The best of Essay Daily-each a writer in conversation with and about an essay, whatever its variety, contemporary and classic.

Introduction * A Fat Man Story: ANDER MONSON on HL Mencken's "A Forgotten Anniversary" * MARCIA ALDRICH on Bernard Cooper Invisible Engineering: The Fine Art of Revising: "The Fine Art of Sighing"* MARYA HORNBACHER on What an Essay is Not* KRISTEN RADTKE on Chris Marker's "Sans Soleil"* Majestic Ruins: ROBIN HEMLEY on The Work of James Agee* MARGOT SINGER on Relics, Alchemy, and Primo Levi's "Chromium"* ROBERT ATWAN: The Assault on Prose: John Crowe Ransom, New Criticism, and the Status of the Essay* LUCAS MANN: On Writing Young* MATT DUBE on Joan Didion, Repo Man, and a '76 Malibu* MARK EHLING: "Two Clowns on Tarkovsky"* T CLUTCH FLEISCHMANN Wants You to Read Samuel Delany* KATI STANDEFER on the Mysterious Leslie Ryan and the Structure of a Trauma Narrative* JULIE LAUTERBACH-COLBY on Arianne Zwartjes' "This Suturing of Wounds and Words" and Kisha Lewellyn Schlegel's "Cannulated Screw"* Living Within the Ellipses: CÉSAR DIAZ on Ilan Stavans' book On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language* SEAN LOVELACE on Augusto Monterroso's "Fecundity"* SEAN PRENTISS on Charles Bowden's "Torch Song"* EMILY DEPRANG on Joan Didion: On the Morning After My Twenties* Email from BONNIE J. ROUGH* STEVEN BARTHELME: Talent and Fifty Cents* ALISON HAWTHORN DEMING on Julian Barnes* STEVEN CHURCH on Tom Junod's "The Falling Man"* BETHANY MAILE: We Sought But Couldn't Find - Coming Up Empty in David Shields' "Death is the Mother of Beauty"* GENINE LENTINE on Michael Cunningham & the Nemesis* Movie Quotes as Misery: DAVID LEGAULT on Claudia Rankine's "Don't Let Me Be Lonely"* CASSANDRA KIRCHER: On E.B. White, Adoption, and Writing Hybrid Reviews* JONI TEVIS on the Long Lyric Essay* MICHAEL MARTONE: More or Less: the Camouflage Schemes of the Fictive Essay * JOHN D'AGATA: The Essays of Ansel Adams: An Allegory* MEEHAN CRIST's 10 Thoughts on Elision* CRAIG REINBOLD: John D'Agata Breaks Rules, Windows* NED STUCKEY-FRENCH: Time for a New Essay - Eric Walrond's "On Being Black"* THOMAS MIRA Y LOPEZ on Donald Hall's "Out the Window"* JILL TALBOT on The VanMeteresque* DANIELLE DEULEN on the Virtues of Drowning: Lidia Yuknavitch's The Chronology of Water* COLIN RAFFERTY on Sherman Alexie's "My Encounters With the Homeless People of the Pacific Northwest"* JOHN T. PRICE: On Hoagland, Animal Obsession, and the Courage of Simile* MAYA L. KAPOOR on Writing Trout* CHELSEA BIONDOLILLO: On Long Winters, Short Essays, and a Sky that Stretches Forever* MEGAN KIMBLE on Wendell Berry and Why I'm Not Going to Buy A Smartphone* BRIAN DOYLE: It is a Shaggy World, Studded with Gardens* PETER JAY SHIPPY: Angle On* NICOLE WALKER on Rebecca Campbell's Thick Paint* PAUL LISICKY on The Fugue, Alison Bechdel's Are You My Mother, DFW, and the Resistance to the One Thing* ALISO STINE on Street Art* BRIAN OLIU on The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling by David Shoemaker* PAM HOUSTON on Rick Reilly's "Need a Fourth" from Sports Illustrated, March 31, 1997* DAVE MONDY on Jim Bouton* PHILLIP LOPATE on A Little-Known Gem by Max Beerbohm* JOY CASTRO on Margery Latimer's "The New Freedom": A Manifesto of the Modernist as a Young Woman* AMY BENSON on Eliot Weinberger's "Wrens"* WENDY RAWLINGS on Natalia Ginzburg's The Little Virtues* PATRICK MADDEN on Charles Lamb's "New Year's Eve"* ELENA PASSARELLO on the Book of Days* PATRICIA VIGDERMAN on Alexander Stille* RYAN VAN METER on Endings