Escape into Meaning: Essays on Superman, Public Benches, and Other Obsessions

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This book was like 7 course meal of all desserts. As if I got a 7.5 hour YouTube video of his inner thoughts and views of the world. He mentioned at one time how the YouTube career was meant to originally be a springboard into his writing career similar to the path of John Green, which is ironic because Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed was another of my favorite reads of last year. I don’t agree with everything Emerson wrote. If I did, Emerson himself would be the first to disapprove. But his points, in “Self-Reliance” and elsewhere, are subtle enough to overcome their excesses and still be of great value to the modern reader. There are ways Emerson’s exaltation of the self goes too far, but it’s also an essential message, made all the more essential for the beauty of its articulation. We all need to forge a confidence in our own mind. To achieve great things, we first need to believe we’re capable of great things. That belief, as we know, wavers. It erodes against a constant bombardment of self-doubt. If you’re feeling low, “Self-Reliance” is the best pep talk imaginable:“You cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as the colossal chisel of Phidias, or the trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these.” And confidence in the self, once attained, gives you the confidence to see its shortcomings. O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth’s... I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I won’t hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints.

But the mind doesn’t need cogent thoughts to operate. That’s the second fundamental truth I learned from Emerson, not from his writing directly, but as a consequence of reading it. My brain was getting along just fine in all its hypocrisy and contradiction. If I kept myself busy, I barely noticed the inconsistencies. But once I slowed down and began to wonder who I actually was, what I actually believed—something we’re all inclined to do eventually—my tangled self could offer no answers. A brilliant, wide-ranging essay collection that explores meaning and how we make it with the thoughtfulness and open-hearted generosity that have long been hallmarks of Puschak's writing." —John Green, New York Times bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed At times, Emerson’s contempt for society’s conforming pressures slips into a distrust of society itself:“Society never advances,” he declares. “It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on another.” Between individuals and the collective, Emerson favors the individual—to a fault. Society does advance, and only when people stand together, when they act collectively. Emerson’s self-reliance reads as self-absorption in certain passages, and self-absorption being the keynote of our culture for some decades now, it’s clear how such thinking can hinder progress and cause all kinds of disastrous inequality. Not all multitudes are bad. O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth’s… I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I won’t hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. Essay collections are such a wonderful thing. I’ve read bits and pieces of quite a few, but not many to completion. I always find it interesting to see the way various writers apply their style to the medium of essays. David Foster Wallace with his intricate yet hilarious prose. Orwell with his journalistic and insightful voice. John Green with his deeply human and romantic lens.Essay by essay, Emerson brought my life into focus. I was entranced, enlightened, and inspired. I couldn’t believe someone knew how to do these kinds of things with language. It was magic, and I wanted to learn it. I wanted to retrieve the cloudy, half-formed thoughts from my head and give them shape, make them real. I wanted to excavate the secrets of my mind and see if others recognized them. I wanted to know what I actually believed, and to do that I had to write. So I wrote, and it was godawful.

The more Emerson I read, the more my own thinking seemed murky and confused. The more it seemed like my decisions and beliefs were based on a hodgepodge of old, drifting thought-fragments, corrupted after years without reflection. A paragraph of Emerson’s was more complete than my entire belief system. His essays snowballed into towering monuments of self-expression, poetic and staggeringly lucid.Emerson is the most eloquent nine-year-old in history. And like a nine-year-old, he’s never jaded. He’s here for the drowsy and jaded souls of 1836 or today, to shake us out of it: “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!” Producer, editor, and writer behind the highly addictive, informative, and popular YouTube channel The Nerdwriter, Evan Puschak presents an unconventional and whip-smart essay collection about topics as varied as Superman, politics, and public benches.

I also enjoyed the first essay, which explores education vs. enthusiasm for learning. The rest of the essays varied, the one on Superman reading to me like a guy's take on Superman, and I didn't finish the one on Seinfeld--I tried twice to watch some of the show, but both times got to where this loud, boring guy mansplained at the top of his lungs to a captive audience and I flipped the channel both times. I tried reading the essay but nothing engaged me in the opening graphs, so I moved on.In going down into the secrets of his own mind, [a person] has descended into the secrets of all minds…. The poet, in utter solitude remembering his spontaneous thoughts and recording them, is found to have recorded that which men in cities vast find true for them also…. The deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment, to his wonder he finds this is the most acceptable, most public and universally true.