I am not completely certain that Zadie Smith (pictured above) was right in deciding how to title her recent discussion in The New Yorker. Online, Smith's article was titled as follows: "The Art Of The Impersonal Essay." In the hard copy version of the magazine, the title is only slightly different. There, it appears as, "On The Impersonal Essay."
It's the "Impersonal" part that I find just a bit incongruous, since I think of an "essay" as a particularly "personal" piece of writing, each such "essay" being the author's attempt to say something personal, to share one's personal views on something, with others. Depending on your subscription relationship to The New Yorker, maybe you can use the link I have provided to try to get a handle on that question for yourself, by way of reading the entirety of what Smith has to say. I do understand her argument.
In the meantime, I am providing, below, a statement in Smith's essay that provides her reason for insisting upon "impersonal." This statement by Smith also contains an assertion (absolutely true, and which I have highlighted) that has prompted me to make the comment that I am providing by way of this blog posting:
“To essay” is, of course, to try. My version of trying involves expressing ideas in a mode open enough, I hope, that readers feel they are trying them out alongside me. While I try, I am also striving to remain engaged (and engaging) yet impersonal, because although the personal is certainly interesting and human and vivid, it also strikes me as somewhat narrow and private and partial. Consequently, the word “we” appears in my essays pretty frequently. This isn’t because I imagine I speak for many, or expect that my views might be applied to all, but because I’m looking for the sliver of ground where that “we” is applicable. Because once you find that sweet spot you can build upon it. It’s the existentialist at my desk who is best placed to find that spot. She says to herself: Almost all of the people I know (and I myself) have experienced pain. And absolutely all of the people I know (and I myself) will die (emphasis added):
Everyone of us will die! That is true - it is true for absolutely all of us - and yet how to confront and consider the fact of the inevitability of our individual and personal death is a particularly "personal" assignment: "Memento Mori," in other words. We do, each one of us, need to "try" to do that, and more than one effort, one attempt, one "essay," may well be necessary. That indisputable commonality identified by Smith, that fact that each one of us will die, is seen by Smith as a "sliver" of common ground. But let me offer a view of our human condition that goes beyond the "sliver" of common ground that is represented by our common need to face up to our individual deaths.
The fact that we will each die is not, in my view, by any means the only, or the most significant, way in which "we" find ourselves "together."
It is true that we each must die (a bond between us, for sure), but shouldn't we perhaps pay more attention to the fact that we are - each one of us - alive.
We are, as I like to say, "together in this," and by "this," I mean that we are, all of us, alive, right now, on one planet, the only one we know of where life occurs, and what each one of us does, in our relatively brief life, impacts and affects every other person alive with us.
Here is my appeal (and I would be quite surprised if Zadie Smith wouldn't join me in this appeal). The most important spot of "common ground" upon which we stand (and run, and jump, and do everything we do) is not that we each will have to die, it is that we are, each one of us, right now, alive. Since we are together in being alive, we should - shouldn't we ? - celebrate together (and individually), and elevate the fact of our togetherness in this life to build and decorate our common world in splendors, in any and in every way that we possibly can.
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