Only 3-Word Review on video:

“His essays are intimate, on occasion a bit uncomfortable in their frankness on family or sexuality, but if read as personal–as a man himself working to understand the events of his life–merely genuine.”

In my search for new essayists to follow, Blanchfield’s work (along with his poetry) comes highly recommended–I understand why.

As summaries of the collection assert, this is an essayist left alone to explore himself–his knowledge, his personal condition, his cultural aplomb, the connections he discovers there, all without consulting authority. The result is interesting, as occasionally his errors find connections otherwise unlooked for or sometimes his discoveries were made obvious when re-examined, sublimated as they were to appear afresh as original connection. His essays are intimate, on occasion a bit uncomfortable in their frankness on family or sexuality, but if read as personal–as a man himself working to understand the events of his life–merely genuine.

I don’t know how many of these I will take with me; after all, these are Blanchfield’s mind, not mine. Nevertheless, I never found their journeys uninspired or uninteresting: the empathetic differences between the words “this” and “that,” or the Robin Hood workings of The Dukes of Hazzard, or the etymologies of meeting “minutes,” or the coveting of a tumbleweed of happenstance. Blanchfield follows all where they take him, much it seems as his disparate jobs have led him from recollection to recollection.