Of course it's possible for political essays to be artful. I just want to call into question the dominance of content over form in the history of the essay. I want us to recognize that there's art involved in making this stuff, because we still don't approach the constructed nature of the essay with the same appreciation that we do poetry or fiction.
John D'AgataAs frustrating as my time in grad school felt, it also helped tremendously because it challenged me to figure out what it was I thought I wanted.
John D'AgataIn some ways we want definitions that can help protect our own interpretations of the genre.
John D'AgataI never really understood the idea that nonfiction ought to be this dispensary of data that we have at the moment. Also, roughly around the time we were doing this fact-checking. And I never really understood why people think what nonfiction's job is to give them information as opposed to something else.
John D'AgataI'm not worried about what part of their life they needed to massage in order to achieve something that I get to experience as transcendent. Because that's the point of literature, I think: to connect.
John D'AgataThe essay community should have hundreds of anthologies from hundreds of different perspectives that are constantly introducing us to new writers, new work, and new visions for our genre. The whole spirit of these anthologies is that there should never be a last word in how essays are interpreted or what they can be.
John D'Agata