18.2: Part the Second

If you’ve been teaching long enough, the schoolmaster habits can be hard to break. My initial intention for my “Intro to the Essay” class was to do the usual thing: analyze Montaigne-like essays and ask students to write pieces showing that they had understood the methods of analysis that I was trying to teach them. In other words, I was about to ask my students to write five paragraph essays about Montaigne essays. Sort of like teaching someone how to play the guitar out of a book (and without a guitar). You learn something, I guess, but you won’t be able to make much music. 

I could see very quickly that my students were not enthralled with my plans. So I asked them what they wanted to write, and they jumped at the chance to do something different, to imitate the personal essay rather than analyze it. “We already know how to write school essays,” they said. I asked them whether they’d feel gypped. “This course,” I said, “is supposed to teach you something useful. You know, how to analyze a text, how to use evidence. I’m afraid that what you’re proposing won’t be much help to you in your other classes.” They assured me that they didn’t care. “We’ve been writing theses for all of our other classes,” they said. “It would be fun to do something different.” So to relieve my boredom and theirs, we junked my plans to write more formal academic pieces. We decided to write the kind of essays we were reading: about love, sex, food, animals, getting lost, getting drunk, getting headaches, things people hate, things people love, or—if my students chose—deer antlers. (No one did finally choose to write about deer antlers or any other sort of antler, but they could have if they’d wanted to.)

It was a little strange at first, asking my students to write . . . well, whatever the hell they wanted. But that’s what I had to do, at least if I were going to follow Montaigne’s instincts. In fact, giving my students absolute free range was more than strange; it was downright frightening. For me, at least. If you’re a teacher and you’re not . . . you know . . . teaching, then just what do you think you are doing? What happens when you have no idea what to expect?

It turns out that you can expect some really good, original writing, writing that made me forget to pick up my red pen. Take this opening, from my student Owen:

I often have a strange feeling that there is some other place
that I ought to be, and I do not know quite where it is. I am
plagued with a vague suspicion that there is somewhere full
of fascinating situations and events that were always meant to
collide with my life and are waiting for me to stumble upon
them but are slipping away into a void of hypotheticals while
I am miles or feet away doing nothing of any importance or
relevance to myself or anyone else. Thus my life slides away in
the most ordinary and horrible way possible.

Now that’s an opening paragraph. Soon after I began reading Owen’s essay, I forgot that I was supposed to be “correcting” it. I was reading it as though it were written by a peer rather than a student. I was reading it because I wanted to read it. Rereading it now, I’m struck by its perfect Montaignian (that’s a made-up adjective, but a good made-up adjective can be impressive) quality. It makes the same “mistakes” that Montaigne’s essays make: it’s all about the author—notice how often that he uses “I”—and it focuses on the author’s thoughts and experiences. It invites an identification between the reader and the writer. I have felt this feeling, and perhaps you have, too. The writer speaks as a companion, rather than as an expert.

The piece got better. Like Montaigne, Owen is a bit skeptical about the benefits of formal education. School, he writes, “must convince the student that boredom is an unavoidable and essential component of life. If this were not accepted the ‘real world’ would fall apart.” These sentences made me glad that I had abandoned my original plan for the course. Meanwhile, Owen’s essay winds up to one of the best lines I read all semester: “When I tell people I am an English major I am usually asked if I want to be a teacher. The idea is absolutely absurd to me. How many inmates do you think apply for jobs as prison guards after being released?” I say this is one of the best lines I read, but reading it also made me uncomfortable since I had both been an English major and become an English teacher. But it made me think, and it made me wonder how often I have bored my students because I am guarding in the same way I was guarded. I like to think that my teaching “frees” students—from prejudice and ignorance. After Owen’s essay, though, I wondered whether I was freeing students or imprisoning them. That’s what the best essays do: they make you wonder.

Now, let’s say he were writing this for a first year class that asked for a research paper. Though our notion of the research paper is pretty different from what Montaigne wrote, you will be asked to write formal research papers, and you may be wondering what the personal essay has to do with the research paper. Fair enough question. The answer begins with observing that Owen isn’t just navel-gazing. He’s asking a serious question about whether education teaches us to tolerate boredom. In Dumbing Us Down (2005), for example, John Taylor Gatto, former New York City Teacher of the Year and proponent of alternative schooling, has made a career about asking the very same question. Owen’s wondering has led him to a question that also interests nationally-recognized educators, a question that one could do some research on and write about, a question that might be more interesting than whether you’re for or against abortion, or gun control, or capital punishment.

Like Owen, Kathy begins with an experience to which her readers, including me, could easily relate: insomnia. (In fact, I’m drafting this essay at 1:14 a.m., so I can really relate to insomnia.)

It is really a shame when one is not able to sleep. At least for
me, it leaves me with nothing else to do but wrestle with my
thoughts. I try to count sheep, hypnotize myself, concentrate
on my breathing, and clear my head. All of these are techniques
people have told me to try. None of them have worked
for me so far. The problem lies in the fact that when I cannot
sleep, I focus so much on trying to sleep, that it is nearly
impossible.

The essayist here sounds like a peer or a friend rather than an expert or a professional. What’s more, she takes a mundane experience and tries to turn it into something more serious, and thus she finds a subject that might interest her more than the standard research topics that demand us to be “for” something or “against” something. How many college students experience insomnia? Does it get worse as the semester goes on? How does it affect their grades? If you’ve ever found yourself wide awake in your dorm room all night, perhaps you’ve wondered about the answers to these questions. Writing about them in this essayistic, wondering/wandering way, you might be more likely to stumble across questions that really interest you.

Looking out her dorm window, Kathy sees our university’s church, which leads her to recall attending services there. Though she planned on sleeping in most Sundays, now that she is away from home, a friend persuades her to go. And though she wakes up early only reluctantly, she does not regret going:

The stained glass windows and architecture were amazing. I
would continuously look up, for no other reason than to admire
the way the golden arches on the off-white ceiling came
together. The lights, pillars, candles, tabernacle, statues, es-
sentially everything in the cathedral, demanded my attention.
I was captivated by the beauty that surrounded me, and nothing
could break my trance of sheer fascination.

Isn’t that a lovely passage? Lovelier still is the way she begins the next paragraph: “Back to reality, I am not in that gorgeous church anymore. Instead, I am stuck in this utterly boring dorm room.” The contrast is wonderful. If the strength of the first image weren’t enough, Kathy sharpens our perspective by bringing us into her dorm room, which she doesn’t need to describe. You can picture it: cinderblock walls painted flat white. It pales in comparison. But she tries to reconcile herself to her room. “After all,” she writes, “this is the only space in this city I have.” I don’t know if I would have gotten such strong writing if I had given Kathy a formal assignment.

Jon decided to imitate Sei Shonagon, one of the great Japanese essayists, who wrote in the tenth century, long before Montaigne came up with the word essai. Sei Shonagon liked to keep lists of her likes and dislikes, and my class read one of those essays, titled “Hateful Things.” Though she wrote one thousand years ago, her dislikes can seem very familiar: “A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him but who speaks in an affected tone and poses as being elegant” (27). Or, “Sometimes a person who is utterly devoid of charm will try to create a good impression by using very elegant language; yet he only succeeds in being ridiculous” (26). (In college, you may run into people who use very elegant language but succeed only in being ridiculous.)

Jon kept his own list. “Since I am not in the greatest mood right now,” he writes, “I thought it appropriate to base this essay on Sei Shonagon’s ‘Hateful Things.’ I would just like to apologize in advance for anyone I may inadvertently offend with the subsequent items.” Already, I was primed simply to read this essay. How are you going to “correct” what someone hates? Besides, I wanted to see how much, if anything, Jon and I had in common. “The squirrels outside my window in the parking lot playing a friendly game of cat and mouse. The freedom they have upsets me. While I sit in my room studying in order to make something of my life, they run around without a care in the world. Sometimes I wish I were as free as these squirrels, being able to do whatever the hell I want whenever the hell I want.” This is a very common move in a personal essay: to take a mundane moment—for example, watching squirrels play—and then to ask larger questions about one’s purpose in life. Something else Jon hates: “Having a ridiculous amount of work to do on Mardi Gras weekend. Where is the celebration in that? I believe there is a conspiracy among teachers to make as much work as possible due the week after what is known to be a busy weekend among college students.” (Again, a question that might be worth exploring. Does homework increase near holiday and party weekends? How would you find out?) He continues, “I mean, I had big plans for this weekend, especially Saturday, I was going to get up early, go ‘eat breakfast’ at a friend’s apartment, then go ‘watch’ the parade, come back and ‘sleep’ for a couple of hours, and go back to my friend’s apartment to ‘play some board games.’” This passage is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it sounds like the author is writing his thoughts as they come to him. That gives the essay a lively tone. Second, the passage requires so much interpretation. As you can probably guess, Mardi Gras is not exactly the most wholesome event in the world, so the author’s scare quotes make me wonder what he means exactly. I have a hard time believing that they’re just going to be playing board games. I don’t know for sure, but that’s what makes it interesting.

Like Jon, Samantha followed a time-honored essay tradition, writing about the art of walking. We read Henry David Thoreau’s essay on walking, and though Samantha didn’t like it very much, she used as it inspiration for her own work:

The reason I dislike Thoreau so much is because he consistently
drifts far, very far, away from his intended idea. Then,
when you try to figure out how he got to a certain point, it
just confuses you more. He begins the piece by talking about
the art of walking and by the end, he has wandered miles
from the beginning idea and never returns to tie up loose
ends. Is the reason I feel the need for the author to return
because I simply have been trained that way? Throughout my
life, I have been saddled with expectations that are supposed
to teach me responsibility, obedience, control, and fluidity of
thoughts. Eventually, I became accustomed to thinking everyone
expected those of me and in turn I expect it from them.

What I like about this passage is the level of criticism. Sam isn’t just saying she hates Thoreau’s essay; she is also questioning why she has come to the conclusions that she has. She’s wondering about her own interpretive principle. That makes this moment very Montaingian: it’s not just the critique of another author but the critique and the personal reflection about that critique. Sam comes to wonder whether she reads because of how she’s been trained, and that’s a short step from wondering whether there are different ways of reading (and writing). These are questions that have troubled English professors for a long time. Is there a “right” way to read? Or do we just think that the way we happen to read is the “right” way? This is a serious question. Perhaps you’ve had the experience of being told that the books you like aren’t literature, or that your interpretation of a poem isn’t correct. Well, that all depends on what you mean by “literature” and “correct.” There’s a huge argument about this between scholars, but the truth is we usually don’t share it in the classroom. It’s sort of like the way parents try not to fight in front of the children. This condescension is obviously foolish: Samantha, who’s not an English major, has found her way to a fundamental question simply by following her thoughts. Again, essays are more about exploring what’s possible rather than demonstrating what’s already known. (If it’s already known, why demonstrate it?)

Speaking of exploring, I actually asked students to go for a walk one day, so they could practice wandering around aimlessly. This experience was strange for them, as it was for me. (I stayed behind to watch their stuff, and I can just imagine what someone who happened to look in might have thought. Were they all abducted by aliens?) Samantha wasn’t quite sure what to do either. “When the class was told we were going for a walk,” she writes, “I was expecting a kind of group walk around campus or, at least, some kind of structure. Never did I expect to just leave class and walk on my own. I was lost, and I believe, by the puzzled looks on the faces around me, the class was, too. The first thing that came to mind was whom should I walk with so I don’t look like a loser walking alone?” This question suggests the same thing about school that Montaigne noticed and Sam has already noticed. School can so train you to think in certain ways that even taking a walk by yourself seems strange.

At this point, you may be wondering how to write such an essay. The truth is, I don’t know. We just read some examples and went for it. Jon imitated a structure we’d read. Samantha took a theme and played with it. Owen captured the tone of Montaigne perfectly, and Kathy sat at her desk and imagined her entire world. Of course, we worked on these pieces throughout the semester, revising them to make them stronger, and proofing them at the end for any little errors. But the creativity came from the students, and its source was mysterious. In some ways, I did the least teaching that I have ever done in a semester. I just asked my students to read some essays and write essays like them.

I’m not trying to suggest that Montaigne’s version of the essay is better than the formal school version. I’m simply arguing that there are other available ways of writing, ways that are as old and as important and valuable as the usual ways we’re usually taught. You’re still going to need to know how to write an argument with a thesis and with support. That’s a good and useful thing to know. Moreover, it’s not as if the personal essay and the school essay are diametrically opposed: the former can lead to the latter in interesting and compelling ways. The personal essay does not demand that you answer questions; it demands that you ask really interesting questions. Yes, these questions can lead to answers, but the better the question, the better the answer. At the very least, you now know that there is another way to write, one that allows you to wander far and wonder out loud.