At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays
Anne Fadiman
Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2007
U.S. hardcover, first edition
ISBN 0-374-10662-2
240 pages; $22.00
Every now and then someone mourns the death of the essay. Clifton Fadiman, Anne Fadiman’s father, did so over half a century ago in – yes – an essay entitled “A Gentle Dirge for the Familiar Essay.†He, and we, are fortunate that his own daughter has so often shown that his obituary for this literary form was very much premature. At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays is a lively collection that will bring joy to the heart of anyone who loves good writing.
I’ve been a fan of Fadiman’s ever since I read Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader. The scope of At Large and At Small is broader than her earlier book, not being limited to the joys and woes of owning and reading books, but books and authors play an undeniable role in Fadiman’s intellectual life. You will find here an essay about Charles Lamb, “The Unfuzzy Lamb,†that will induce you to seek out Lamb’s essays. Her essay on “Coleridge the Runaway†will probably convince you to read Richard Holmes’s two-volume biography of the poet, Coleridge: Early Visions: 1772-1804 and Coleridge: Darker Reflections: 1803-1834. “Procrustes and the Culture Wars†will put into perspective all that silliness you hear these days about why you are “allowed†to read this person’s works but not that person’s depending on your political or moral outlook. “The Arctic Hedonist†will put you in mind of Fadiman’s essay from Ex Libris entitled “My Odd Shelf,†where she discusses her collection of books on polar exploration; here, her particular subject is Vilhjalmur Stefansson.
Fadiman’s greater accomplishments in this volume, though, are her non-book essays. “Ice Cream,†were it in verse form, would be an ode, and it sent me straight to the freezer for some almond praline. I wish I’d been on the transcontinental ice cream tasting trip she and her brother took in 1974. And her description of the color of Baskin-Robbins Chocolate Mint as “fly-specked absinthe†is right on target. “Moving†was another essay that seemed to capture the essence of a moment perfectly, the move from a big city to the country, when it seems that one has left any chance of ever eating a real bagel again behind forever.
“Coffee†is an essay anyone addicted to the stuff will recognize, even if one has never been as twitchy as Honore de Balzac, who ate dry coffee grounds. “Mail†is for anyone who runs to the mailbox as soon as the postal worker arrives (it’s often the high point of my day, and by that I do not mean to imply that my days are boring; they’re not). “A Piece of Cotton†is a piece about the flag, and especially America’s response to the flag in the wake of 9/11 – responses both genuine and heartfelt and tacky and commercial.
The shortest piece in the book is the last, and it is the most powerful. Entitled “Under Water,†it is about a tragedy that occurred on a canoeing trip when Fadiman as eighteen. It is a small masterpiece. I will not ever forget it.
Clifton Fadiman was unquestionably premature in announcing the death of the essay. Each year, Houghton Mifflin publishes a volume of the year’s best essays. David Foster Wallace has been delighting us with footnote-laden essays collected in such volumes as Consider the Lobster for some years now. John McPhee can interest us in the most abstruse topics with his essays. Oliver Saks and Atul Guwande write medical essays that give us a spotlight into a world we would probably otherwise not understand. Edward O. Wilson and Annie Dillard explain the natural world, each in their own way. We are lucky to have so many fine writers at this moment in time.
This book, though – this book delights, excites, inspires, engages, absorbs, pierces, thrills. Most definitely, the familiar essay is alive and well in the hands of Anne Fadiman.
Remembering Clifton Fadiman
I was just thinking of him recently (and I've noted down Anne's essay collection for future reading). It's likely that Fadiman got me started on science fiction. When I was about 9-10 years old, my father had to go into the hospital for a brief, non-serious procedure. His colleagues gave him "Fantasia Mathematica," a collection of short stories edited by Fadiman, all on the theme of mathematics (my father was a math teacher in one of the specialized high schools of NYC). I got hold of that book not long after he came out of the hospital and read it through more than once. I still have that book, one of the few I kept after my father died. It's got material by Asimov and Heinlein (iirc), among others. I just found them all fascinating.
Collections of short stories around one theme (horses, mathematics, fairy tales) formed an important part of my childhood reading. I don't know much of what's out there for children, but I wonder if they're turned off from reading because they get handed full-length books too soon instead of a bunch of stories on their favorite topics.