One of the wonderful things about essay collections is you don’t have to keep going. It’s a breeze to read an essay at a time, spaced a day or a week or at whatever interval you please, no need to keep a narrative thread in your head as you would, say, were you trying to read “War and Peace” BECAUSE YOU SHOULD, but then you get waylaid for a week because your basement floods or you took a vacation that didn’t turn out to really be one, and when you return to the tale you can no longer distinguish between Denisov, Kutuzov, and Bezukhov, so you have to start over for the 33rd time in a life that you can’t help but notice is growing shorter by the day while the book refuses to do the same.
The 37 selections in Brian Doyle’s 2016 collection, “A Sense of Wonder,” require only 179 pages, which my calculator tells me comes to 4.84 pages each.
Some are a bit longer, some shorter, none requiring more than a few minutes with writers who don’t dally in offering up widely varying reflections on the glorious, primal, almost instinctual human sense of wonder that manifests in countless forms—mouth-gaping, joyous, hilarious, inspirational, devotional, somber, critical, aggrieved.
And always: honest, from the heart.
If essays are the bite-sized version of books, excerpts of essays are a delicious lick, a nibble, a nuzzle, a sunbeam mainlining it right to the soul.
To be ingested, of course, at a pace of your choosing.
***
***
Patrick Madden: “On Laughing: Notes on the Funniest Sound There Is”
“My daughter, three months old, is just beginning to laugh. She is not ticklish; she is not mimicking us. As far as I can tell, she is just delighted by the world. She sees a funny face, sees her brother in a giant witch’s hat, sees me with my glasses upside down, sees her mother dancing to the funky music of a commercial, and she laughs.
“I have loved this kid since she was born—since before she was born, when she was only an idea—and yet I haven’t known her till now. Her laughter has become a common ground for us, a mutual realization that the world is an interesting and silly place.
“According to a third century-BC Egyptian papyrus: ‘When (God) burst out laughing there was light…When he burst out laughing a second time the waters were born; at the seventh burst of laughter the soul was born.’ Man as the height of God’s laughter: that might explain a lot.”
—Mr. Madden is a professor of humanities at Brigham Young University and the author of four essay collections.
***
***
William Stafford: “Every War Has Two Losers”
“It might be that military appropriations should be increased. We need an easy, enlightened, well-paid, courteously treated army—one so good that it will participate in its own decline…
“The question, ‘Wouldn’t you fight for your country?’ begs the real question, which is, ‘What is the best way to behave here and now to serve your country?’ So one answer would be, ‘If it was the right thing to do, I would fight for my country. Now let’s talk about the right thing to do.’ Or, ‘Wouldn’t you refuse to fight if asked under the wrong conditions to do so, for the sake of your country? So let’s talk about what to do for our country”…
“The state can’t feel. It can’t have our undivided loyalty, for the sources of its power and wisdom are capricious. Meanwhile, Right wanders from person to person and sometimes has to live out in the open without shelter.”
—Mr. Stafford (1914-1993) was a conscientious objector during World War II who served four years in Civilian Public Service camps. He authored more than 60 volumes of poetry and another seven non-fiction collections.
***
***
Heather King: “The Closest to Love We Ever Get”
“Monday morning, putting out the garbage as the sky turns pink above the salmon stucco façades, I bend my face to the gardenia in the courtyard, knowing that every shabby corner, every bird and flower and blade of grass, every honking horn and piece of graffitti, every pain and contradiction, deserves a song of praise. O Sacrament most holy, o sacrament divine…, we sang at Mass yesterday. The kids are coming in droves now, making their way to Hobart Middle School—pushing, yelling, throwing their candy wrappers on the sidewalk—and that is a kind of hymn, too. We’re all doing our part, their exuberant shouts mingling with the thoughts I’ll shape into an essay, all drifting like incense, raised aloft and offered up to the smoggy air above Koreatown. Maybe that’s exactly as it should be. Maybe I need their noise and they need my silence; maybe the song we make together—all of us—is the closest to love we ever get.
“‘What are we here for?'” Annie Dillard asks in The Writing Life. “‘Propter chorum, the monks say: for the sake of the choir.'”
—Ms. King is the author of 13 memoirs and also writes about arts, culture and the nature of creativity.
***
***
Edward Hoagland: “When I Was Blind”
“When I was blind (for a while) I loved to ride trains, to sit in the observation car and chat with strangers, or in the dining car, the club car. When you can’t see, age is less of a factor, no skin tone or paunchy posture to go by. Voices wrinkle later than faces, and, emanating from inside, seem truer to the nature residing there, harder to educate in concealment and deceit. Voices register compassion, disdain, apprehension, or surprise more directly, if you’ve learned to listen…
“Blindness was full of second sight.”
—Mr. Hoagland (1932-2026) was a noted American essayist of some 20 volumes who also wrote short stories, novels and criticism.
***
***
Brian Doyle: “The Late Mr. bin Laden: A Note”
“What a waste of gifts given to that man by the Creator! Imagine, for a moment, the same man alert to humor, perhaps the greatest weapon of all. Imagine that man, humorless in this life, infused by the holy merriment of John XXIII, a Dalai Lama, a Desmond Tutu. Imagine that same poor soul, consumed day and night by smoldering hate and worries about rehearsing his lines for his video performances, alert to the power of mercy, simplicity, conversation, common ground. Imagine what he might have done for the religion he loved, had he bent his capacious talents to witty connection rather than wanton destruction. Imagine, for a moment, that he might have become a great man, rather than the preening thug he was, wrapped in a shawl, obsessed with himself, hiding in a dark room, waiting for the explosive death he must have known would someday be his fate. What a waste.”
—Mr. Doyle (1956-2017) was the longtime editor of “Portland Magazine” (Oregon) and the author of some 20 essay collections, along with editing “A Sense of Wonder,” published one year before his death from a brain tumor. Which, of course, he wrote about in another essay entitled, “On ‘Not’ Beating Cancer.”
***
***
Mary Oliver: “Do You Think There Is Anything Not Attached By Its Unbreakable Cord to Everything Else?”
“Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor. With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats. I didn’t choose them, I don’t fault them, but it took me time to reject them. Now in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness. Something is wrong, I know it, if I don’t keep my attention on eternity. May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe—tiny but useful. May I stay forever in the stream. May I look down upon the wind flower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect…
“Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen…
“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”
—Ms. Oliver (1935-2019), was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 26 poetry volumes of poetry and another seven of prose and essays. She is the subject of a recently released PBS documentary, “Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World.”
***
***
Ian Frazier: “Native: Notes on Americanness”
“This is the tradition of American journalism that modern journalism, and to a degree, modern politics, is still reacting to. The tendrils of history are much longer than we admit. From the widespread attitude at first contact, that Indians were animals without souls, to the attitude not all that long ago that they should just be exterminated…
“Sometimes that which is closest to us we don’t see at all. I feel a certain responsibility as an American writer to try to see that which is closest to me in my country, which might explain why some of my books are about fishing and New York City or about Ohio and my family or about the Sioux, especially, a remarkable and paradoxical group of my countrymen. I have no patience with people, and there have been some, who say that I should not have written a book about the Sioux, because what could I, given who I am, possibly know? My answer there, I guess, is, well, as a middle-aged white guy, what do I write about? Other, middle-aged white guys?”
—Mr. Frazier has authored 10 non-fiction books and another seven volumes of humor writing. His “On the Rez” detailed life among the Oglala Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
***
***
Pattiann Rogers: “I Hear And Behold God in Every Object, Yet Understand God Not in the Least”
“All of us want to be loved unconditionally. We crave that love. We are born craving to be loved unconditionally. Some of us become warped or crippled from the lack of that love. Maybe the health and vibrancy of the universe too depend on a love like that. Maybe the creation is not finished. Maybe the creation, in its ongoing shifting and changing, altering and evolving, requires a robust strength that love alone can provide, a love given freely and unconditionally throughout the coming and going of stars and mountains and suns and planets, in the coming and going of life…We can express love to a universe that requires it, give love despite fear, despite horror and grief, despite suffering, despite our ignorance, love unconditionally despite death. Each of us can give that gift as we are able.”
—Ms. Rogers, born in 1940, has authored 16 volumes of poetry and countless other writings which have won her a plethora of awards, fellowships, writers-in-residence posts, and many other honors over her long career.
***
***
Looking to subscribe to this blog’s pretty much weekly posts? Top right of this page, just plug in your email address (never shared or published) with a name—full, first name only, or pseudonym—and you’ll get email notices with each post.
Deep appreciation to the photographers! Unless otherwise stated, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing.
Elizabeth Haslam, whose photos (except for library books) grace the rotating banner top of homepage. https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhaslam/
Library books by Larry Rose, Redlands, California, all rights reserved, contact: larry@rosefoto.com
Cosmic wonder by Brad Switzerland, Ann Arbor, Michigan https://unsplash.com/@mintchap
Laughing infant by Sean Dreilinger, Portland, Oregon metro area https://www.flickr.com/photos/seandreilinger/
Horror mask by Rob Griffin, Wisconsin https://unsplash.com/@rgartprjkt
Los Angeles street scene by Brian Gonzalez, Pico Rivera, California https://www.flickr.com/photos/inmyeyes88/
Bat by Uftab Uzzaman, Thames, New Zealand https://www.flickr.com/photos/aftab/
Twin Towers “In Memory of Yan Ji” https://unsplash.com/@yanruoji
Streamside by Andrew Hidas https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewhidas/
Sitting Bull from historical archives
Mama chimp and baby by Michele W. https://www.flickr.com/photos/101951515@N07/
Oh, oh, oh….thank you Brian Doyle. Thank you, Andrew Hidas.
On behalf of the departed-but-still-with-us-in-the-larger-sense Mr. Doyle and myself, we say, “You’re most welcome!”
It’s funny how often I don’t know what I need until I get it, and then I think wow, I really needed that. I also need to hug that baby!
Your column made me think of the beautiful and ethereal song by Van Morrison called “A Sense of Wonder” that includes the lines:
Didn’t I come to bring you a sense of wonder?
Didn’t I come to lift your fiery vision bright?
Didn’t I come to bring you a sense of wonder in the flame
It’s easy to describe the leaves in the Autumn
And it’s, oh so easy in the Spring
But down through January and February
It’s a very different thing
Here a link that includes the lyrics and a video that someone created to accompany the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5vkZPOdKOI
Good words. Great photos. Baby laughing says it all. Sitting Bull, regal beyond all portraits. Nice read on a Friday afternoon.
Yes!! Yes!!
Thank you!
Me too, Deanna, about that baby! Still wasn’t sure I was going with this idea when I got a little into it, which is when I often drift a bit, take a walk, check out fotos that might work with the general theme. That kiddo was the one I ran into when I knew, “Yep, that’s it, this is a go!”
Robby, really glad you brought that song to my and readers’ attention. I looked at it for this post but in typical Van style, it went off a bit “into the mystic,” and not being sure what it was about and not wanting to dally too long to find out, I went for something more direct. The notion arises, though, of exploring Van’s wonder meditation as a brilliant song, given its clear literary undertones. (Or is that overtones? You’re the music guy, you tell me!) So as always: Stay tuned!
That “nice read on a Friday afternoon” was exactly the mood I was hoping this would engender for readers, Robert. Perfect synopsis, thanks.
Marilyn, very happy you enjoyed these snippets and stopped in to say so. Twice! Much appreciated…
“We sold our clothes to the state”, I always wondered about that line…And I loved the description of the process of reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace. I read Anna Karenina well enough but couldn’t stick through for the next one. Thanks for the essay recommendation, I do love essays and can find them also here, and on Substack. It’s fall, we need the sense of sadness it brings to show it’s other side, the renewal that it brings no matter where we are in the process of life. Sufjan Stevens’ music accompanies well. The musical made from his songs was absolutely wonderful.
Being only somewhat familiar with Sufian Stevens, I’m mystified by that line myself, Jeanette. On the surface, it could be an allusion to joining the military, but the rest of the song doesn’t really support that, so who knows? Sometimes, we just have to “let the mystery be,” as Iris Dement recommended we do about God?
The only Tolstoy I’ve ever gotten through is “The Death of Ivan Ilych,” which I found as fascinating as many critics and literature professors have over the years, but that didn’t quite propel me enough to tackle either “War and Peace” or Karenina. Might I yet? Wouldn’t rule it out, but…