The Thing of the Essay

Abstract

I read the essay’s attitude toward things as a commitment to both receptivity—lingering with things as they are found--and renewal—seeing new possibilities in things. Understanding the essay as an experiment in dwelling with things perhaps helps to motivate the contemporary relevance of the form. Dwelling with things has a visionary potential to see beyond the narrow horizon afforded by the habitual or orthodox, and in times of social and environmental crisis, the need to renew the possibility in things becomes urgent.