Levy Ariel - The Best American Essays 2014

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ISSN 0888-3742

ISBN 978-0-544-30990-6

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A Matter of Life and Death by Timothy Aubry. First published in The Point, #I Fall 2013. Copyright 2013 by Timothy Aubry. Reprinted by permission of The Point and Timothy Aubry.

Strange Beads by Wendy Brenner. First published in Oxford American, Summer 2013. Copyright 2013 by Wendy Brenner. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Final Day in Rome by John H. Culver. First published in The Gettysburg Review, Summer 2013. Copyright 2014 by John H. Culver. Reprinted by permission of John H. Culver.

Letter from Williamsburg by Kristin Dombek. First published in The Paris Review, #205, Summer 2013. Copyright 2013 by The Paris Review. Reprinted by permission of The Paris Review and Kristin Dombek. Excerpt from Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World from Things of This World by Richard Wilbur. Copyright 1956 and renewed 1984 by Richard Wilbur. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

The Man at the River by Dave Eggers. First published in Granta, Summer 2013. Copyright 2014 by Dave Eggers. Reprinted by permission of Granta and the author.

At Sixty-Five by Emily Fox Gordon. First published in The American Scholar, Summer 2013. Copyright 2013 by Emily Fox Gordon. Reprinted by permission of Emily Fox Gordon.

On Enmity by Mary Gordon. First published in Salmagundi, Winter 2013. Copyright 2013 by Mary Gordon. Reprinted by permission of the author and Salmagundi.

Letter from Greenwich Village by Vivian Gornick. First published in The Paris Review, #204, Spring 2013. Copyright 2013 by The Paris Review. Reprinted by permission of The Paris Review and Vivian Gornick.

Slickheads by Lawrence Jackson. First published in n+1, Winter 2013. Copyright 2013 by Lawrence Jackson. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Devils Bait by Leslie Jamison. First published in Harpers Magazine, September 2013. Copyright 2013 by Leslie Jamison. Reprinted by permission of Leslie Jamison.

Thanksgiving in Mongolia by Ariel Levy. First published in The New Yorker, November 18, 2013. Copyright 2013 by Ariel Levy. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li. First published in A Public Space, #19, Fall 2013. Copyright 2013 by Yiyun Li. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.

Sliver of Sky by Barry Lopez. First published in Harpers Magazine, January 2013. Copyright 2013 by Barry Lopez. Reprinted by permission of Sterling Lord Literistic.

Someone Else by Chris Offutt. First published in River Teeth, Fall 2013. Copyright 2013 by Chris Offutt. Reprinted by permission of Chris Offutt.

Joy by Zadie Smith. First published in The New York Review of Books, January 10, 2013. Copyright 2013 by Zadie Smith. Reprinted by permission of Zadie Smith.

Little X by Elizabeth Tallent. First published in The Threepenny Review, Spring 2013. Copyright 2013 by Elizabeth Tallent. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Old Man at Burning Man by Wells Tower. First published in GQ, February 2013. Copyright 2013 by Wells Tower. Reprinted by permission of Wells Tower.

How to Make a Slave by Jerald Walker. First published in Southern Humanities Review, Fall 2013. Copyright 2013 by Jerald Walker. Reprinted by permission of Jerald Walker.

On Being Introduced by Paul West. First published in The Yale Review, January 2013. Copyright 2013 by Paul West. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Becoming Them by James Wood. First published in The New Yorker, January 21, 2013. Copyright 2013 by James Wood. Reprinted by permission of James Wood. Excerpt from How Shall I Mourn Them? by Lydia Davis from The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis. Copyright 2009 by Lydia Davis. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Legend: Willem de Kooning by Baron Wormser. First published in Grist, #6, 2013. Copyright 2013 by Baron Wormser. Reprinted by permission of Baron Wormser

In recent years weve heard a lot about the issue of truth in nonfiction, the impetus for this topic deriving mainly from a stream of disingenuous memoirs. By truthand Ill avoid the customary nervous quote markswe generally mean how honestly and accurately the writing represents the actions and events the writer depicts. Is the writer telling us exactly what happened? Is he embellishing, fabricating, making things up, in an attempt to tell a compelling story (ah, that potentially deceitful narrative arc!) or to characterize himself as attractively virtuous or appealingly naughty? Sounding frank, honest, and sincere is, of course, a rhetorical strategy in itself, known from ancient literature as parrhesia. Its often employed by liars.

Ive addressed the topic of truth in nonfiction in several talks and essays (including the foreword to the 2008 edition of The Best American Essays), maintaining essentially that unless the incidents or factual references are in some ways verifiable, we usuallyshort of confession or recantationhave no way of knowing whether a nonfiction writer is telling the truth, especially when details remain unconfirmed, utterly private, or trivial. No one has ever verified the now famous deaths of George Orwells elephant or Virginia Woolfs moth, though the passing of E. B. Whites poor pig can actually be documented.

But truth in nonfiction involves more than accuracy, sincerity, documentation, or verifiability. Not all essays take the form of personal narratives that recount a string of events in a candid tone of voice; many offer personal opinions on various topics, whether general (growing old) or topical (health care). Most such nonnarrative essays pose a different set of criteria for assessing truth. In the territory of argument and exposition, we look at claims, evidence, consistency, and logical coherence. If all we can hope for in nonfiction narrative is verifiability, in opinion essays we demand validity. We want to see at the minimum that conclusions follow from premises. But testing the premises is another matter. Three essays, all demonstrating dramatically different opinions, can all be grounded in valid arguments.

So, as useful as they are in establishing degrees of truth and truthfulness, verifiability and validity do not always take us very far. And, of course, they have little to do with the literary value of essays and creative nonfiction in general. I remember in college courses we made a rough distinction between the essay as a literary genre (whether belletristic or experimental) and the essay as