Writing like it's out of fashion

Granta 82: Life's like that edited by Ian jack (Granta, (pounds) 9.99)

IF you are the kind of writer who has his sights set on the Nobel Prize, said EB White, you had better steer clear of the essay. Essayists don't win prizes, that is the prerogative of poets, novelists and dramatists. In the literary hierarchy, the essay ranks some rungs below the short story, which is in a healthier state than most of its doomy supporters would allow. The essay, on the other hand, is, at least hereabouts, waiting for an organ transplant, clinging desperately to a life without much evidence of quality.

For too long, we have taken the essay for granted, passively neglecting it while hyping the novel, which ought by now - if originality was its principle criteria - to be extinct. Instead that is the fate which could be facing the essay, that most elastic and embracing of forms. Perhaps it is a victim of its own modesty. Essayists, unlike other writers, tend to be low profile. They do not sign million-pound advances, mouth off about colleagues or take star billing at book festivals. They wait politely in wings, hoping to be noticed. If not, so what? Their turn will come. Essayists embody patience. They are not pushy people. In consequence, marketing departments find them easy to overlook.

But what makes essays hard to sell also makes them a joy to write and read. They can be quiet or loud, topical or timeless, long or short. The only imperative is that they must be well written. A recent edition of the annual Best American Essays, an exemplary collection which would be impossible to emulate on this side of the pond, includes essays on the telephone, how to speak Italian, ageing, history, the craft of cartoons and the power of photography, summer in Vermont, a stroll around Queens, and dinner at the White House. Among the contributors are big hitters such as John Updike, Saul Bellow and JM Coetzee, as well as writers of the quality of Edward Hoagland, Ian Frazier and John McPhee who have made the essay their personal fiefdoms. The publications in which these essays first appeared are as diverse as The American Scholar, Salmagundi, The Gettysburg Review and The New Yorker. For Robert Atwan, series editor of Best American Essays, the volumes offer readers, both foreign and domestic, "an annual portrait of our nation".

In contrast, the outlets for essayists in Britain are limited. Newspapers which published so-called "essays" are fooling themselves. Essays that are written to length always seem to be on the point of suffocating for want of breathing space, which in papers is at a premium. Moreover, it is not in the nature of newspapers to promote discursiveness or obliqueness. In a newspaper, anyone seen wandering off the point or taking their time reaching one is regarded, quite rightly, as lacking in direction, for which one can only sincerely apologise.

Which brings us, rather circuitously, to the latest issue of Granta, "the magazine of new writing". Granta is not wholly devoted to the essay but it is one of its few champions. The latest edition offers five examples of what essays can do. Tim Judah's Passover In Baghdad, for instance, might be described as reportage, though it is also a slice of personal history, which describes in deadpan language the well-justified paranoia of Jews living in post-Saddam Iraq. Meanwhile, Ian Jack's The Steam People is an elegant and factual rumination on Britain's love affair with the steam engine, accompanying a collection of photographs by Robin Grierson.

The other three essays are autobiographical, hence the "Life's Like That" tag. Kathryn Chetkovich's Envy is "a story about two writers", herself and an unnamed other. They meet at an artists' colony, fall in love, conduct a long-distance relationship and move in together. All seems hunky-dory but things begin to fall apart when her partner's novel takes off and he becomes "that rare thing, a writer whom people (not just other writers) have heard of".

Simon Gray begins his Smoking Diaries a couple of hours into his 66th year. He is abroad on holiday with his wife. Old friends are dead or perilously ill. Gray goes out to watch the dawn come up and spies a fellow guest staking an early claim for a chair. He writes about Hank Janson, the archetypal bodice-ripper ("the only writer who actually changed my life for the better in any practical and measurable way"), the way Gary Cooper walked, his mother, his younger dead brother, Harold Pinter's cancer and smoking, which Gray does continually. The art is in the apparent artlessness.

Lynn Barber is best known as an interviewer of celebrities, the majority of them men, whom she seems to revel in abusing. Many of them, of course, deserve to be deflated but often Barber appears unwilling to acknowledge or recognise their talent, preferring to dwell on their foibles. An Education may give her victims a clue to why she is so gleefully cruel, relating how, at the age of 16 and while still at school, she was seduced by a conman who impressed her with his flashy cars and fancy restaurants. Not only was Barber duped but so, too, were her hitherto highly protective parents.

When the truth emerged - her lover was a crooked landlord linked to the infamous Rachman and married with children - she felt betrayed not only by him but by her parents who had fallen for his charm and thrust her into his bed.

Consequently, reflects Barber: "I learned not to trust people; I learned not to believe what they say but to watch what they do; I learned to suspect that anyone and everyone is capable of 'living a lie'. I came to believe that other people - even when you think you know them well - are ultimately unknowable." It was a good lesson for an interviewer to learn, she concludes, but not for life. Like all the great essayists, she is at her most candid and courageous when looking unflinchingly in the mirror.

Edinburgh International Book Festival - Granta Best of Young British Novelists (Monica Ali, David Peace and Dan Rhodes), August 10, 7pm

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