The Erotics of the Essay Form

Why do our students find the writing of essays mostly a dull chore and is there anything we can do about that? This salon will address these questions by means of a conversation about four iconic essays written over the course of more than three centuries. We will start with a reading of Francis Bacon’s “Of Truth” (1625), commonly regarded as the first essay in English. Then we will move through three modern masterworks: Oscar Wilde’s scandalous and hilarious “Decay of Lying” (1891), Virginia Woolf’s haunting, luminous “Death of the Moth” (1942), and Raymond Chandler’s sharp-edged “The Simple Art of Murder” (1944). In conversation with Bacon’s inaugural text, we will examine how these writers transform the essay from a rigid exercise in logic into something else entirely, and consider the radical, queer possibilities of the form as it has developed across modern history. After our evening together, you may never look at the essay form in the same old ways again.

Dinner & refreshments included