Virginia Woolf, a wonderful essayist, sometimes wrote about the essay. She said several things:
• The essay exists to give pleasure.
• Some of that pleasure is in encountering another personality. Montaigne included plenty of himself in his essays. So did Charles Lamb. But that personal element then lay dormant until Max Beerbohm arrived.
• “The public needs essays as much as ever, and perhaps even more.” But there are practical limits about what a writer can do. Woolf was talking about how long an essay should be, and whether a writer could write one in a month for a magazine, or once a week or once a day for a newspaper.
She spoke of the demand for “the light middle,” an essay not exceeding 1,500 words or, in special cases, 1,750. In my day, a newspaper column was 500 words. The column — a single column of type — began at the top of the page and ended at the bottom.
Woolf pointed out the relationship between length and frequency. Where Lamb wrote one essay, Beerbohm might write two and Hilaire Belloc 365.
To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heart-breaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm’s way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.
I agree with the first sentence. Anyone who’s done it can tell a story about heartbreak. But I’m dubious about the second claim. Some writers trust the public a great deal, while others don’t. Some worry about giving offense. Others don’t.
But I sympathize with trying to write for people who are busy, harried, overwhelmed. Trying to give them something, even if it’s short, seems worthwhile to me.
• “The Modern Essay” is in Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader; New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, Incorporated, 1925. Project Gutenberg has it here:
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