Consider The Essay
On the works of writing enshrined in our memories
In this week’s podcast conversation with the newsletter’s editor, Claire Bullen, we talked about the landmark stories that have inspired our writing: the essays and articles that stay with us, that still provide us guidance about how to approach word choice, flow, and rhythm. She pointed to a piece by Gay Talese called “Frank Sinatra Has A Cold,” published in 1966 in Esquire. Talese wrote the sweeping profile of Sinatra without ever interviewing him, instead building a portrait of the man by focusing on the people surrounding him. The story is remembered for the way that it brought narrative storytelling elements—the kind of prose, plotting, and characterization more often associated with fiction—into a journalistic context.
To follow on our podcast conversation, Claire and I decided to make a list of those personal landmark stories, the pieces that have shaped our writing. Of course, this is far from an exhaustive selection, but these choices remain references for our writing and editing today—and perhaps they’ll inspire you, too.
Ashley’s List
“To Scratch, Claw, or Grope Clumsily or Frantically,” Roxane Gay
Gay’s essay from her book, “Bad Feminist,” is about unapologetic fandom and the feelings we express out of others’ sight. The essay chronicles Gay’s journey into the world of competitive Scrabble competitions, filled with deliciously specific details that could only have come from Gay herself. She talks about an incredibly niche topic using very personal details, which seems like it could potentially alienate most readers. But instead, the specificity helps build a world that illuminates both the setting and the author’s perspective.
Out of all the essays on this list, this is the one I always wanted to use as a “model” for a future story on barista competitions (an equally niche thing), but I’ve yet to do so. Re-reading this essay this morning has made me want to revisit that idea.
“Consider the Lobster,” David Foster Wallace
I don’t consider myself a DFW stan (unlike every guy I dated in my 20s). I didn’t read this essay (or really much of anything by him) until I read Ruth Reichl’s book “Save Me The Plums: My Gourmet Memoir,” which discusses her tenure as Editor-In-Chief of the acclaimed former food magazine. She devotes a whole chapter to how she commissioned this essay, which she assigned to DFW under the pretense of covering a Maine lobster festival. The finished piece ends up being a curious essay on the nature and ethics of eating. At one point, he asks: “Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?”
It’s not necessarily the writing style of this essay that compels me—in fact, there’s this clever self-awareness in his writing that feels show-offy, even provocative. But what I love about this essay is how much it tells you about DFW himself, and how much it tells you about the audience he meant to reach. He’s not overly preachy in his queries about the ethics of eating lobster, but seems genuinely curious about how sophisticated eaters—arguably the people reading Gourmet in the early 2000s—classify and understand their culinary preferences. Reading this article feels like witnessing someone actively fall down a rabbit hole. Also, it’s very funny.
“Beer Is Offal,” Mark Spence
I might have a unique perspective on this series, an incredibly visceral and gut-wrenching blog about the intersection of life and food, because I've watched Mark read some of these essays aloud. When I worked at Good Beer Hunting, we recorded audio versions of the stories we published, and I’d sit as Mark dramatically read his stories, marking up the pages to remember when to pause, when to speed up, when to take a breath.
Mark’s articles, much like his audio readings, feel like movement. His writing reminds me to be unafraid to get gory—to get lost in the details and never overlook the significance of small moments. Meaning is everywhere, and everything is connected.
“The Trials of Dan and Dave,” 30 For 30 Podcast
OK, so this isn’t an article. But this episode of ESPN’s 30 for 30 podcast has taught me so much about storytelling and how to build tension and mystery within a seemingly straightforward narrative, one where most listeners already know the outcome. In 1992, Reebok launched an iconic ad campaign to promote two top biathletes, Dan O’Brien and Dave Johnson. Both were expected to compete for gold at that year’s Olympics in Barcelona, but things took a weird turn at the U.S. Olympic Trials.
If you saw the ad campaign or watched these Olympics, you know what happens—but the narrator gives so much context around this moment, adding weight and intrigue to a story you might have already heard. Listening to this episode was the first time I considered the importance of archival footage and letting historical records tell a story.
Other Recommendations:
“Buying Myself Back,” Emily Ratajkowski
“A Manual For Cleaning Women,” Lucia Berlin
“Between the World and Me,” Ta-Nehisi Coates
“Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” Annie Dillard (Many people point to Dillard’s essays as monumental works of literature, and I agree, but my first taste of her work’s simple power of observation came from this book.)
Claire’s List
“The Glabrous Apricots of Tajikistan,” Adam Leith Gollner
From this wonderfully named story (originally published more than a decade ago in “Lucky Peach,” now republished on Hazlitt), I learned one of my favorite techniques: beginning a long-form, reported story with a vivid, multi-sensory scene. Gollner’s piece is mainly about rare, prized fruit varieties—the kinds that could never survive being packed and shipped to supermarkets, the kinds that obsessives will track halfway around the world to taste. Specifically, he focuses on the wide spectrum of apricot varieties, those that prove the fruit isn’t just the mealy, tart, mostly lifeless thing sold in grocery stores.
But the piece begins with Gollner’s own teenage love story in Hungary, and he braids those memories with his accidental discovery of a tree heavy with transcendentally good apricots: “These smelled crazy, like hybrid cardamom-vanilla-jasmine flowers in full sticky bloom. Plucking one, I was struck by the smoothness of the skin. Instead of the usual velvety feel, this one had the glossy sheen of a nectarine or a cherry. I took a tentative bite. The flesh was astonishingly juicy—syrupy nectar pooled to the surface and ran down my arm. Compared to the juiceless cottonwads back home, this was a dripping, pulsating lifeform. It seemed to have been drenched in wild honey, butterscotch, and first kisses.”
“Green to Me,” Helena Fitzgerald
In this story for Hazlitt, Helena Fitzgerald—whose writing (especially on her Substack, Griefbacon) I’ve followed and enjoyed for years—ostensibly writes about her love for the color green. But this virtuosic piece ducks, weaves, and dodges, covering everything from the use of kudzu in the South to American greenbacks, Shakespeare to Robert Moses. Infused with vivid moments of personal storytelling, it is also a wide-ranging meditation on the promise of green as stability and comfort, the color’s corruption within American life and governance, and its signifier of oblivion within an urban context. But for all it contains, this piece never feels weighed down, and her prose is a glory throughout.
“The Really Big One” by Kathryn Schulz
It is a special person who can make over 6,000 words of technical, scientific writing feel as tight and propulsive as a Hollywood thriller, and Kathryn Schulz—who won a Pulitzer for this 2015 “New Yorker” piece—is that person. “The Really Big One” is about earthquakes, and geology, and the way that plate tectonics work; it’s also about the forecasted earthquake that is due to hit the Pacific Northwest, and which, when it occurs, will be among the worst natural disasters in North American history. It is an extraordinarily gripping story, and I have returned to it again and again to learn from the arc of its narrative velocity.
“The Underdark: A Modified Craft Talk,” Brandon Taylor
I think I’ve learned more about the craft of writing from novelist Brandon Taylor’s Substack, Sweater Weather, than I did in my entire Creative Writing MA. In this particularly deft and insightful essay, he discusses the mechanics of exposition, interiority, and backstory, including close readings of passages from classic literature, in a way that feels so clear and accessible that I wonder why none of my tutors ever addressed these mechanics so directly. For anyone writing fiction, this essay is a gift that will likely change the way you understand storytelling and characterization.
Other Recommendations:
“Living Autobiography,” Deborah Levy
“Losing Religion and Finding Ecstasy in Houston,” Jia Tolentino
“Heaven or High Water,” Sarah Miller
“Oranges,” John McPhee
What works have inspired your own writing or creative practice? Let us know below!
This was SO good, Ashley! and very useful - I can remember the essays and articles or books that made a huge impact on me when I was in grad school and later as a prof - academic/research writings are a distinct genre to be sure but the problem of how to say what you want to say in the way you want to say it is still the same -- it was the ‘way’ they were written, the style/approach that mattered most (rather than the contents per se of - I was not looking for findings relevant to my topic but rather just as you say, HOW these writers organised, presented their work - and the things you selected as important in the essays you cite are EXACTLY the same things I was inspired by!
A story: when I gave my advisors what I wanted to be the first chapter of my dissertation, their response was ‘this is good... but you are not writing a novel, Jack - let’s make this first part like a normal thesis intro, ok?’ A novel... That’s when I knew I had succeeded!