Some of 2007's Best Creative Nonfiction
BY SHELLY BRYANT I NOVEMBER 10, 2008
David Foster Wallace, ed. The Best American Essays, 2007. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007. 294 pages.
ISBN 978-0-618-70927-4
The Best American series is a good spot to start if you are looking for excellent creative nonfiction pieces each year. The 2007 version of The Best American Essays is one of the best of the best. Edited by David Foster Wallace, one of creative nonfiction's most noteworthy giants, this book brings together some excellent work from 2007. Wallace's own introduction to the anthology is not the least of these excellent pieces (and for what it's worth, I'm one of the very odd sort who reads collections like this straight through, beginning to end, and so got to read his entertaining introduction first).
Iraq and the Bush Administration are favorite issues raised in several of the essays in the collection, and I really enjoyed the insightful treatment of the field of contemporary politics by these writers. Some of the essays are disturbing, which is generally considered a good thing in the field of creative nonfiction. I found Mark Greif's "Afternoon of the Sex Children" and Elaine Scarry's "Rules of Engagement" both to be disturbing, in the best of ways.
Several of the essays have made their way into my daily conversations since I read the essays gathered here. Besides the Greif and Scarry pieces, I've found myself engaging with several other essays in the collection at different times. Ian Baruma's "The Freedom to Offend" and Peter Singer's "What Should a Billionaire Give—and What Should You?" have both made their way into various blog entries I've written in the past month or so, and Louis Menand's "Name That Tone" has brought me a comforting smile in those moments when I've begun to feel old (and those moments are coming more and more frequently all the time).
It is never easy to cull through a large body of writing and say, "This counts as the best," and David Foster Wallace addresses that difficulty in his introduction. That said, he's done a fine job of at least collecting some very excellent work from 2007 to showcase in the anthology. It is a book that any fan of creative nonfiction should pick up and read through—whether from beginning to end, or with a more carefree "grazing" approach. Whichever way you go about it, you are sure to find something engaging in the volume.
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