Ross gay book of delights review
The Book of Delights: Essays
Ross Gay spent a lot of time on airplanes in a recent month period, which, these days — what with security lines, absent amenities, and shrinking legroom (and he being a pretty lofty guy) — does not sound very delightful. Yet Gay made it his practice over the course of a year to open himself to and capture his impressions of the little pleasures of the everyday, every day.
Well, maybe not every night. There aren’t essays in The Book of Delights, but we spend one year with Gay, from birthday to birthday, education to delight with him and to be delighted by him.
Even better (or, as the author would say, “Delight!”), this is a physically small guide that fits nicely in the reader’s hands. Each essay stands satisfyingly on its own, at most six or eight pages, more often two or fewer. All of which goes to say that it’s a book that begs to be carried along, offering insight and delight in whatever slice of time a reader may have. This is flash nonfiction.
If you didn’t know Gay as a poet before coming to D by Vivian Wagner One cool, April day, seven years almost to the day after my father’s suicide, I sat outside a coffee shop reading Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights. As cherry blossom petals fell around me and onto the pages of the book, I came across this passage in one of its essays, “‘Joy Is Such a Human Madness’” It astonishes me sometimes—no, often—how every person I get to know—everyone, regardless of everything, by which I mean everything—lives with some profound personal sorrow. Brother addicted. Mother murdered. Dad died in surgery. Rejected by their family. Cancer came back. Evicted. Fetus not okay. Everyone, regardless, always of everything. The essay ends with the idea that maybe, by joining our wildernesses of sorrow, we can locate something like joy: Is sorrow the correct wild? Not for the first time in reading The Book of Delights, I create myself crying. A When Henry James admonished writers to be “one of the people on whom nothing is lost,” he could well have been explaining poet Ross Gay. Author of three books of poetry, including the National Book Critics Circle prize-winning collection CATALOG OF UNABASHED GRATITUDE, he now has applied his considerable talent to the essay. In THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS, Gay delivers more than bite-sized entries that carry him through one year, beginning on his 42nd birthday in Intensely personal, wise, witty and sensuous, these glimpses of life through Gay’s perceptive eyes aren’t merely an introduction to his unique society. Collectively they’re an invitation to readers to awaken to the delights that surround us every day. When he embarked on the project that became this publication, Gay’s plan was to “write a daily essay about something delightful,” and though he hewed scrupulously to that theme, he admits his commitment to the regimen of producing a piece each day faltered. From his hometown of Bloomington, Indiana Ross Gay Ross Gay is known for his poetry, but The Book of Delights proves that he’s also an adept essayist. In composing the book, Gay operated under a simple principle: keep a diary of entries over the course of one year, with each entry concerning something joyful. From this conceit he spins out a variety of reflections that are sometimes whimsical, sometimes touching, and always thoughtful. Certain topics run throughout The Book of Delights, including Gay’s love of gardening, the emotional impact of his favorite songs, and his appreciation for entity in the moment. Seemingly small incidents are the springboard for little epiphanies. A mother and toddler sharing the burden of carrying a shopping bag across the street leads to a moving paean to mutual support. A shared high-five with a stranger becomes a tribute to human connection. A Lisa Loeb song leads to a memory about a childhood friend who invaded Gay’s house to rearrange his furniture in an elaborate prank. Another friend’s overuse of gas quotes pr
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And if it is—and if we join them—your wild to mine—what’s that?
For joining, too, is a kind of annihilation.
What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying.
I’m saying: What if that is joy?The Book of Delights: Essays
The Book of Delights
Algonquin Books (Feb 12, )
Hardcover$ (pp)