by the time you get through reading all twenty of Mr. Moore's essays, if you are anything like me, you have learned of the existence of 18 essayists who you never heard of before even though some are pretty famous in their own right.
Dinty Moore possesses an infectious sense of humor. Yes, it's catching. My nose started to run. The enthusiasm; it overwhelms your defenses, moistens the tear ducts, keeps everything flowing. No, it never gets stuffy, stiff or self-conscious, which, I admit, it could, given the concept, but, Glorioski! Mr. Essay Writer Guy pulls it off with aplomb. He deserves congratulations for that alone if not a medal for public bravery; that is, bravely speaking openly of private things in public. What else is an essay for?
An example: Cheryl Strayed (Author of Wild) admits in a letter to Mister Essay Writer Guy that she has an obsession with em dashes: ''I have a hot dash on the em dash. What does my need to stuffwhile simultaneously fracturingmy sentenceswith the meandering, the explanatory, the discursive, the perhaps not-entirely necessarysay about me?''
Mr. Essay Guy writes back to Cheryl: ''You do realize that 99 percent of the civilized world has no idea what an em dash is, right?''
Another favorite of mine, his last essay in the book, Do not read this book where he laments everyone's attention deficit. Writing students are no longer requested to write. No one has time to read an essay, no less write one. He goes on to write one, anyway.
Other essayist queries request advice on selecting an essay topic, coming clean about how relatives traumatized one at an early age, and the importance of writing with clarity. Why be clear when one can be muddled and hint at so much while saying so little? Good question.
Kritika Narula, reviewing the book on GoodReads wrote: ''How can you read non-fiction like this and not fall in love with the genre? The whole genre owes you, Sir. Or your humor. I am not sure if we can separate the two. You know you will fall into this book as soon as it opens because of this [dedication page]: ''To the polar bears. Be gentle with me.''
I agree with Ms. Narula.
Mr. Moore's oeuvre is not a ''how-to-write-an-essay book'' so much as it is a ''why-should-I-bother-writing-essays?'' book, or a book that demonstrates some of the marvelous effects that can be accomplished by writing essays.
True, non-fiction story: I got the idea of writing an essay while reading Mr. Moore's book.
So gin-on-up to Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy, Dinty W. Moore's crazy, funny, hilarious, LOL romp through ''essaylandia,'' a collection of twenty parodies of well known essayists (not well known to me, but well known to those who have long loved this literary form), writers like Philip Lopate, Cheryl Strayed, Patrick Madden, Steve Almond and Judith Kitchen (who sadly recently passed away.) I had never heard of most of the names but, thank God, many better read than me have.
And therein lies the conspiracy. After reading Dinty Moore's twenty smart, funny essay parodies, you will be cajoled into Google-ing at least some of the essayists' names. You will read and gain a new appreciation of the essay you never had before.
Full disclosure: This author made me laugh out loud when he was an instructor and I, a participant, at the Kenyon College Writer's Conference some years ago. Dinty W. Moore is a fun guy who is fun to read.
