The art of essay writing is not very different from assaying.
A set of facts much like silt sand and earth are sifted in a mental pan on the riverbanks of ones mind and it is hoped as we put the argument through a sieve that we will find gold .
The construction of an essays’s argument is a perilous exercise
By and large we teeter between the certainty of our opinion buttressed by facts that support our contention and the winds of our doubt at the high altitude of the spires we find ourselves perched upon.
But when the essay is finally written and complete, it is sent out hopefully , as Plutarch one of the earliest essayists says, to kindle the flame in one’s mind rather than to fill it.
An essay is a provocation to think. It cannot be anything but: it is not history, nor is it reporting on the present times.
It may spring from an observation: So and so
was dressed so brightly that it reminded one of a male peacock in prime mating season.
That observation leads one of think of, say, the relationships between plumage and sexuality. And off to the races we go!
An essayist as opposed to a novelist,a poet, a historian or the writer of a thesis must be prepared to hear voices of both agreement as well as disquietude.
This is actually the job of the essay: it is to provoke. In that sense the essayist must be a rebel ,never content with the status quo, inciting anarchy.
Anarchy is a space of creativity: it is a context of order without rule.
The essay asks you to imagine a different order or orders. It removes the “it can’t be done”.
An essay is a tilt at a windmill.
A badly written one can be nothing more than a diatribe.
A well written one in the traditions of Montaigne and Voltaire,Lamb and Hazlitt, Jacobsen or de Botton is a delight. You wonder as to how they see the world we live and love in, the motives and reasonings of the politics of our times, the angst and joys of our lives.
We are shown paths. Which one should we take?
That, the essayist says, is up to you.
So It Got Me Thinking 