So you want to be an essayist. An essayist on serious matters. Or, uh,
walk that back a bit … You actually love to read essays that are immaculately
structured, humble (not clever!) in tone and tell you something about what you
care about in a way that is surprising, intelligent and entertaining.
If this sounds like you. Or half of you. Take a few moments and read this
essay (from the London Review of Books, March 3, alternate title, The Faceless
Unnamed) by Frances Stonor Saunders. Thankfully, this thinker is not one of
those in the If the Greats Were With Us Thursday department …
Where on
Earth are you?
Frances
Stonor Saunders
The one
border we all
cross, so often and with such well-rehearsed reflexes that we barely notice it,
is the threshold of our own home. We open the front door, we close the front
door: it’s the most basic geographical habit, and yet one lifetime is not
enough to recount all our comings and goings across this boundary. What threshold
rites do you perform before you leave home? Do you appease household deities,
or leave a lamp burning in your tabernacle? Do you quickly pat down pockets or
bag to check you have the necessary equipment for the journey? Or take a final
check in the hall mirror, ‘to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet’?
