De Botton on Religion

Alain de Botton's newest, "Religion for Atheists: A non-believer's guide to the uses of religion," is coming out in March. Interestingly, the author, on Twitter, is offering a "dinky" signed nameplate if you tweet him a signed receipt proving that you have bought his book.

A Convergence of Chroniclers

One of the best collection of chronicles out there is Cees Nooteboom's Nomad's Hotel. In it you will find a chronicle about his pilgrimage to visit another great chronicler, Tim Robinson, author of the Proust-sized, sui generis The Stones of Aran. Robinson's new book is Connemara: a Little Gaelic Kingdom, which is reviewed in The New Statesman by none other than Brian Dillon, the author of In the Dark Room and The Hypocondriacs and the best chronicler to emerge in England after Alain de Botton.

The last paragraph of Dillon's review can fairly stand as a detailed definition of the chronicle genre:

As ever with Robinson, the pleasures of his vagrant, exacting style are many. The seductive accumulation of stories or topographical details frequently culminates in reflections at once abstract and lovely, as in his concluding remarks about the intricacy of the coast: "The natural world is largely composed of such recalcitrant entities, over which the geometry of Euclid, the fairy tale of lines, circles, areas and volumes we are told at school, has no authority." Long, digressive tramps through natural or cultural history terminate in aphoristic clarity: "There are places where place proliferates . . . There is no overarching story other than the dominance of story itself." Except that, for Robinson, such sudden vistas and insights are preludes to the renewed work of immersion in place. As he wrote in his diary 30 years ago: "I could wander onwards up here for ever."

The Essay vs. the Chronicle

In the Guardian, Harry Mount — the editor of Notting Hill Editions Journal in England, which commissions a new essay every week — tries to define what an essay is: "Any shortish passage of non-fiction which makes a general argument."

I don't at all agree as to length being part of the definition. An essay does not cease to be an essay when it becomes a book (which, of course, does not constitute a literary genre,) just as a chronicle does not. Alain de Botton's "The Art of Travel" and "The Architecture of Happiness" are definitely essays despite being also books.

As to an essay having to make a general argument, I suppose that is how it differs from the chronicle, which is more concerned with depiction and narrative than argument, though it can be as thought-filled as any essay.

But what Harry Mount had to say about the autobiographical essay applies also to the chronicle: "You could write 50,000 words about yourself, and it could be an essay in every regard. It sounds banal, but all that matters is quality of writing and thought. "

He then goes on to list 10 exceptional essays. I found the list interesting because two of the essays are actually works of reportage, reminding me of how Joan Didion's pieces are now called essays when they were originally magazine features and examples of the New Journalism.

Harry Mount justified it this way: "Brilliant reportage leaps its chains and becomes an essay."

I think Harry Mount is right in suspecting that "brilliant reportage" leaps out of its genre into another -- but since a report usually has no general argument to make, and is more concerned with depiction and narrative, that other genre would not be the essay but the chronicle. The same applies to Didion's pieces: if they are to be considered more than magazine features, then call them chronicles.

Alain de Botton -- Hail a Master Chronicler

In the English language. Alain de Botton had already proved himself the best living essayist. (It was a relief to see him give up the novel form, in which his Proustian prose style had sat so uneasily beside his passages of flip dialogue and attempts at plot.) With his commissioned "A Week at the Airport," he proved himself to be a master chronicler as well.
And I've recently discovered his Twitter feed, which is very much worth following. Two recent gems from it:
1) There isn't any such thing as good writing: really it's just a covert term for good thinking.
2) Use mornings of courage, light and optimism to draw the roadmap that will work in the darkness.