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A review by brice_mo
Any Person Is the Only Self: Essays by Elisa Gabbert
4.0
Thank you to NetGalley and FSG for the ARC!
I’ve been thinking recently about what constitutes good writing, and I’ve settled on the idea that—more than anything else—it is an effective curatorial impulse. It is knowing what shouldn’t be shared so that the reader can better appreciate what is shared.
This idea was on my mind while reading Elisa Gabbert’s exemplary Any Person is the Only Self, a collection of intersecting essays with reading and writing at their center. On the surface, these pieces first present themselves as Sontag-like cultural criticism, but they quickly and excitedly drop even the possibility of pretense, instead offering readers something more inviting and celebratory.
The collection’s voice falls somewhere between a conservationist explicating an ecosystem of great writing and a curator explaining why it’s beautiful. Gabbert isn’t offering only aesthetic or intellectual appreciation, though—she’s offering kinship. Although these essays cover a range of topics and themes, they repeatedly bring the same writers into conversation, and Gabbert situates both herself and the reader in the center of the discussion. Somehow, this feat is accomplished without ego, and I was struck by how generously the author works to invite everyone into the essays. Even if some readers might not have a robust cultural or literary knowledge, it doesn’t matter—Gabbert does all the legwork necessary for someone to participate in the conversation without feeling like an imposter.
If it seems odd that I’m dwelling on the structure and tone of the book more than its content, it’s because the content almost seems less relevant. There are great insights here, and I expected nothing less after reading Gabbert’s Normal Distance, but I feel like the book exists primarily for the reader to evaluate their own relationship to literacy. The author removes attention from herself as much as possible, creating space for reflection without didacticism.
I don't have any critiques per se, but I’m not quite sure the book is as unified in its focus on the self as the title would lead one to believe. Maybe that’s just it, though—selves are scrappy and sprawling. These essays don’t need to coalesce as much as they need to complicate. They are intended to open discussions instead of end them, and they are designed to help even the least literary amongst us find ourselves alongside literary greats.
A prime example of this is the essay, “A Complicating Energy.” In this piece, Gabbert shares about authors who struggled with anxiety and depression and their relationship to art, including the distance between the performed self and the actual self. I found it incredibly resonant, and it seems to summarize the book’s guiding impulse—sometimes we don’t need complicated feelings resolved; we just need to know they are shared.
I’ve been thinking recently about what constitutes good writing, and I’ve settled on the idea that—more than anything else—it is an effective curatorial impulse. It is knowing what shouldn’t be shared so that the reader can better appreciate what is shared.
This idea was on my mind while reading Elisa Gabbert’s exemplary Any Person is the Only Self, a collection of intersecting essays with reading and writing at their center. On the surface, these pieces first present themselves as Sontag-like cultural criticism, but they quickly and excitedly drop even the possibility of pretense, instead offering readers something more inviting and celebratory.
The collection’s voice falls somewhere between a conservationist explicating an ecosystem of great writing and a curator explaining why it’s beautiful. Gabbert isn’t offering only aesthetic or intellectual appreciation, though—she’s offering kinship. Although these essays cover a range of topics and themes, they repeatedly bring the same writers into conversation, and Gabbert situates both herself and the reader in the center of the discussion. Somehow, this feat is accomplished without ego, and I was struck by how generously the author works to invite everyone into the essays. Even if some readers might not have a robust cultural or literary knowledge, it doesn’t matter—Gabbert does all the legwork necessary for someone to participate in the conversation without feeling like an imposter.
If it seems odd that I’m dwelling on the structure and tone of the book more than its content, it’s because the content almost seems less relevant. There are great insights here, and I expected nothing less after reading Gabbert’s Normal Distance, but I feel like the book exists primarily for the reader to evaluate their own relationship to literacy. The author removes attention from herself as much as possible, creating space for reflection without didacticism.
I don't have any critiques per se, but I’m not quite sure the book is as unified in its focus on the self as the title would lead one to believe. Maybe that’s just it, though—selves are scrappy and sprawling. These essays don’t need to coalesce as much as they need to complicate. They are intended to open discussions instead of end them, and they are designed to help even the least literary amongst us find ourselves alongside literary greats.
A prime example of this is the essay, “A Complicating Energy.” In this piece, Gabbert shares about authors who struggled with anxiety and depression and their relationship to art, including the distance between the performed self and the actual self. I found it incredibly resonant, and it seems to summarize the book’s guiding impulse—sometimes we don’t need complicated feelings resolved; we just need to know they are shared.