Top 10 unconventional essays | Essays
I have collected here 10 book-length essays that appeal to me in their style, and that informed my writing of Having and Being Had, which I think of as a book-length essay. I have left out works that read like essays but that are entirely fictional, such as Claire-Louise Bennett’s wonderful Pond, and Anne Carson’s The Beauty of the Husband. I have also left out works that were published as poetry, such as A Pillow Book, Suzanne Buffam’s lovely homage to the zuihitsu of the 10th-century writer Sei Shōnagon. Even so, many of these books are only arguably essays. I find all of them diffi...