In his forward to the 1986 inaugural volume of The Best American Essays, series editor Robert Atwan notes that the classic essai, as Michel De Montaigne in a reflective moment chose to call it, "has adapted to a reading public's imperious demand for information, while retaining the personal, fluid and speculative manner that has long characterized the form."

This would seem to make arriving at a definition more difficult. Where, then, are the borders of this literary effort? What, if any, are its uses to the citizenry -- as separate from its uses to the writer, who sometimes, like Montaigne, is bent on defining himself in the process of putting words down?

Not that matters were clearer to Montaigne, who, for all intents and purposes, invented the "modern" essay in the 16th century, yet ventured no handy definition. Atwan admits boundaries are fuzzy. "Drift too far in one direction and you get an article -- informative, impersonal, subject-bound; but move too far to the other side and you get a literary pose -- arch, impressionistic, overwritten."

Atwan, together with each year's guest editor, has struggled to define the essay in the course of choosing its best exemplars. After nearly a decade and a half, there is as yet no consensus. But over the years, these editors have suggested some wide parameters. For reasons of time and space, the best essays most often appear in journals and magazines. And they carry what 1993's guest editor, Joseph Epstein, calls "the strong presence of the writer." Without that presence, he argues, "the essay doesn't quite exist; it becomes an article, a piece, or some other indefinable verbal construction." The writer's voice and passion, then, are integral to the essay. Thus, argues Elizabeth Hardwick, the series' first guest editor, the essay is by nature the most "aggressive" of written forms.

Atwan has another point to make, and it's worth quoting in full. The essay, he argues in the 1993 volume, is still the most "newsy" of literary forms. "But good essays do more than introduce us to a culture's current or recurrent themes and topics; they introduce us to its dominant styles of thinking as well. An understanding of America in our time isn't simply a matter of knowing what topics are being discussed but of knowing how they're discussed. This is what the essay does best and why it penetrates deeper into the surface of society than journalism. If you want a record of what happened today, you pick up a news-paper; if you're interested in a timely or trendy topic, you read a magazine article; but if you want to get closer to the dynamics of a culture's thinking, you need essays."

We have ourselves experimented with form, struggled with definition, at this magazine. Illinois Issues readers have come to expect thorough reportage in our pages, as well as explanatory articles and opinion columns. But in recent years, we aimed deeper by reaching further, offering "the strong presence of the writer." We have tried, in the spirit of Montaigne's trials, to accomplish that through analysis. And through the essay.

In the course of this exercise, we have published some of Illinois' best thinkers and writers. Jim Krohe is our most Montaigne-like contributor. "I don't know what I think until I've written it," he'll remind us. Bob McGregor brings a moral passion to his writing. Thomas Geoghegan, our most "aggressive" writer to date, sharpens ideas through words.

And all of these words have carried the journalistic equivalent of a warning label. To disagree with the writer is to engage in the discourse. To expect an essay to offer the "objective" balance of a reported article is to misread the enterprise.

Certainly, the essay is the most challenging of literary forms. Yet, like Hardwick, we believe our "essays are addressed to a public in which some degree of equity exists between the writer and the reader. Shared knowledge is a necessity, although the information need not be concrete." 

Illinois Issues April 2000 | 4