Week 8 Oct 16–22

Monday October 17

• Read Nicole Wallack, “On reading Essays,” 60–68
  
• Read David Foster Wallace, Shipping Out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise (Harper’s 1996); Let’s talk about what this essay is doing. Then read Walker Percy’s essay, The Loss of Creature
  

• Read Annie Dillard The Death of the Moth and How I wrote the Moth and Why
  
• Essay 4 Check in: Whose essays are you reading? What are you discovering?

Wednesday October 19

• Featured Writer Michael Branch and his column in High Country News Rants from the Hill. Read Customer Cranky and Towering Cell Phone Trees. Also read After Many Years a Wave Goodbye and consider Mike’s description of the rant:

Only recently has the wonderful word rant come to mean “an angry or aggressive tirade or diatribe.” I, instead, invoke rant in its earlier, nobler form. Starting around 1600, to rant meant to express oneself in “an extravagant or hyperbolic manner”—with the important caveat that this was understood to be a good thing. The archaic noun form is even more cheering, as a rant was “a boisterous, lively, or riotous scene or occasion; a festive gathering; a romp; a spree.” It is in that spirit that I have shared Rants from the Hill with you for the past six years. Take care of yourself, and your own small corner of the planet, and keep laughing.

I also recommend Such Sweet Sorrow: An Airy Meditation on Flatulence and Independence. (Browse the titles and the essays, at least until HCN says you need to subscribe!)