This is my first edition of a post I hope will go on for quite awhile, and one that all of you might be able to get something out of. When I first started this blog I was kind of pulling away from something that I really, really love. The essay. This summer I have taken a strong return back to my old favorite and now I'm hoping to talk about one essay I love every week. To start us off I decided to go with First by Ryan Van Meter which originally appeared in the Gettysburg Review, but I read it in The Best American Essays 2009. If the anthology is any actual gage of the best American essays published in 2009 then I would argue that this is actually the best essay, because I've returned to it about six times in two weeks and every time I grow to love it more. It's the only essay from the anthology that has left such a huge mark on me. And I didn't even know this until exactly this moment, but apparently he teaches at the University of Iowa (my school!). I honestly didn't know this, I don't want you all to think I'm biased or something.
This essay is the story of a five-year-old boy's thoughts on love, which he gains from watching soap operas with his mother during the summer. "What I enjoyed most about soap operas was how exciting and beautiful life was. Every lady was pretty and had wonderful hair, and all the men had dark eyes and big teeth and faces as strong as bricks..." (178). He believes that love is possible and beautiful and wonderful, and he believes that he is in love with his best friend who is possibly named Ben (being that he was five at the time, it's a little difficult to recall). "What I know for certain right now is that I love him, and I need to tell him this fact before we return to our separate houses, next door to each other" (177). They are riding backwards in the back of a car, with their dads sitting in the front seat together and the moms in the back. One of my favorite observations in the essay is "that when mothers and fathers are in the car together, the dad always drives" (178).
By the end of the essay young Ryan has proposed to Ben, only to be told by his mother that this is not okay. This shatters everything he knows or thought he knew about love, and with it some of his hope is also lost. This, of course, deals with homosexuality and the acceptance of it, even within your own family. I think this essay really transcends that though. To me it's more about growing up and learning that what you think as a child may not actually be how the world works. I was just thinking about how as a child death would happen in stories, but I never gave much thought to it. Now I'm obsessed with death in children's stories and how children react to it. Beyond the message of this story, it is beautifully written. I can see everything happening with such precision, it reads like a dream. One great example is right after Ben and Ryan let go of hands and he says, "I close my fingers into a loose fist and rub my palm to feel, and keep feeling, how strange his skin has made mine" (179).
This is by far my favorite essay I've read this year and if you'd like to read it you don't even need to get The Best American Essays 2009 (in fact, I'd probably skip it since I wasn't overly impressed by the collection as a whole, more on that later). You can check out this essay at The Gettysburg Review. It's very short, just three pages printed and I obviously think it's worth a read and reread. Ryan Van Meter also has an essay collection coming out April 2011 entitled If You Knew Then What I Know Now. I wait with baited breath.
I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.