Culture

The Lost Origins of the Essay edited and introduced by John D’Agata

The Lost Origins of the Essay edited by John D'Agata. Graywolf Press. Paperback, 656 pages. $23.
Cover of The Lost Origins of the Essay

What is an anthology? It is always a little too much and a bit too little. Too much, I mean, in particularly physical terms. The anthologies I own — “The Oxford Anthology of British Literature,” “The Best American Short Stories of the Century” — are prodigious volumes, not the little bouquets of verse denoted by the Greek anthologia. I leave them on my shelves. Sometimes, when I want to exert myself, I go over to where they sit next to the dictionaries and the grammarian handbooks. Otherwise, they sit dusty while I type something into Google. In the Internet Age, the weight of words has ripened into a quaint phrase.