The Art of the Essay, 1999

Now in its third year, this annual collection presents the most notable, influential, and surprising essays published in the last twelve months in either books or periodicals throughout the English-speaking world. Selected with consummate taste and a catholic openness to style and subject matter by famed essayist, critic, and editor, Phillip Lopate, the 1999 edition demonstrates that the form continues its renaissance as an unrivaled vehicle of intelligence and sensibility.

For this edition, Lopate has paired his tewnty-eight selections by topic, which offers suprising parallels and divergences in points of view. Andre Dubus and Tom Beller on apprentice work as a form of true experience; Richard Rorty and George Packer on the quixotic and often self-defeating character of the American left;… Keep Reading