CPE exam 2016 Article Sample

Submitted by Elena Malykh

# words: 240

The Unibaken museum in Stockholm

Located in the city center, on an island, this museum looks like a small railway station, but was actually the house of Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren, who became a household name in the 1920s for writing riveting books for children like "Pipilongstokey", the red-haired naughty girl with super-strength powers.

The Unibaken is not the typical museum with exhibits on display which young people find boring, but a really brand-new and very interactive experience. There is an educational play-room for children which looks like a miniature Nordic town, there is a theater for adults playing classic movies, and a library and audio collection of the best works of Astrid Lindgren.  

I still remember visiting the museum for the first time and travelling in the Story Train. While making this trip I enjoyed looking at the fantastic sets created by the museum´s designers and listening to the audios about the heroes of Astrid Lindgren´s stories and the world where they live. I was immediately transported to an imaginary world made just for children. 

For this and for many other reasons, my husband and I are big fans of the Unibaken and come every time we are in town. I can say without hesitation that it  is worth a visit. Not only is it one of the main attractions in Stockholm -daily visited by residents and tourists-, but a one of a kind mueum in all Europe, and a reason for Sweden to feel proud of.

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Assay's Best American Essays Project Database is Live

Oh, hey there. As you know, we're fans of the Best American Essays, built and edited by Robert Atwan (see our Advent calendar from last year for year-by-year reads and revisitations of each BAE installment).

So we're super excited to hear that Assay has indexed and databased all of the BAE anthologies, and not just the official Bests but also the Notables, which makes for an awesome set of data for scholars of the essay. You can find and search it here. Easy to lose some time in there.

Thanks to them on behalf of all writers and readers and scholars of the contemporary American essay. Try looking up some of our favorite (and the series favorite) essayists: Cynthia Ozick (holds the record, just, for the most essays reprinted in BAEs) or Brian Doyle (close), for instance. Oh, this is a fun toy.

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Get-Essay.com Review

Written by: Legitimate Writing Services

Service

Date published: 07/27/2016

6.9 / 10 stars

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Beginnings

Like first impressions in life, and rather more so, first impressions, i.e., beginnings in fiction matter. They may not be quite all important, but they do invite and influence readership.

Take that terrific opening sentence that many people who know nothing else about Tolstoi’s “Anna Karenina” (more properly “Anna Karenin”) are familiar (!) with, “Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” No one is let down by that novel, but “War and Peace” must be a veritable graveyard of readers who gave up midway or sooner.

Pretty famous, deservedly, is also the beginning of L. P. Hartley’s “The Go-Between,” “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” The whole novel is good, although the fine film based upon it may be even better.

Both of these are apt beginnings because they lay their finger on something we “oft have thought but ne’er so well express’d,” as Alexander Pope so well put it. But are other beginnings as good as that, I wondered. So I decided to pluck ten worthy books at random from my shelves and check out their beginnings. See how ably they invite further reading or not.

Only one of them is well-known, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” which starts: “Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do; once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations.’”

Very clever, this, since it appeals not only to children (no pictures) but even to their elders (no conversations).  What characterizes the passage is impatience (very tired of sitting) and what is more characteristic of young children than their lack of what German calls “Sitzfleisch,” hard to put into English short of “flesh to sit on.” Conversations, of course, know no age. So our author appeals to all ages.

Now take what may be my favorite English (British) novel of all time, Ford Madox Ford’s “The Good Soldier.” Here the very short opening sentence gets us where we live: “This is the saddest story I ever heard.” How succinctly the author establishes the presence of both a narrator and of the characters whose story it is. Presumably equally sad for those who lived it and the one who heard and recorded it. And who can resist reading on compassionately?

There is, however, a tricky way of telling a tragic story humorously: a double-bottomed treasure chest. This is the Turkish American Nobel Prize-winning novelist, Orhan Pamuk’s “My Name Is Red,” which begins: “I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well. Though I drew my last breath long ago and my heart has stopped beating, no one, apart from that vile murderer, knows what’s happened to me. As for that wretch, he felt for my pulse and listened for my breath to be sure I was dead, then kicked me in the midriff, carried me to the edge of the well, raised me up and dropped me below.” This opening paragraph goes on to list further gory details, but already you see its burlesque effectiveness. Which would be less remarkable but for the victim telling it (The same device figures in that splendid movie, “Sunset Boulevard.”)

The comic tone—gallows or black humor if you like—comes from the details so carefully enumerated by the corpse; it is bizarre, but somehow also reassuring, if dead men do tell tales. Even the almost convivial “that wretch,” plays a droll role.

As does something worse than mere death: entombment in a well. We want to know more.

Now take the start of George du Maurier’s “Peter Ibbetson” (1891). “The writer of this singular autobiography was my cousin, who died at the ---- Criminal Lunatic Asylum, of which he had been an inmate three years. He had been removed thither after a sudden and violent attack of homicidal mania (which fortunately had no serious coincidences) from ----Jail, where he had spent twenty-five years having been condemned to penal servitude for life, for murder of ---- his relative. He had been originally sentenced to death. It was at ----Lunatic Asylum that he wrote his memoir . . .” etc.

Note especially the adroitness of the double dash (----). It cleverly makes the story universal, allowing the reader to fill in the lacunas with the jail and asylum nearest him. The narrator is essentially genteel, a later paragraph reveals that it is a woman, the loony’s literary executrix, who tells the story with refined discretion, hence also all those masking dashes. Our curiosity for what follows is chastely aroused, allowing for the propriety of the Victorian readers as well as their secret love of horror.

Next, consider the skillful beginning of Milan Kundera’s early ‘The Farewell Party” (1976), in its French original the more lyrical “La Valse aux adieux.” “Autumn had arrived. In the lovely valley trees were turning yellow, red, brown, and the small health-resort town seemed to be surrounded by flames. Women were strolling under the colonnade of the spa, now and again pausing to lean over the spouting springs. These were childless women who had come to the spa in the hope of gaining fertility. There was a handful of men among the patient too, for in addition to gynecological wonders a cure at the spa was supposedly beneficial for heart ailments. All the same, females outnumbered males nine to one—an infuriating ration for a young nurse like Ruzena, ministering all day to the needs of sterile matrons.”

Observe the skillful progression from the beauty of nature to the anguished childless women, thence to the zeroing in on the unfulfilled needs of a specific heroine. A movie camera could not have made these transitions more vividly effective, from an establishing shot through a tracking shot to a close-up. We are caught in Kundera’s clever manipulation, ready to be taken into the heart of the story.

Similarly involving and evolving is the progression at the start of the French-Alsacian Rene Schickele’s delightful novel (written in German) “Die Flaschenpost” (“The Bottle Mail”), which I translate, keeping the spacing that resembles free verse. “Cloud./ Richard Cloud . . ./ Today the matutinal mini-boats all foregathered on the horizon. As the sun rose, someone gave a signal, and they sailed in a race across the sky. // One after another they capsized, filled up on blueness and sank—I said to myself contentedly: ‘among them also Richard Cloud.’ . . . // My family lived in the United States, there where it is most boring.”

Here, too, we start with a nature description, lyrical but also ironic, mocking. The hero, Richard Cloud, watches his namesakes in the sky overturn and, smiling, projects himself among them, a rich young man who will similarly capsize. And the very next sentence is a challenge: what is this America, the most boring place in the world? Again, we are seduced into wanting to find out what clouds the life horizon of this Mr. Cloud.

Now take Arthur Schnitzler’s marvelous novella, “Casanova’s Homecoming” (1918), though the German “Heimfahrt” inadequarely translatable as homegoing or home journey. I translate.  “In his fifty-third year, when Casanova had long since given up being chased through the world by the adventurousness of youth, but by the restlessness of approaching old age, he felt arise so powerfully in his soul a nostalgic longing [Heimweh] for his birth city, Venice, that, like a bird that from airy heights gradually descends toward death, he began surrounding it in ever narrower and narrower circles.”

We have here Schnitzler’s gift for blending, in an elaborate but elegant style, psychological insight with poetic prose. The long sentence weaves its way through senescence and an avian image to a vagabond’s yearning for the true final home. A long but carefully constructed sentence is itself a kind of journey toward a resting place as it carries us along toward greater realization impending.

Contrast this sympathetic approach to human yearning with the severity of the beginning of V. S, Naipaul’s novella, “The Second Rebellion” (l979) in the volume entitled “A Bend in the River.” “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.”

Naipaul’s antipathy for much of humanity is crystallized in this hostile opening.  Where other writers’ motivation is usually sympathetic, Naipaul’s is condescending and contemptuous. But it works in its negative way just as much as other authors' positive one.

Take now the good-natured approach in “The Caliph Stork” (1913) by the great Hungarian poet and prosaist, Mihaly Babits. Captioned “The Autobiography of Elemer Tabory,” it begins (I translate): “I want to gather together the acts of my life.

Who knows how much time I have left? The step I have resolved to take may prove fatal, Slowly, inexorably night is waning. Surely there will come sometime, tiptoe like a murderer, the black Dream, and step soundlessly behind me. Suddenly, it will press its palm on my eyes. And then I will no longer belong to myself. Then anything can happen to me. I want to collect the acts of my life before I would go to sleep once more.”

Note how calm this writing is, how empathetic. Death as a black dream, silently pressing from behind its palm on one’s eyes, does not sound too awful, leaving one time to collect one’s past actions, presumably on paper. The repetition makes it all the more resolute, the tone more resigned. We are eager to read those recorded acts.

But the recording of the past can be much more unnerving, as in that superb novel, Italo Svevo’s “Zeno’s Conscience,” (1925) published in Italian as La coscienza di Zeno, which I would translate more euphoniously as “The Conscience of Zeno,” but who am I to dispute the premier translator from the Italian, William Weaver? Herewith the beginning of the “Preamble” following a very brief doctor’s note. The hero is commenting on the doctor’s recommendation.

“Review my childhood? More than a half-century stretches between that time and me, but my farsighted eyes could perhaps perceive it if the light still aglow there were not blocked by obstacles of every sort, outright mountain peaks: all my years and some of my hours.”

The jacket copy informs us that this is “the story of a hapless, doubting, guilt-ridden man, paralized by his fits of ecstasy and despair and tickled by his own cleverness” in this “pioneering psychoanalytical novel.” The tone of that beginning establishes an attitude of imaginative, jocular pessimism.” We want to read on and find out whether those blocking mountains could be climbed.

Let me conclude with the first sentence of the Russian poet-novelist Valeri Briusov’s “The Fiery Angel” (1930), excellent advice to both writers and would-be writers. “It is my view that everyone who has happened to be witness of events out of the ordinary and not easily comprehensible should leave behind a record of them, made sincerely and without bias.” It should be taken to heart: something that we don’t quite understand, if written down sincerely and without bias might become comprehensible in the process of committing to paper. That is what Babits had in mind too, and that is what Zeno is advised to do. The past may be a foreign country, as Hartley opined, but we can become observant tourists in it.

Briussov’s exciting novel has become the basis of Prokofiev’s terrific opera, all too rarely performed. But there are at least a couple of worthy recordings of it that will afford repeated happy listening.

And one further comment. Isn’t it interesting that half my prosaists were also poets? To wit Babits, Briussov, Carroll, Schickele and Schnitzler. It bears out my contention that the best training for a prosaist is to have also been a poet.                                                                                                          

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50 Tips for Parents

Ruth Lackore and her son Jason 

Moms and Dads, hard to believe it but we are getting closer and closer to the final countdown. Freshman move in day is only four weeks away! Don't worry, I've got you covered. I solicited the help of people who know best how to be a great Tulane parent: Tulane parents! Here are their 50 tips for you directly from our amazing current parents.

• Enjoy the incredible food in NOLA - Favorite eats for the moment (SO many!): brunch at Willa Jean; dinner at Shaya.  
• Always carry a small umbrella in your bag - it can downpour suddenly  
• Become a part of the Tulane community - it feels like a wonderful family of amazing parents, administrators, professors, and of course, students. Be on the lookout for ways to get involved. (Jennifer / Santa Monica CA / mom of Chloe '18)
• If you play an instrument, bring it with you even if you don't plan to be involved in formal music programs – there is music all over campus, students just jamming in small groups.
• Purchase Kentwood Springs  water for your student in their dorm room! there is a tent on the guad during move in day and if you miss it, you can call them at 504-400-5965. This was the best investment ... They need a lot of water as it's hot and it's reasonable and worth it!
• Even though the move in process seems overwhelming, Tulane has one of the best move in days known! Stay if you can for the convocation..so special! (Heidi / Bethesda MD / mom of Joshua, '18)
• There are no controls for the AC. My son was freezing and I needed to send him down winter pajamas, sweatpants,  sweatshirts so he could survive the frigid dorm air. 
• My biggest worry...the hurricane threats.  Dropped my son off freshman year and left him with a hurricane headed straight for NOLA! Was a great icebreaker for meeting his floormates, but after 4 years of warnings I realized this is the "Tulane  Norm." Try not to worry! (Lauren / Wayne NJ / mom of Jason '17) 
• When it rains it pours....bring waterproof shoes.
• Eat and drink your way through NOLA, and visit the sights it is best city in the world
• Summertime Storage is amazing, and would recommend using them (Linda / North Woodmere NY / mom of Michael '19)
• Go to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival every year with your student and make some family college memories and fall in love with New Orleans.  
• But ONLY go to Jazz Fest on first weekend, because second weekend interferes too much with finals studying and the kids are too tired from the first weekend! Don't forget to purchase your after show tickets and reserve your dinners after 9 pm.
• Feed and meet all of their friends and enjoy the diverse and fabulous music and the unique New Orleans hospitality and culture. 
• Send your student a solid care package the days before Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday).  Be sure it has healthy provisions that they can enjoy as they move about during Mardi Gras or even send a tray of sandwiches, cheese/crackers, fruit and other essentials for their dorm fridge!
• Rouse's Market delivers to campus! They will thank you when they are hungry and exhausted and all dining halls are closed and food is scarce...even in New Orleans! (Susan / Miami, FL / mom of Brian, '16) 
• If possible, out of towners can send boxes to their hotel vs campus. They will gladly store them for you and then you don’t have to wait in line on campus to get them. Just took one step out of the process and made things easier for me in particular as it was just Jonah and me on move in day. (side note- a change this year is HRL is piloting delivering your boxes to your S/Ds room before they arrive! Success rate, TBD -Jeff)
• Trust the process and go random for roommates; my son didn’t hook up with a roommate in advance and he got paired with a GREAT kid from San Francisco who he has loved living with. Says he fared a lot better than many other friends who tried to manage the process.
• Invest in a backpack that is truly waterproof AND has a build in cover. (not sure right wording here). Basically it is tiny, in a zipped pocket, but when its pouring NOLA style he can pull it out and cover his backpack (books and laptop) as he never has an umbrella handy.
• That kid in the Tulane video who said you MUST bring a Hawaiian shirt…well we laughed at this idea and then Jonah dug one up and shoved it in his bag and said “thank god” - he wore it to tons of stuff. Apparently a ‘must have.' (Arlene / Bedford MA / mom of Jonah '19)
• If your schedule permits, fly in for move in on Wednesday. Get the Bed and Bath done in a less stressful manner as you will likely go back 2 or 3 times. Use the time to get the toiletries, groceries, etc on Thursday so that move in on Friday is more calm. 
• On Saturday, enjoy Convocation and your kids and get out earlier on Sunday. Dragging it out doesn't help them at all. Cry at the airport!
• Book your hotel and CAR early. Get a small SUV or mini van as that stuff from Bed and Bath is bulky! 
• Book hotel for parent's weekend early as well, if your kid wants you to be there.
• Listen to the webinars that are offered from the Office of Parent Programs. They are truly informative and help provide information on things like rushing spring semester, move out in spring, etc.
• Make dinner reservations...it's what everyone talks about whether you are a foodie or not. Try for Shaya as it just got the Beard Foundations "Best New Restaurant " in America (Lisa / Los Angeles / mom of Natalie, '19)
• Tulane Trash for Treasures is a great way to find cheap dorm items on move in day! Go EARLY!
• Attend Family Weekend (Friday night A’Cappella concert a must!)
• Check out student syllabus before making flight arrangements for Thanksgiving. 
• If visiting, expect extra students for dinner (they are so appreciative)
• You do not need a car when visiting NOLA.
• Play nice on the parent Facebook page ;)  Couldn’t resist….I’m 1 of the 4 admins. (Annalee, Baton Rouge, mom of Caroline, '18)
• My son (his idea) wears his Tulane shirt every time he flies back to NOLA from a school break.  He has always been able to find someone to share a ride back to Tulane from the airport.
• We moved our son with the basic necessities and kept it very simple to accommodate the small dorm room.  There was ample space and storage when we left.  By the time spring came around, his dorm room was cluttered with stuff.  Be aware not to over pack. 
• Highly recommend all parents to participate in the Parents weekend during Fall semester. Despite the pouring rain, we had a blast and enjoyed all the activities. sessions, and it was a happy reunion with our son.
• Prepare your child for wet weather......shoes, raincoat, umbrella, etc....they will use it frequently!  (Ruth / Nashville, TN / mom of Jason '19)
• Don’t bother renting a car in New Orleans. You don’t need one. Between the streetcar, taxis, and good old fashioned walking, you can get wherever you need to go, easily and inexpensively. 
• We shipped most of her stuff via FedEx Ground and bought any extra items we needed at the campus store, which sells pretty much what you’d find in any Target. Honestly, it never even occurred to me to rent one on any visit. So go green, save yourself some money and skip the car rental! (Robin /  NYC / Mom of Marlee '16)
• My advice is coming from a parent of a kid who had a sheltered high school experience and who did not have the most successful first year. Not everyone goes and immediately fits in, has great time, and gets the college thing.  Prepare your kids for that before they go. Prepare them for potential loneliness the first few weeks to the first couple of months. Prepare them to possibly screw up as far as time management goes and explain how communication with you as parents, counselors, and professors is key to making things right. Explain that while drinking is prevalent, there are other kids out there who are into hanging out and not partying - keep looking.  
• Finding the sweet spot of supporting while giving room to make mistakes is one of the hardest parenting maneuvers out there.  
• Take the Tulane Parents page with a grain of salt - not every kid is having an amazing time every moment.  And that is ok.  It's life.  It's part of the learning process. Take a deep breath.  It all works out in the end.
• Frenchman Street is great spot for live music day or night. 
• The book, "One Dead in the Attic" helps one understand what Katrina really did and why she is forever part of NOLA now. 
• Anything you don't bring on move in day can be sent - no reason to panic. And that the sale of used stuff on move in day is the best thing ever (Trash to Treasure)! (Kim / Huntington Beach CA)

Thank you you to all the amazing parents who contributed to this!

Heidi Dupler and son Josh

Jennifer Happillon and daughter Chloe

Mike, mom Linda behind camera 

The Campbell family in NOLA

Lisa Josefsberg with daughter Natalie 

Robin Bernstein and kids at freshman move in day 

The whole Fusfield clan at Jazz Fest 

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Preparing for the CPE exam? Sample Essay Proficiency 2016

Submitted by Anna Baryshnikova

# of Words: 240

Essay on food

Food consumption is a central element for individuals and societies. Both passages analyse food from a series of different angles: meals as a way to get people together, cousine as a symbol of national pride, and home-made meals as a nutritious alternative to eating.

The first text states “a pleasure shared is a pleasure doubled”. And I totally agree with this statement. Many psychologists and coaches rank shared-meals as the number one way to create bonds between friends, lovers and families. But it goes even beyond individuals to a much wider national level.  National recipes carry the countries´s favourite flavours and are a vehicle for emotions and even culture, which is passed from one generation to the other. 

The second text addresses the popularity of ready-to-go meals, and questions its healthiness. Undeniably the fast pace of our current lifestyle means people having less time for caring about slow-food and nutrition. However, doctors warn of possible health perils because of junk food and suggest going back to homemade dishes. The second text also defines homemade meals as a chance to express care and affection to our friends and family.

In conclusion, food plays a very important rol in our lives, both as individuals and as a society. Hectic as current modern lifestyles are, it is important to take the time to embrace traditional recipies, cook and just sit down to unwind with our beloved ones. 

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Preparation for the CPE Exam. Sample of Article - Proficiency level 2016

Submitted by Mayra Badariotti Pagani

#Words: 310

Task

You recently attended a discussion about the environment. You found the discussion engaging and have decided to write an article for a magazine. Make comments on these points giving your own point of view:

-  Tourism can have a destructive influence on the environment.

- Climatic patterns are a yet another manifestation of global warming.

- The effects noise can have on you

Time for Change

We live in a planet we do not care for. We are aware of the serious effects our negligent behaviour has on the environment, our health and the well-being of the future generations. 

So why do we persist in our self- destructive attitudes?

The Earth is showing us warning signs: floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis –among many other natural disasters- are devastating our planet. Experts warn that climate patters are changing due to global warming, which is caused by us humans polluting of the environment. Think, for instance, how we ruin tourist attractions and spoil landmarks, dumping our rubbish anywhere or writing with aerosol every blank space we find.  Think, for example, how much waste we produce throughout our lifetime and how little we do to recycle it.

Irresponsible human behaviour is not only detrimental for our own planet, but also for our own health. Our bodies are speaking for themselves and giving signs, since new and strange illnesses are exterminating thousands of people. It seems that these diseases are produced by a number of factors, such as food contaminated with pesticides or noise produced by machines and vehicles. Noise pollution is a type of contamination, and the effects it can have on our health are unimaginable: they range from noise-induced hearing loss to cardiovascular effects and an increased incidence of coronary artery disease. So what are we waiting to change our lifestyles and habits?

All in all, I am convinced that humans’ practices and customs are far from being eco-friendly and sustainable, so we ought to call for a change in attitudes now. Keep your sweets’ wrappers until you get home, use your bike instead of your car, choose cloth bags when you go shopping and make use of renewable energies at home. We only have one planet to live it. Take care of it. You can make the difference.

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Of Bedrock: Reading Michel de Montaigne's “Of Practice”

Whosoever shall know himself, let him boldly speak it out.

—Michel de Montaigne

I spent last summer in France, living at a camp about an hour's drive from Michel de Montaigne's mansion in Bordeaux. For miles, if I were to leave camp and walk in almost any direction I'd be met only by farms, by fields of wheat or grass, or by thickets of tall trees where I could hide myself from the sun. There were trails around the camp, littered with the waste left behind by nearby resident swans and ducks, or with manure from the horses people sometimes rode through the woods. Whenever I thought of the horses I couldn't help but also think of how close I was to Montaigne's home—how, if I'd been able to rent a car, I could drive away from camp and find the place where Montaigne himself liked to walk in fields of grass or ride his own horse on a fine summer day.

            I once told a friend who was studying philosophy about my introduction to Montaigne's Essais in my MFA program. He'd also studied Montaigne in school, and he thought it was fascinating that the course I was in at the time, History of the Essay, examined Montaigne as a writer, rather than as a philosopher. It was then that I became aware of Montaigne being taught in philosophy programs, as well as how infrequently he might be taught within the milieu of creative writing. I came to understand Montaigne as a writer who fits neatly in different circles, and who is often taught to students accessing him from angles far different from my own.

            Of course there are other writers whose work might find its way onto syllabi not just in creative writing classes but in courses in other disciplines—names that immediately come to my mind are Roland Barthes, Hélène Cixous, Susan Sontag, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Jacques Derrida—and these are writers who've adopted modes of writing often examined through kaleidoscopic lenses, looked at as if they take on different shapes and colors every time we readers make a turn. In the light of the kaleidoscope, Montaigne's own work is no less colorful.

It's easy to wonder just how we should read Montaigne, and especially how to look closely at his essays. We could read him as a wise philosopher who's teaching us about idleness or cannibals, but looking at the writing itself is another game, coming at Montaigne from a wholly different direction—a re-strategizing, if you will, of our examination of one of France's great writers.

            We can begin, I think, with the qualities of the Montaignan essay, and what have since become the qualities of the personal essay. For the record, I don't believe the Montaignan essay is the best or only valid form of the essay, nor do I, for that matter, want to call Montaigne the “Father of the Essay” (a moniker I'm more likely to give to Plutarch or Cicero). But I do think that because the Montaignan essay allows itself qualities like digression and anecdote, in addition to its conversations with other writers, it encourages aspiring essayists to follow his lead, and to consider the ways he synthesized the many elements of essay writing all at once.

            In Terence Cave's book How to Read Montaigne, for instance, Cave writes (about Montaigne's “To the Reader”)  that “[a]s in letter writing, it presupposes a reader who is not some distant, impersonal figure, but something like a friend. Or again, it may be expressed as a form of improvisation: 'essaying' can only be authentic when it avoids all premeditation and registers the random flow of thought.” Viewing Montaigne as a great letter-writer, as a belletrist at heart, might help us understand the position from which he essays, and, furthermore, how to essay ourselves. Montaigne isn't pedantic. He doesn't pontificate. He isn't condescending or conceited. He writes to us as friends, the dear in “dear reader” always hanging overhead, and the reason it might be easy for us to listen is because it's easy for him to speak. And just as with the epistolary form, Montaigne frees himself via an avoidance of forethought: He essays (the verb form never forgotten) in fluid motion, the pen held close and inhibition held at bay.

            Conversely, Jane Kramer tells us in “Me, Myself, and I” that “[t]he best way to read Montaigne is to keep watching him, the way he watched himself, because the retired, reclusive, and pointedly cranky Michel de Montaigne is in many ways a fiction—a mind so absorbingly seated that by now it can easily pass for the totality of Montaigne's 'second' life.” And Sarah Bakewell, in the warmly-received How to Live, notes that “[a]s the novelist Gustave Flaubert advised a friend who was wondering how to approach Montaigne: Don't read him as children do, for amusement, nor as the ambitious do, to be instructed. No, read him in order to live.” It seems that when we read Montaigne, it isn't as if we merely read the text but that we read Montaigne himself. This might be the only way to read him properly: First and foremost as a man.

            To read Montaigne “in order to live,” and to watch him “the way he watched himself,” we initially approach him not as philosopher, essayist, or former politician, but as someone who allowed the totality of the meaning of his life experiences to flow through his pen—as a confrère in the duty of living. Because his character on the page was shaped as much by his omissions as by his admissions, we trust more than anything else his thinking—the way it found itself sneakily placed, and its poignant presentation, should be our biggest considerations as readers.

            “Today we would call him a gentleman ethnographer,” Kramer writes, “more enchanted than alarmed by the bewildering variety of human practices.” This enchantment is Montaigne's gravity, and it's easy to think of Montaigne as charming because of how he marvels at himself, and therefore how he marvels at the rest of us. Whether in “Of Thumbs,” “Of Vanity,” or “Of Practice,” Montaigne's examination of human nature never traverses into contempt, and for this we can be deeply grateful. Montaigne's essays, always so thoughtful, have every opportunity to cast a dark shadow over his perception of the world, but his writing, even when it's writing about the darkness of death, somehow gives us a portrait of a man nowhere near in danger of going scrooge.

The essay that helped me begin to understand the (Western) personal essay tradition and form was Montaigne's 1574 essay “Of practice.”[1]In “Of practice,” Montaigne begins with a philosophical position by introducing a subject, and we dive in with him from the first sentence: “Reasoning and education, though we are willing to put our trust in them, can hardly be powerful enough to lead us to action, unless besides we exercise and form our soul by experience to the way we want it to go; otherwise, when it comes to the time for action, it will undoubtedly find itself at a loss.” He keeps us seated in the third person throughout his first paragraph, then opens his second paragraph with a sentence that serves as a slight turn on his initial thoughts: “But for dying, which is the greatest task we have to perform, practice cannot help us.” This is what we need for an awareness of what Montaigne will ruminate on throughout the essay—but rather than swiftly introduce death as a subjectin the first paragraph he guides us in slowly, and only once we're waist-deep will he tell us to swim on our own.

            This is a move Montaigne has borrowed (or learned outright, perhaps) from essayists before him, like Seneca, Plutarch, and Cicero. There's the introduction of a subject as a part of the essay's introduction, which differs from the essays working outside of Montaigne's lineage, which might open with an image or a narrative beginning instead. (An essayist who comes to mind as working outside of this traditional move might be Joan Didion, while those like Roland Barthes or James Baldwin have kept the move alive in much of their own work.)

            By the fourth paragraph in “Of practice,” Montaigne has brought the reader into the first person and into the collective “we,” also bringing those of us familiar with the literary essay as a form to a place of recognition: A look at one of the subgeneric attributes of the personal essay. His “It seems to me, however . . .” (my emphasis) leads us further into the process of essaying: After introducing the death-subject we come to see that this is beyond mere report, and that in order to dig into death there's an inevitable sense that, at some point, he'll have to provide a subjective examination of death itself.

            Montaigne's sixth paragraph finally brings us that narrative switch, where, it could be argued, we see him get to the heart of what we understand as essaying. He tells us about a time when he took his horse out for a ride around his property with another man, and that eventually this man “spurred his horse at full speed up the little path behind me, came down like a colossus on the little man and little horse, and hit us like a thunderbolt with all his strength and weight, sending us both head over heels.” With this thunderbolt came fear: The momentary fear that, on the ground away from his horse, “ten or twelve paces beyond, dead, stretched on my back, my face all bruised and skinned, my sword, which I had had in my hand, more than ten paces away, my belt in pieces, having no more motion or feeling than a log,” Montaigne would succumb to death's grip.

            From here we're given a meditation on what it means to die. More accurately, we're given Montaigne's observation that there is no way we can practicedying, the way we can practice our other skills and occupations. He illustrates through his narrative a philosophy appearing earlier in the essay, that “for dying, which is the greatest task we have to perform, practice cannot help us [. . .] we can try it only once: we are all apprentices when we come to it,” giving us the image of a helpless but ruminative Montaigne ready to pass away in that field, his body battered and broken but his mind still racing.

            He tells us how he's saved—by nearby family and friends who rush to his aid after believing he might've been killed by the fall—before returning to Montaigne-as-essayist in his eighth paragraph with “this recollection, which is strongly implanted on my soul, showing me the face and idea of death so true to nature, reconciles me to it somewhat.” Montaigne's own wandering mind took him to a place of reflection in order to better make sense of the death-subject, and in many of our own essays today we can see what we've learned from Montaigne's writing moves in “Of practice”: 1) that essays, by their very own meditative nature, employ narratives without necessarily becoming them, 2) that a linear (and non-digressive) form is difficult to maintain if an essay is going to essay, and 3) that in order to write our “honest-to-God” essays we need to make meaning out of our narratives—because that's what essays are supposed to do. Otherwise, we might as well try our hands at short stories.

In Phillip Lopate's 1996 essay “In Search of the Centaur: The Essay-Film,” Lopate spends considerable energy defining the essay-film for the unknowing reader, but works toward a definition of the essay-film by first illustrating the qualities of the personal essay. While these two subgenres of nonfiction need distinction from each other, discerning between them shines an accidental light on the qualities I've learned to use to classify the personal essay—or, at least, my ideal of the essay as a form.

            The essay, Lopate writes, “tracks down a person's thoughts as he or she tries to work out some mental knot, however various its strands. An essay is a search to find out what one thinks about something.” This lines up nicely with Montaigne's use of the term essai, from the French “to attempt.” I'll piggyback on Lopate's idea here in saying that the essay is an attempt at working through the author's mental knot; at figuring out what we really think about our subjects. And especially within the Montaignan tradition, the characteristic we look for as we judge the quality of an essay bears on how much digging into their own mind the essayist is willing to do. To keep the metaphor going: Good, Montaignan essays are going to search for the essay's bedrock moment, the place where you can't dig any deeper without it actually being therapy.

            In digging, Montaigne gives us a bodiless epistolary voice—bodiless because he doesn't actually address the reader by breaking the Fourth Wall, yet we never lose the sense that he perceives us as friends. I think this technique is one that's trickled down through other essayists, and Lopate might agree: He asserts that readers of an essay “must feel included in a true conversation, allowed to follow through mental processes of contradiction and digression, yet be aware of a formal shapeliness developing simultaneously underneath.” When I go to contemporary essayists like Baldwin or Barthes, like Didion or Biss, I assume that Montaigne's disembodiment somehow coached them, that it influenced a slightly indirect “dear reader” attitude they employed while writing their essays.

            It's this emphasis on mental processes that also helps define the Montaignan essay, and that gets us closer to understanding which tools (a shovel or a spade, perhaps?) we need to de/construct the essays in this tradition that we've described as sharp, poignant, heartfelt. When Montaigne returns to his essaying after detailing the story of his fall from his horse, for instance, he grounds us in his “dear reader” voice again with a reminder of the importance of recounting his fall. He tells us that

[t]his account of so trivial an event would be rather pointless, were it not for the instruction that I have derived from it for myself; for in truth, in order to get used to the idea of death, I find there is nothing like coming close to it. Now as Pliny says, each man is a good education to himself, provided he has the capacity to spy on himself from close up. What I write here is not my teaching, but my study; it is not a lesson for others, but for me.

Montaigne's statement about how “the capacity to spy on oneself from close up” is useful primarily to himself, but might what's useful for Montaigne to reflect on also be useful for others? This spying is an occasion not just for “Of practice” but for all of his most personal essays, and with Montaigne's self-study we become witnesses to the usefulness of reflection within the essay form. It's not merely for the purposes of exposition or confession, or for Montaigne to say to us “this is this weird thing that happened to me once,” but to mix meditation on a subject with a reflection that might illuminate this meditation, the product of which moves us both toward grasping “the idea of death” as well as—if we're essayists reading Montaigne in order to essay by his example—what it means to experience a brush against death. We have as much reason to ponder what Montaigne has done as an essayist as what he's done as a model for how we might learn to live.

I don't think that I typically write Montaignan essays. I'm likely to ground myself in a narrative first, and then I try to make sense of that narrative, like Montaigne might do were he to begin with his horse instead of with the death-subject. I take my cues from James Baldwin or E.B. White, placing myself in an image before looking at the little pieces that eventually come together as a bigger picture. Montaigne's essays haven't driven me toward strict imitation, but I see the merit in using Montaigne to learn how to essay well.

            Reading “Of practice” taught me a lot about writing essays, though, and what it taught me most of all is how the personal essay operates as a subgenre of nonfiction, making me wonder how it hasn't been seen by more readers as essential—quintessential, even—to Montaigne's corpus. I want to root for it more than “Of thumbs,” “Of cannibals,” “Of the education of children,” or “That to philosophize is to learn to die.” I want it to be the essay that teaches us all how to essay.

            It also makes me a little sad. Not because of Montaigne, but because of readers and writers trying their hands at nonfiction who easily ignore what Montaigne shows us is the potential for the genre. I'm sad when college composition students think the essay is only an academic thing, which makes me wonder how we might rescue the essay from its history in classrooms. I'm equally sad when writers of “creative nonfiction” write narratives without questions and call them essays, when the essay as a form resides in the space between scrutiny, philosophical investigation, and self-interrogation. I'm all for narrative nonfiction, but let's not write narratives without questions while still calling them essays.

            “An essay is a continual asking of questions,” Lopate writes, “not necessarily finding 'solutions,' but enacting the struggle for truth in full view,” and “Of practice” is an excellent example of how we can do the work of asking questions without necessarily getting every one answered. We have no certain answers about death, for instance, but this shouldn't keep us from talking about how it affects us, how our perceptions of death might alter with age or experience, or how it feels to look death in the eye—to know that we might be put beside our own lives by accidents that shock us into reflection.

            I leave you as Montaigne himself might: Not with my own words but with those of another. Specifically, I leave you with Montaigne's words. Words that might guide us in both essaying and in life, and that shed light on how and why we essay: to paint our own thoughts, and to give testimony of ourselves.

My trade and my art is living. He who forbids me to speak about it according to my sense, experience, and practice, let him order the architect to speak of buildings not according to himself but according to his neighbor; according to another man's knowledge, not according to his own. If it is vainglory for a man himself to publish his own merits, why doesn't Cicero proclaim the eloquence of Hortensius, Hortensius that of Cicero?

             Perhaps they mean that I should testify about myself by works and deeds, not by bare words. What I chiefly portray is my cogitations, a shapeless subject that does not lend itself to expression in actions. It is all I can do to couch my thoughts in this airy medium of words. Some of the wisest and most devout men have lived avoiding all noticeable actions. My actions would tell more about my fortune than about me. They bear witness to their own part, not to mine, unless it be by conjecture and without certainty: they are samples which display only details. I expose myself entire: my portrait is a cadaver on which the veins, the  muscles, and the tendons appear at a glance, each part in its place. One part of what I am was produced by a couch, another by a pallor or a palpitation of the heart—in any case dubiously. It is not my deeds that I write down; it is myself, it is my essence.

Works Cited

Bakewell, Sarah. How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer. New York: Other, 2011. Print.

Cave, Terence. How to Read Montaigne. London: Granta, 2007. Print.

Kramer, Jane. “Me, Myself, and I.” The Best American Essays 2010. Ed. Christopher Hitchens and Robert Atwan. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2010. 53-63. Print.

Lopate, Phillip. “In Search of the Centaur: The Essay-Film.” Beyond Document: Essays on Nonfiction Film. Ed. Charles Warren. Hanover, NH: U of New England, 1996. 243-70. Print.

Montaigne, Michel de. “Of practice.” The Complete Works: Essays, Travel Journal, Letters.

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[1]    Translated here by Donald Frame. The essay also exists in Charles Cotton's translation, entitled “Use makes perfect.”

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Micah McCrary’s essays, reviews, and translations have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, Brevity, Third Coast, and Midwestern Gothic, among other publications. He co-edits con•text, is a doctoral student in English at Ohio University, and holds an MFA in Nonfiction from Columbia College Chicago. His book manuscript, Island in the City, was a finalist in the Cleveland State University Poetry Center 2015 Essay Collection Competition and a semifinalist in Ohio State University Press’s 2016 Non/Fiction Collection Prize Competition.

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