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.

It's fun to just skim through piles of books in the stacks of a library.

Sometimes the essay is where we end up when everything that we know must change.

Yet there are some critics in the nonfiction world who still look at some of today's stranger interpretations of the essay and say "You don't belong here. That's not how we do things." I think that's problematic.

And Lopate's anthology helped a lot too. It came out the same year I started grad school, and I remember the book's publication feeling eventful and celebratory. It got a ton of attention for giving voice to this form that had sort of slipped between the cracks. That was exciting to see.

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

Sometimes what I'm looking for is the thing that will help renew people's interest in a writer that they may have written off as not their kind of writer.