on personal essays

or, 'the importance of idleness'

Whilst actually doing my uni work, I was referred by my tutor to a wonderful essay by Robert Dessaix. Entitled 'Letters to an unknown friend', it tickled my fancy, and my inner idler, by dwelling on the merits of the personal essay and discussing how idleness is an important trait for the personal essayist to have or to cultivate. You're most welcome to skip the rest of my post and simply read Dessaix's essay, it's very well written and very engaging!

According to Dessaix, 'the essay is vital to a civilised life' - he refers to the humble personal essay rather than its academic cousin. 'The more personal kind of essay, the sort of thing we write just because we want to tell someone something, something we must find the words for now, before the moment passes'. Whilst I agree with his ideas, I must protest at the placement of his prepositions! He barely gets away with putting that 'for' where he has put it; I would have written, 'Something for which we must find the words now', but still, it is the sense of immediacy that is important, and perhaps that is better served in Dessaix's sentence.

He then goes on to consider idleness, and how the tendency to idleness should not be confused with indolence. He's quite right, though I don't think cats are indolent, as he suggests they are, because after all they're never really asleep when they're napping. The idle person may be preoccupied all the time, and yet not be busy, and in being idle, one can make one's haphazard way through the world, and enjoy leisured pensiveness, stillness, and take pleasure in the ordinary. I rather like these notions, they make me want to write personal essays, and to first do the necessary amount of idling.

Dessaix also laments the lack of actual communication that goes on in the world, and the demands of consumer culture that we should work and spend money, that there isn't the time for good conversation in cafes, and for writing essays, to have wonderful discussions on all topics with friends. Dessaix is not the only person to write on the importance of idleness, because Tom Hodgkinson does as well, in his book How to be idle, but that book hasn't the deliciousness of actually being about the nature of personal essays and the merits of writing said essays. I suppose blog posts are sort of personal essays, or some of them may be, it would really depend on the content. I like the idea of the time spent observing and reflecting that is required for essay writing, perhaps I ought to take it up, add it to my list of thoughtful things to do...


The online archive for the Australian Book Review is here. I strongly recommend that you spend time idling over these!