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The Art of the Essay

 The extraordinary paragraph featured here is from Donald Hall's essay "Out the Window." Hall--having spied his ninetieth birthday on the horizon--had committed himself to writing prose.


We don't get many books from octogenarians. In fact, Lorrie Moore has specifically said that she thinks a writer's career ends at the eightieth birthday; "I have turf until I turn eighty, and then I need to cede my spot." This is nonsense--and Donald Hall enjoys taking on the contrarian role. It's clear throughout the essay that he is writing as an act of service--he knows there are not many literary reports from the pen of a "post-post-retirement" man, and he is filling a gap. I'm especially moved by his descriptions of his mother. The subtext is evident: "This, now, is what it was like for her. This is what she couldn't find words for. This is what she couldn't tell me."

A writer has to recognize shame as an opportunity. Most of us choose not to dwell on our car accidents. By contrast, Amy Bloom appeared in public and said, "The year my husband sought help with his suicide, I crashed my car four times." Blithely, Hall does something similar: "When I was eighty, I had two accidents. I stopped driving before I killed somebody." He looks, unblinking, at his own routines: "I eat widower food, mostly Stouffer's."

Finally, it's nice to spend time thinking about Hall's verbs. "Prose endures." "When I lament and darken over my diminishments, I accomplish nothing." "New poems no longer come to me, with their prodigies of metaphor and assonance."

Great writing.








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