Liars and Saints

 Clifton Fadiman sounds insufferable. He was a misogynist. He informed his daughter of his extramarital affairs by saying, to her, "I've just had a stroke. There are some women I want you to call. Share the news. Don't ask any questions. Here's the list." Fadiman also struggled to cope with daily life. When his wife/servant had a health episode, Fadiman (reasonably) chose to drive his daughter to a restaurant for dinner--and he immediately crashed the car. On the other hand, Fadiman was a revered critic for "The New Yorker"--he was brave enough to say that Faulkner was for masochists. Fadiman launched his own career by inventing 100 good ideas for book proposals--handing the list to a friend in publishing--and worming his way into a Manhattan editorial department. Additionally, he edited "Cricket" Magazine and did a high-profile translation of Nietzsche. None of this really matters--what matters is that Clifton is the father of Anne Fadiman, on...

 Anne Fadiman's extraordinary personal essay, "Under Water," is an adventure story. In her youth, Fadiman goes on a rafting trip. A young man gets his foot wedged between two rocks. Here, you might expect a successful rescue. But that's not the tale. Fadiman and her friends attempt to reach the victim--but the attempt is a failure. Next, the *adults* arrive and make an attempt--and they also fail. In other words, the kid dies. What makes a personal narrative special is the depth of the writer's thinking. A banal lesson might be this: "Don't ever go rafting." Or this: "Carpe diem." But Fadiman takes an odd, shocking path: The victim's shirtless torso was pale and undulating. I thought, he looks like the flayed skin on St. Bartholomew in the Sistine Chapel. As soon as I had the thought, I knew that it was dishonorable. To think about anything outside the moment, outside Gary, was a crime of inattention. I swallowed a small, sour piece of ...

  In an Anne Fadiman essay, you get (1) a perfect title, (2) an arresting intro, and (3) details. I'll show you what I mean. Fadiman wrote about switching to Zoom for class instruction during Covid, and she called the essay "Screen Share." It's an essay about sharing one's screen--but it's also an act of sharing- about- screens. Perfect title. To write about oneself, one must be able to *mock* oneself. Fadiman demonstrates this with her intro: ON THE FOURTH  day of spring break, our university’s president announces that no one is to return to campus. Two cases of Covid-19 have been reported in our state. All classes will be moving online. Soon afterward, the members of the humanities faculty receive an email from our dean telling us that “the development of a quality online course takes at least two years.” We have 12 days. I feel like a runner with decent times in the 800 meters whose coach says,  You still get to go to the track meet, but we’ve switched you ...

  Anne Fadiman has written about Coleridge, about a Hmong community in America, about "them" as a singular pronoun with unknown antecedent, and about the habit of annotating books. She understands that a writer needs to "seduce" a reader. So one of her essays begins in this way: It was a late afternoon in November, and I was hosting a college talk by Mark Helprin. During the Q&A, Helprin told the assembled students that making it as a writer today was virtually impossible. A student stood up. Thin. Beautiful. Long reddish-brown hair. Long legs. Flagrantly short skirt. Nimbus of angry energy. She asked Helprin if he really meant that. There was a collective intake of breath in the room. It was what everyone else had been thinking but no one had been brave or brazen enough to say... What follows is a twin portrait. Ostensibly, Fadiman is writing about an impressive student. But--really--she is writing about herself. It's clear that she is tied to her student (...