Essay Series on Grief by Meghan O’Rourke
Last week, Meaghan O’Rourke began a series of essays on grief at Slate Magazine. I adore the essay form, and am especially moved by these pieces. O’Rourke, a poet and the culture critic at Slate, finds a place for both her lyric talent and her critic’s eye in these essays, which exquisitely balance personal pain with a search for a more reasoned understanding of the grieving process.
I’ve blogged before about Adam Gopnik’s introductory essay to The Best American Essays 2008, and can’t help thinking of his words again:
… an essay without a bit of both abstract reflection and winning anecdote–without a tear to raise and a point to score, without an unimpeded argument and an obvious “I”–isn’t quite an essay. The ideal essay has facts and feelings, emotions and thoughts, an argument about and an anecdote from, parallel and then crisscrossing, all over it. It is a classical form for short-winded romantics …
from the introduction to The Best American Essays 2008,
by guest editor Adam Gopnik
O’Rourke’s essays on grief live up to Gopnik’s definition here, and then some. And that’s a particularly tough challenge when mining the subject of grief, perhaps the most-written about topic out there. O’Rourke’s essays rise above the best I’ve read on grief because of both her clear-eyed emotional honesty, and her utter unwillingness to wallow.
Anyone hoping to write essays should look at these pieces and appreciate, over and above the subject, their exquisite craftsmanship.