On the Familiar Essay (PDF)

G. DOUGLAS ATKINS is Professor of English at the University of Kansas, USA, winner of several awards for distinguished teaching, and the author of more than a dozen books books, including Estranging the Familiar (a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of the Year).

"In this timely revalorization of the form, Atkins shows the unexpected depths of the familiar essay. Far from being the lightweight pieces dismissed by their detractors as trivial, he shows how, at their best, such essays are exquisitely crafted intersections of time and timelessness. Their indirectness, individuality and warmth suggest a way of knowing that at once challenges and complements the clinical prose of conventional academic articles. Essayists, says Atkins, are endeavoring to write personally and artfully about the familiar and through it to approach the universal. His study calls for a meticulous reading of their work in order, ultimately, for the reader to learn from it how to make the most of the short time we have on earth." Quoting extensively from acknowledged masters of this neglected mode of writing, Atkins provocatively questions the adequacy of established educational procedures and champions a pedagogy informed by essayistic ideals." - Chris Arthur, author of Irish Nocturnes, Irish Willow, Irish Haiku and Irish Elegies

"In these pages, Atkins richly models the exploratory, revelatory pursuit that he calls the familiar essay. The essays he celebrates range outward from personal experience to impersonal, even cosmic concerns. They marry literature and philosophy, wisdom and wit. Through illuminating readings of figures as diverse as E. B. White and T. S. Eliot, Atkins confirms his position as the leading interpreter of this various and vital mode of art." - Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Private History of Awe

"In these deeply felt and elegantly expressed thoughts about the essay, Atkins offers a moving account of the hard work of self examination in a difficult world. His book is also both an apologia for and a gentle critique of Atkins s own vocation to an academic life. But unlike Marxist or disciplinary commentaries on the profession, this essay invokes the much rarer language of spirituality - of value - to engage,