What's a Lyrical Essay? A Review of Elisa Gabbert's The Word Pretty

GD Dess reviews Elisa Gabbert's latest collection of writing, The Word Pretty, and considers the lyrical essay's recent abundance. At Los Angeles Review of Books, Dess writes: "The lyrical essay has proliferated in recent years. Its antecedents can be traced back to 1966 when Truman Capote, author of In Cold Blood (1965), introduced the idea of the 'nonfiction novel' in an interview with George Plimpton for The New York Times. Over the years, the burgeoning genre of creative nonfiction, as well as the increased publication of personal essays, led to the development of what has come to be called the lyrical essay." More: 

An influential definition of the form, by John D’Agata and Deborah Tall, was published in the Seneca Review in 1997:

The lyric essay partakes of the poem in its density and shapeliness, its distillation of ideas and musicality of language. It partakes of the essay in its weight, in its overt desire to engage with facts, melding its allegiance to the actual with its passion for imaginative form.

Lyrical essays are often viewed as being closer to stream of consciousness or koan-like riddles than traditional essays. They are notably difficult to critique because of their association with poetry and the poetic license they claim as their due. When D’Agata and Tall wrote that the lyrical essay “partakes of the essay in its weight,” they were pointing to the ways it draws from our common understanding of what an essay is. While a precise definition of “essay” has remained elusive, readers can generally agree that the genre typically presents an author’s thinking about a particular subject; it involves an examination of a topic in the form of an argument. Arguments consist of premises leading to a conclusion. Like a concerto, then, essays generally adhere to a logical form.

But lyrical essays are more like jazz than a concerto. The idea that lyrical essays are more poetic than logical has allowed authors to play fast and loose with the truth, as D’Agata did in his 2010 essay “What Happens There,” in which he reported on the suicide of Levi Presley in Las Vegas. The essay was rejected by Harper’s because of factual inaccuracies but was eventually published in The Believer. The ongoing dialogue between D’Agata and the fact-checker Jim Fingal morphed into the book The Lifespan of a Fact (2012), in which they debated the liminal space between fact-based truth and art.

Dess goes on to sharply critique Gabbert's collection. In possibly his most generous moment, Dess writes:

When Gabbert is simply connecting thoughts or images, her chatty tone — which, unfortunately, descends into snark all too often — is easy to digest. There are many statements that raise an eyebrow, but you’re likely to grant them a pass in order to keep reading. As there is no formal argument in this style of writing, you just float along the narrative stream. But when Gabbert moves into the more treacherous waters of analysis, she encounters difficulty and following her becomes problematic.

Read on at Los Angeles Review of Books.