Just before Christmas I published the comments of Benjamin Chambers, of the top-notch literary website The King’s English, as he daringly attempts to read every single New Yorker essay ever to be singled out in Houghton Mifflin’s “Best American Essays” series (which I first wrote about here). For his next feat, I suspect, he’ll try a record English Channel swim.

Take it away, Benjamin!

My next job was to tackle 1987, from the anthology edited by Annie Dillard: an easy list of only three essays. (One wonders if Dillard didn’t care for the stuff The New Yorker did; or if she felt obliged to go against the grain, figuring that it was better to take notice of material in other, lesser known venues; or—possibly?—The New Yorker itself was having an off year? It’s interesting that when Geoffrey Wolff edited the anthology the next year, he felt 10 NYer pieces were notable (though he didn’t select any for “best of” status). What’s odd about that, though, is that he included some very weak pieces, including one by Veronica Geng that’s actually fiction. (The Complete NYer‘s index lists Geng’s piece that way, too, but it’s not infallible, as for example when it inexplicably classifies as fiction Susan Sontag’s autobiographical essay, “Pilgrimage,” which appears on Dillard’s 1987 list.)

Actually, I cheated and started out my 1987 reading by jumping ahead to 1988 and reading Joan Didion’s “Letter from Los Angeles,” which starts out shapeless but pleasing, and then turns into an acute report on the writers’ strike that had just recently fizzled out. Given the strike that’s currently going on, it was particularly timely. Then I went back to 1987, and read E.J. Kahn Jr.’s delightful profile of Helen Suzman, who was for many years the only woman in the all-white House of Assembly of the Republic of South Africa, and an internationally known opponent of apartheid. I’d never heard of Suzman, and came away feeling great admiration for her feistiness. At the time, of course, she didn’t feel very successful—she’d spent years being the only voice in opposition—but again, to read the profile after the nearly bloodless end of apartheid gave it a special flavor. (This profile led me to Wikipedia, where I found a link to an article in the Telegraph from 2004, where she had some reservations about the way current politics are working out there, although none whatever about the abolition of apartheid.)

I’ve never had much use for Harold Brodkey’s work, but in truth I’ve not read much of him, so I approached “Reflections: Family” with qualified hopes. Unfortunately, they proved unfounded—as with E.J. Kahn’s “Hand to Hand” from 1988, the size of audience that could be interested in the piece would seem to be quite limited—in Brodkey’s case, to his own family, as the essay amounts to a collection of observations about their broad experiences and personalities. The piece’s charm would’ve grown in inverse proportion to its length. Kahn’s “Hand to Hand” records in excruciating detail the sinking of a U-Boat by a U.S. craft during World War II, the latter-day reunion of men on both sides of the battle. Though a promising premise, it feels more like a war story fit for other veterans of that war, rather than a general-interest piece—at least at this distance.

That’s curious about the Geng piece. I wonder if that choice elicited any commentary at the time? Anybody know?

—Martin Schneider

Previously: Chambers on the “Best American Essays,” Pt. 1