I know it sounds silly, but disrespecting a dead writer by sitting in a chair that probably never belonged to him still felt like a risk to me. So I chickened out.

I think that in a lot of readers' minds the essay is a lot more utilitarian than it is art.

The best stuff that Cicero wrote, in the first century in Rome, were the Philippics, a series of speeches that he delivered against Marc Antony, whom he thought was irreparably dismantling the Republic of Rome. Those speeches are powerful because they're not only really pointed but they're thrillingly beautiful - and that's precisely what made them dangerous: the fact that people wanted to read them.

I like Plutarch because I've read him forever, and I know that he's incredibly funky, even though his mainstream image is as Mr. Unfunky.

As 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.

If Plutarch is the essayist I want to believe he is, he would want us all to sit in his chair.

As a student at the time, I kind of felt like my only options as a nonfiction writer were to either jump on the personal essay bus or linger back at the station, hoping that some other heretofore unknown mode of transportation was going to magically show up to take me where I wanted to go.