What I like in an essay (1 . . . or is it 2?)

Finally, I'm able to take a bit of a breather from some frantic paper writing and cramming other loose ends at the end of a semester. Every semester, I tell myself that I will not wait to start writing papers until the last few weeks. I know its a bad tactic for me. I've heard some of my peers talk about how they need the pressure to catalyze their academic muse, and admittedly a sudden burst of inspiration hit me near the middle of my two week paper. But for the most part I think writing a longer non-fiction work during a concentrated period encourages me to look for short cuts (i.e. coming to conclusions too easily) more than it serves to light my fire for any sort of thoughtful inspiration. I want to build my papers more gradually throughout the semester, writing whenever the inspirations comes, which is usually just after I read something provocative or having a good conversation.

But the title of this post refers to essays I like to read, not write, tho of course their is a emulative relationship between the two. Reading essays from different sorts of journala and book chapters lately, I've realized that there are some academic essays/articles that indeed have a certain similarity in form to the "bohemian essay" that I adore so much. The essays I like are the ones that tread along a path of thought full of switchbacks and twists. They are unpredictable. They don't exhaust their ability to provide insight or stimulation in a thesis money-shot at the beginning. Instead they are rich with the acuity of the wandering eye. I think the most graceful bohemian essays tend to render insight in an even more offhand way than good academic essays can. Baldwin, Gopnik and the like can throw out just one line or one phrase that puts an aspect of life in a completely new light, then move on to the next thought without hesitation. Academic essays rarely get away with that level of nonchalance, but maybe a stray paragraph or two, perhaps something that stretches to a far off counterexample more for an intellectual challenge rather than the demands of the economy of an argument. While these sorts of academic essays may still have a thesis, they do not move along the arborescent outline format that I teach students to do.