Essay collections gather a writer’s thoughts over time and can be read as an oblique form of memoir, one in which the self is revealed through a series of conversations with the world.
Two new collections by celebrated novelists – Zadie Smith’s Dead and Alive and Anne Enright’s Attention: Writing on Life, Art and the World – tell the stories of our time from within the unfolding cultural moment. The essay, as it appears in these collections, is a response to minds, art, communities and culture, understood through a writer’s body, intellect and being.
