At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays

This is a lovely collection of musings (“familiar essays”) on various topics, from coffee to the postal service. I’ve truly lost track of the number of times I’ve given this book as a gift. It is one of my favorites.

Over the last several years, I must have given close to a dozen copies of Anne Fadiman's previous essay collection, "Ex Libris", to various friends. It's the kind of book you just have to share with others. It didn't seem possible that another collection could match the perfection of the first, but this one comes pretty close. Essays in the first collection focused on topics related to books and reading; the author's lifelong passion for reading shone through on every page and should resonate with any reader sharing her addiction to books. In this new collection, Fadiman demonstrates an ability to write engagingly on a wide variety of topics. Coffee, ice-cream, moving, the life of Coleridge, the essays of Charles Lamb - Fadiman expounds charmingly on these topics, and several others, making it seem easy. Like Malcolm Gladwell, she can make any topic she writes about fascinating. Of course, writing essays so polished they sparkle like gems is anything but easy. It is a testament to Fadiman's skill as a writer that she makes it seem effortless.

I would simply like to add my praise to that of all the other reviewers. This is a book of tiny, sparkling gems which I will read again and again. As someone else has said, Anne Fadiman's readers may not be as interested in some of her subjects as she is, but her perfect, attention-holding prose makes up for this. I also love the way she gives credit to Charles Lamb for teaching her about the "Conversational Essay." She has learnt his lessons perfectly, and I think he would enjoy Anne Fadiman every bit as much as she enjoys him. Reading her essays has made me search for Lamb's "Essays of Elia." I found them and much more - very second-hand but intact - and am having a wonderful time with Mr Lamb. Thank you, Anne Fadiman. Sheila McLaren.

I have felt that I will read any book that Anne Fadiman writes; this confirms that conviction. What's a familiar essay? Fadiman doesn't give a precise definition in her preface, but she characterizes the genre: "The familiar essayist didn't speak to the millions; he spoke to one reader, as if the two of them were sitting side by side in front of a crackling fire.... His viewpoint was subjective, his frame of reference concrete, his style digressive, his eccentricities conspicuous, and his laughter usually at his own expense. And though he wrote about himself, he also wrote about a subject, something with which he was so familiar, and about which he was often so enthusiastic, that his words were suffused with a lover's intimacy" (p. x). These essays live up to the genre: most start with one or more personal stories, which Fadiman uses as a starting point to speak about a subject more generally. The form is the only common theme of the book; the topics are wonderfully eclectic: insomnia, the American flag, coffee, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I enjoyed each of these essays, from Fadiman's fascinating history of the mail system (yes, really) to her reflections on what she calls "the culture wars" (questions like: should the life of the writer affect our valuation of the work? should we value literature for some inherent esthetic value or because of what it teaches us?) to her thoughts on...ice cream. [Only the last essay didn't grab me.] Ultimately, Fadiman brings wonderful prose and delicious diction to any topic. I love her vocabulary's propensity to send me scurrying repeatedly to my dictionary - "oleaginous," "solipsistic," "insouciance," "omphalos" - artfully meshed with an informal, unpretentious style. (She cleverly hides her sources in the back without footnotes, so you can enjoy the book as a leisurely conversation but then know where to learn more.) This is Fadiman's third book: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down was Excellent but very different (a classic work of medical anthropology), and Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader - the bibliophile's manifesto - had the benefit of a common theme. In that sense, this was slightly less compelling than those two but marvelous just the same. She also edited and wrote the first essay for Rereadings: Seventeen writers revisit books they love , a collection of other people's essays about re-reading books they loved as children; I enjoyed that very much as well. I recommend it. [My wife and I read this aloud to each other; I highly recommend that, too.]

This book came highly recommended so I expected it to be brilliant. It's tone is a bit too self-congratulatory in regards to her own family, but I have enjoyed a number of the essays and they have given me some food for thought. It's a book you can dip into for one chapter and then return later for more.

It's always a pleasure to read a book by Anne Fadiman. Each essay is a marvel of erudition and beautifully crafted prose.

For lovers of books, personal essays and anyone who enjoys an intelligent book.when shall we be graced again by another instalment?

Ann Fadiman writes beautifully and brings us into her personal world with warmth. I savored each essay, reading just one a day to make them last. Suzanne Love Harris, Wilson, Wyoming

Schon in Ex libris hat Fadiman bewiesen, wie gut sie es versteht, die alltäglichen Dinge eines Bücher- und Weltlesers in essayistischer Form darzustellen. In At Large and at Small sind die Themen etwas breiter gefächert. Gut recherchiert sind sie immer. Wer etwas über das Sammeln von Schmetterlingen und ihr Idol Charles Lamb erfahren möchte oder einen Weg sucht, in Sekundenschnelle Eiscreme herzustellen, der findet hier genau das richtige. Schön auch der persönliche Bezug zu ihrem Leben, ihrem Bruder und Vater.

“I inherited my owlishness from a father who shares Jimmy Walker’s conviction that it is a sin to go to bed on the same day you get up.” Author Anne Fadiman, daughter of the illustrious Clifton Fadiman, offers a collection of “familiar” essays covering an extraordinary range of topics, including ice cream, mailboxes, Arctic explorers and author’s childhood memories! The tone is gentle, humorous, but also erudite – rather like an intimate conversation with an exceptionally well-read friend. In ‘Collecting Nature’, the author remembers her early childhood, when she and her brother Kim used to catch butterflies, put them in a “killing jar” and eventually preserve them in Riker mounts, which she describes as “a shallow glass-topped box filled with absorbent cotton.” However, “Shame set in about two years later. I remember a period of painful overlap, when the light of decency was dawning but the lure of sin was still irresistible…” Fadiman shares her subsequent experiences of collecting and displaying biological specimens – followed by “the last day of my childhood” when she had to dismantle her little museum before leaving home for college. At the end of the essay, the author says that she and her husband gave their six-year-old daughter “a kit containing five painted lady caterpillars” which eventually grew into butterflies and were set free by the little girl – thereby completing the natural cycle of birth and death started by her mother a generation ago. “Americans now eat more ice cream per capita than the citizens of any other nation, and I am proud to say that from an early age I have worked hard to do my part.” Anyone who enjoys ice cream will relish the author’s dictum “it is a grave error to assume that ice cream consumption requires hot weather.” This essay, simply titled “Ice Cream’, explains technical parameters like butterfat content and overrun, and also shares the recipe for “Kim Fadiman’s Coffee Kahlua Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream.” Another interesting essay is ‘Moving’ which describes the author’s change of residence from New York City to western Massachusetts: “We packed 347 boxes… we vowed we would never buy another book. We broke our nails peeling packing tape from slippery brown rolls. We kept losing our scissors, our Magic Markers, our color-coded dots (green for the new house, red for storage). Later we discovered that we had boxed them up.” Anyone who has experienced a transfer can relate to this! Anne Fadiman, the quintessential perfectionist, has published only two collections of essays, ‘Ex Libris’ in 1998 and ‘At Large and At Small’ in 2008. Having read both of them (and posted reviews on this site), I am inclined to read her memoirs very soon.

Anne Fadiman is a superb essayist and book-lover. This volume of essays is great for dipping into - each essay takes about half an hour to read - just enough time to have a coffee and a piece of cake in your favourite coffee shop (as long as you're not interrupted by unexpected friends turning up!) The essays themselves are mostly autobiographical, beautifully-written, and an interesting window on Ms Fadiman's world. They are warm, sympathetic and a joy to read. Oh, and, if you haven't read it yet, do buy, borrow or steal a copy of her companion volume, Ex Libris....