The Art of the Personal Essay

"One writes out of one thing only -- one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art." Launching ourselves from James Baldwin’s assertion, we will examine the artfulness of the personal essay by reading and critiquing examples from the genre’s beginnings in Michel de Montaigne’s essais (“attempts”) in the 1580s to those being posted and published in 2009. What is essential to the genre? What has changed and continues to change? We will also make our own attempts at writing from personal experience. 3 hrs. sem.