Jamey Essex – Geographer writing on development, diplomacy, the state, food, and the politics of place
Even though one could say that as a philosopher reading forms a large part of my work, my interests pull me in so many different directions that I feel I am perpetually behind (sometimes embarrassingly so), publishers’ lists in any particular field or genre. That is true for philosophy and doubly so for literature (which is better than philosophy, since it nourishes the mind but also pleases in a way that very few philosophical authors and their too-careful-to-the-point of verbosity prose are able to achiev
The Lay of the Land is the third volume of a trilogy that began with The Sportswriter and continued with Independence Day . In one respect, the trilogy is classic Americana: an epic that traces the domestic dramas of Frank Bascombe, former sportswriter cum New Jersey real estate not-quite mogul, on his journey from early to middle middle age, through his struggles to love his kids, divorce, re-marriage and its sundry complications, and finally to some sort of inner peace.
In almost all respects Bascombe is everything I absolutely rejected when I was younger. I disdained the social conventions that Bascombe lives by, never wanted to have children, valued ideas and art more than money, dressed in tight black jeans and a leather jacket rather than pale pastel golf shirts. But the power of literature (and all art) is to draw us into worlds which are not our own. The greatness of literature is not found in how accurately it “represents” this or that reality but with how skillfull
Jamey Essex – Geographer writing on development, diplomacy, the state, food, and the politics of place