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Dubious Stains

You can always tell when I’ve been pulling all-nighters by the stains on my bed. (Peanut butter stains, I mean – there’s never time to make any other kind of stain.) Curling up in bed with a spoon and 454g of crunchy Sun-Pat almost makes constitutional law bearable.

That’s why, when in her second essay collection ‘At Large and At Small’ Anne Fadiman writes how she “frequently took a pint of Haagen-Daazs Chocolate Chip to bed, with four layers of paper towels wrapped around the container to prevent digital hypothermia”, I knew I’d found a role model.

The talented Fadiman, who is Francis Writer-in-Residence at Yale and is renowned for her nonfiction, is probably one of the few people in the world who can muse lovingly about ice cream for 18 pages, while still being funny and fascinating. Just as engaging are the other eleven essays in the book. From the fizzily optimistic first half to the calmly nostalgic second, the book demonstrates her mastery of the familiar essay.

“Today’s readers,” Fadiman writes, “Encounter plenty of critical essays (more brain than heart) and plenty of personal essays (more heart than brain), but not many familiar essays (equal measures of both).”

What she modestly neglects to mention is that her essays have both in spades. Fadiman’s feelings and reminiscences flit through her writing, as when she describes her brother using liquid nitrogen in pursuit of the perfect ice cream, or talks about her family’s response to September 11, or even in an off-handed remark about losing her virginity in an essay on coffee.

Rather than weighing her prose down however, these personal elements are effortlessly blended with unexpected facts trawled from science, history, literature, and so on in a buoyant gush of enthusiasm.

Even her more intellectually-oriented pieces, such as one on literary culture wars, or on the semiotics of the American flag, share the same dry wit, amiable rambling and homespun conversational tone, mixed with the odd word that sends you scurrying to the dictionary. It’s like talking to a reference librarian on cannabis.

Of course, not everyone likes conversation for its own sake, and if you’re the type who scoffs at columnists, opinion writers and bloggers, this book is probably not for you. But for the rest, At Large and At Small is the perfect way to while away the hours. I’d even recommend it above peanut butter – at least there are no calories, and also (unless you really like Anne Fadiman) no stains.

Five stars

 

 

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