Status
Available
Publication
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2008), Edition: Reprint, 240 pages
Description
Butterflies, Haagen-Dazs, writing at night, playing word games . . . in this witty, intimate and delicious book, Anne Fadiman ruminates on her passions, both literary and everyday. From mourning the demise of letter-writing to revealing a monumental crush on Charles Lamb, from Balzac's coffee addiction to making ice-cream from liquid nitrogen, she draws us into a world of hedonistic pleasures and literary delights. This is the perfect book for life's ardent obsessive.
User reviews
LibraryThing member bell7
In the Preface, Anne Fadiman quotes her father's regret that the familiar essay is dying, and declares her intention of this book to be her contribution to continuing the genre. She defines the familiar essay as one that includes both the personal (the "at small" of her title) and the general ("at
One of my favorite essays was "Procrustes and the Culture Wars." Not only was it a topic that I was interested in - the culture wars as seen through four questions regarding one's interpretation of capital-L Literature - but also my personal response in reading was pondering what my own response might be, what my own essay on the topic might be like. Even when I disagreed with her points, the essay was thought-provoking, smart, and witty.
One of the greatest strengths of this collection is Fadiman's ability to make disparate subject matter interesting, forcing me as a reader to only read one or two essays at a time, because I wanted to fully absorb what she was saying and think about the subject, rather than moving on quickly to something else as I could have done. Until now, I had only read Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, her collection of essays on books and reading, but this collection has convinced me to try more of her titles.
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large"). Each of the dozen essays in this collection also include the large and small in terms of topic, ranging from ice cream to Samuel Coleridge, as well as exhibiting Fadiman's broad knowledge base in literature and vocabulary.One of my favorite essays was "Procrustes and the Culture Wars." Not only was it a topic that I was interested in - the culture wars as seen through four questions regarding one's interpretation of capital-L Literature - but also my personal response in reading was pondering what my own response might be, what my own essay on the topic might be like. Even when I disagreed with her points, the essay was thought-provoking, smart, and witty.
One of the greatest strengths of this collection is Fadiman's ability to make disparate subject matter interesting, forcing me as a reader to only read one or two essays at a time, because I wanted to fully absorb what she was saying and think about the subject, rather than moving on quickly to something else as I could have done. Until now, I had only read Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, her collection of essays on books and reading, but this collection has convinced me to try more of her titles.
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LibraryThing member beserene
As is everything I've experienced by Anne Fadiman, this collection of familiar essays is wonderful. If you've never read her book 'Ex Libris', which is all about, of course, books, you are missing one of the greatest things known to book lovers. 'At Large and At Small', perhaps because of its
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variety of topics, lacks that intense, cohesive heart of the previous and therefore is not quite so all-engrossing as 'Ex Libris', but is witty, engaging, and fantastic never the less. Show Less
LibraryThing member jjmcgaffey
I do like this kind of writing - what she calls the "familiar essay" (not a term I'd heard before). Some of these have real resonance with me and my life; some completely don't, though they're still interesting. I enjoyed all of them and suspect I'll be rereading this a good many times, as well as
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looking for her other writings. Show Less
LibraryThing member Smiley
What a delightful little book. Little in only the number of pages. Packed with wit, intelligence, elegant writing and enough brain candy that will keep you thinking long after you close the back cover.
At Large & At Small has inspired me to track down Fadiman's other work.
At Large & At Small has inspired me to track down Fadiman's other work.
LibraryThing member satyridae
Engrossing and erudite essays are gem-like in their precision and sparkle. Informed by Fadiman's multi-faceted education and just personal enough to add depth and clarity. Highly recommended.
LibraryThing member Overgaard
Fadiman is one of my favorite essay writers - right up there w Zadie
LibraryThing member ValerieAndBooks
This is a nice set of essays penned by the author of Ex Libris another collection of essays. While I enjoyed Fadiman's essays -- all excellently written -- I feel that Ex Libris is more endearing.
LibraryThing member readingwithtea
"In the fall of 1998 I finally gave in and signed up for e-mail. I had resisted for a long time. My husband and I were proud of our retrograde status. Not only did we lack a modem, but we didn't own a car, a microwave, a Cuisinart, an electric can opener, a CD player, or a cell phone. It's hard to
Anne Fadiman, specialist in the personal essay, turns her hand to a number of large and philosophical topics ("at large") and more mundane themes ("at small"). This short book of essays, each about 10 pages, is full of nuggets of well-expressed thoughts.
I like Ms Fadiman. Were we to meet in real life, I think we'd get on pretty well. Especially given her thoughts on coffee, ice cream, and morning larks v night owls (I'm the former, she's the latter, but I like her considerations about how the two co-exist).
"I recently calculated... that had I eaten no ice cream since the age of eighteen, I would currently weigh -416 pounds. I might be lighter than air, but I would be miserable... Now, under the watchful eye of a husband so virtuous that he actually prefers low-fat frozen yogurt, I go through the motions of scooping a modest hemisphere of ice cream into a small bowl, but we both know that during the course of the evening I will simply shuttle to and from the freezer until the entirety of the pint has been transferred from carton to bowl to me."
Fadiman ruthlessly brings her family and spouse into these essays, which makes them all the more approachable and personable. I like hearing that her husband is a lark and the funny stories arising from the mismatch (and how they deal with it). The family occupation, mentioned in a previous Fadiman essay collection, of finding typos and bad translations on menus, rung very true with me.
She's a very clever author too, with a talent for finding the funny quote in her source material. This from an essay about Charles & Mary Lamb (yes, those Shakespeare Lambs):
"My life has been somewhat diversified of late. The 6 weeks that finished last year and began this, your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a mad house at Hoxton. I am got somewhat rational now, & don't bite anyone."
I don't read a lot of non-fiction, but if there were more essays like this, I'd read them. Maybe this is why I like blogs so much?
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give up that sort of backward image. I worried that our friends wouldn't have enough to make fun of."Anne Fadiman, specialist in the personal essay, turns her hand to a number of large and philosophical topics ("at large") and more mundane themes ("at small"). This short book of essays, each about 10 pages, is full of nuggets of well-expressed thoughts.
I like Ms Fadiman. Were we to meet in real life, I think we'd get on pretty well. Especially given her thoughts on coffee, ice cream, and morning larks v night owls (I'm the former, she's the latter, but I like her considerations about how the two co-exist).
"I recently calculated... that had I eaten no ice cream since the age of eighteen, I would currently weigh -416 pounds. I might be lighter than air, but I would be miserable... Now, under the watchful eye of a husband so virtuous that he actually prefers low-fat frozen yogurt, I go through the motions of scooping a modest hemisphere of ice cream into a small bowl, but we both know that during the course of the evening I will simply shuttle to and from the freezer until the entirety of the pint has been transferred from carton to bowl to me."
Fadiman ruthlessly brings her family and spouse into these essays, which makes them all the more approachable and personable. I like hearing that her husband is a lark and the funny stories arising from the mismatch (and how they deal with it). The family occupation, mentioned in a previous Fadiman essay collection, of finding typos and bad translations on menus, rung very true with me.
She's a very clever author too, with a talent for finding the funny quote in her source material. This from an essay about Charles & Mary Lamb (yes, those Shakespeare Lambs):
"My life has been somewhat diversified of late. The 6 weeks that finished last year and began this, your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a mad house at Hoxton. I am got somewhat rational now, & don't bite anyone."
I don't read a lot of non-fiction, but if there were more essays like this, I'd read them. Maybe this is why I like blogs so much?
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LibraryThing member adzebill
Lovely collection of personal essays, ending with a powerful and disturbing memoir. Made me want to compulsively chase up her sources on Charles Lamb, natural history museums, and Nabokov's butterfly collecting.
LibraryThing member sriemann
A lovely book that I am sad to have finished, but glad to have such a nice list of sources/books in the back, so I can look further into those essay topics that really caught my interest. Some of my favorite essays were about the mail, coffee, and being a night owl. Fadiman's writing shows her
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lineage and her extensive vocabulary, but without making the reader feel dumb. Instead, I felt like I got to learn a lot of neat new words. Another good book for keeping on the bedside table and reading an essay a night. Show Less
LibraryThing member cat-ballou
I was charmed by this book. The only thing that alternated between charming me and irritating me was that Fadiman uses a lot of words that I am just not familiar with. She readily admits to a "weakness for long words" right up front - in the very first essay, as a matter of fact. And now I have a
I should say, though, that her admirably extensive vocabulary doesn't get in the way of the book at all. And who knows - it might just make me a better Scrabble player!
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four columns of words on a post-it with which I need to familiarize myself - not my standard reading experience at all. I should say, though, that her admirably extensive vocabulary doesn't get in the way of the book at all. And who knows - it might just make me a better Scrabble player!
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LibraryThing member kambrogi
Fans of Fadiman’s familiar essays are likely to enjoy this latest offering, bound in the same charming, rather old-fashioned style to fit neatly with the last such volume on one’s bookshelf. This collection is more diverse in subject matter, considering such topics as ice cream, entomology,
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Charles Lamb and sudden death. There is the usual evocation of her fascinating family and childhood adventures, her broad education and her insatiable curiosity. There is sure to be at least one essay for everyone. Unfortunately, I did not find myself smitten by the entire collection, as I was by her earlier Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader. However, those essays stuck close to that one most beloved of topics: books. Show Less
LibraryThing member Teazle
Collection of essays on various book-related subjects. I thoroughly enjoyed this it will have a permanent place on my shelves, alongside 'Ex Libris' by the same author.
LibraryThing member debnance
I paid full price for this book; I only do that for books I really, really want to read. The truth is that I was disappointed. I don’t know why. Partly, I think, it was because the subjects of the essays were not of particular interest to me. But I think it was primarily that the essays felt
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forced, not written naturally out of love for the subject, but to meet the requirements of completing a book. Show Less
LibraryThing member woodge
Eight years ago I read Ex Libris by Ms. Fadiman and really enjoyed it, so I was interested in checking out this batch of essays as well. A "familiar essay" is a reflection on a subject held dear by the author. Some of the subjects Ms. Fadiman covers include butterfly collecting, Victorian writers,
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little known Arctic explorers, coffee, ice cream, and finally, a tragic canoe trip. I found most of it interesting and all of it well written. Show Less
LibraryThing member TerryWeyna
Every now and then someone mourns the death of the essay. Clifton Fadiman, Anne Fadiman's father, did so over half a century ago in -- yes -- an essay entitled "A Gentle Dirge for the Familiar Essay." He, and we, are fortunate that his own daughter has so often shown that his obituary for this
I've been a fan of Fadiman's ever since I read Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader. The scope of At Large and At Small is broader than her earlier book, not being limited to the joys and woes of owning and reading books, but books and authors play an undeniable role in Fadiman's intellectual life. You will find here an essay about Charles Lamb, "The Unfuzzy Lamb," that will induce you to seek out Lamb's essays. Her essay on "Coleridge the Runaway" will probably convince you to read Richard Holmes's two-volume biography of the poet, Coleridge: Early Visions: 1772-1804 and Coleridge: Darker Reflections: 1803-1834. "Procrustes and the Culture Wars" will put into perspective all that silliness you hear these days about why you are "allowed" to read this person's works but not that person's depending on your political or moral outlook. "The Arctic Hedonist" will put you in mind of Fadiman's essay from Ex Libris entitled "My Odd Shelf," where she discusses her collection of books on polar exploration; here, her particular subject is Vilhjalmur Stefansson.
Fadiman's greater accomplishments in this volume, though, are her non-book essays. "Ice Cream," were it in verse form, would be an ode, and it sent me straight to the freezer for some almond praline. I wish I'd been on the transcontinental ice cream tasting trip she and her brother took in 1974. And her description of the color of Baskin-Robbins Chocolate Mint as "fly-specked absinthe" is right on target. "Moving" was another essay that seemed to capture the essence of a moment perfectly, the move from a big city to the country, when it seems that one has left any chance of ever eating a real bagel again behind forever.
"Coffee" is an essay anyone addicted to the stuff will recognize, even if one has never been as twitchy as Honore de Balzac, who ate dry coffee grounds. "Mail" is for anyone who runs to the mailbox as soon as the postal worker arrives (it's often the high point of my day, and by that I do not mean to imply that my days are boring; they're not). "A Piece of Cotton" is a piece about the flag, and especially America's response to the flag in the wake of 9/11 -- responses both genuine and heartfelt and tacky and commercial.
The shortest piece in the book is the last, and it is the most powerful. Entitled "Under Water," it is about a tragedy that occurred on a canoeing trip when Fadiman as eighteen. It is a small masterpiece. I will not ever forget it.
Clifton Fadiman was unquestionably premature in announcing the death of the essay. Each year, Houghton Mifflin publishes a volume of the year's best essays. David Foster Wallace has been delighting us with footnote-laden essays collected in such volumes as Consider the Lobster for some years now. John McPhee can interest us in the most abstruse topics with his essays. Oliver Saks and Atul Guwande write medical essays that give us a spotlight into a world we would probably otherwise not understand. Edward O. Wilson and Annie Dillard explain the natural world, each in their own way. We are lucky to have so many fine writers at this moment in time.
This book, though -- this book delights, excites, inspires, engages, absorbs, pierces, thrills. Most definitely, the familiar essay is alive and well in the hands of Anne Fadiman.
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literary form was very much premature. At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays is a lively collection that will bring joy to the heart of anyone who loves good writing.I've been a fan of Fadiman's ever since I read Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader. The scope of At Large and At Small is broader than her earlier book, not being limited to the joys and woes of owning and reading books, but books and authors play an undeniable role in Fadiman's intellectual life. You will find here an essay about Charles Lamb, "The Unfuzzy Lamb," that will induce you to seek out Lamb's essays. Her essay on "Coleridge the Runaway" will probably convince you to read Richard Holmes's two-volume biography of the poet, Coleridge: Early Visions: 1772-1804 and Coleridge: Darker Reflections: 1803-1834. "Procrustes and the Culture Wars" will put into perspective all that silliness you hear these days about why you are "allowed" to read this person's works but not that person's depending on your political or moral outlook. "The Arctic Hedonist" will put you in mind of Fadiman's essay from Ex Libris entitled "My Odd Shelf," where she discusses her collection of books on polar exploration; here, her particular subject is Vilhjalmur Stefansson.
Fadiman's greater accomplishments in this volume, though, are her non-book essays. "Ice Cream," were it in verse form, would be an ode, and it sent me straight to the freezer for some almond praline. I wish I'd been on the transcontinental ice cream tasting trip she and her brother took in 1974. And her description of the color of Baskin-Robbins Chocolate Mint as "fly-specked absinthe" is right on target. "Moving" was another essay that seemed to capture the essence of a moment perfectly, the move from a big city to the country, when it seems that one has left any chance of ever eating a real bagel again behind forever.
"Coffee" is an essay anyone addicted to the stuff will recognize, even if one has never been as twitchy as Honore de Balzac, who ate dry coffee grounds. "Mail" is for anyone who runs to the mailbox as soon as the postal worker arrives (it's often the high point of my day, and by that I do not mean to imply that my days are boring; they're not). "A Piece of Cotton" is a piece about the flag, and especially America's response to the flag in the wake of 9/11 -- responses both genuine and heartfelt and tacky and commercial.
The shortest piece in the book is the last, and it is the most powerful. Entitled "Under Water," it is about a tragedy that occurred on a canoeing trip when Fadiman as eighteen. It is a small masterpiece. I will not ever forget it.
Clifton Fadiman was unquestionably premature in announcing the death of the essay. Each year, Houghton Mifflin publishes a volume of the year's best essays. David Foster Wallace has been delighting us with footnote-laden essays collected in such volumes as Consider the Lobster for some years now. John McPhee can interest us in the most abstruse topics with his essays. Oliver Saks and Atul Guwande write medical essays that give us a spotlight into a world we would probably otherwise not understand. Edward O. Wilson and Annie Dillard explain the natural world, each in their own way. We are lucky to have so many fine writers at this moment in time.
This book, though -- this book delights, excites, inspires, engages, absorbs, pierces, thrills. Most definitely, the familiar essay is alive and well in the hands of Anne Fadiman.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jon1lambert
The `Collecting nature' essay and the references to butterflies led me to read Speak, Memory by Nabokov. Th mention of carbon tetrachloride reminded me of a childhood holiday in Leamington Spa. The landlady was unhappy about dead speckled woods and a bottle of carbon tetrachloride coming into her
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guest house. Quite right too in hindsight. Show Less
LibraryThing member ntempest
Fadiman writes familiar essays, which are a kind of cross between a personal essay and an essay that poses some sort of argument. They have gone somewhat out of fashion, but Fadiman writes them so well that it kind of makes me hope that they catch on again. Her essay on mail, in particular, was a
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lot of fun. The personal aspect links to her own love of mail--the snail mail kind--and branches out into a history of postage and the evolution from letter writing to e-mail. Anyone who has heard me expound on the virtues of actually writing a real pen-on-paper letter once in a while will understand why this one hit home for me. I found this collection intelligent and interesting and a lot of fun to read. Show Less
LibraryThing member subbobmail
Another collection of essays by Anne Fadiman, rejoice!
I came to Fadiman when I encountered her essay collection about the pleasures of bookishness, Ex Libris. I loved that book enough to give copies to my best friend AND the grandmother who helped me learn to read. Now Fadiman returns with At Large
Topics covered: ice cream (and how to make it with liquid nitrogen), polar explorers (including one who published a recipe for seal blood soup), mail of various kinds, the charming waifishness of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, coffee (did you you know that pure caffeine is such a dangerous poison that it must be handled with gloves?), morning persons vs. night owls, the "unfuzzy" Charles Lamb...
Fadiman is funny but not jokey, learned but not pedantic, a master of prose but not showy about it, accomplished as hell but still seemingly approachable...too bad she's married. Isn't that the way? All the witty female familiar essayists are always taken...
I came to Fadiman when I encountered her essay collection about the pleasures of bookishness, Ex Libris. I loved that book enough to give copies to my best friend AND the grandmother who helped me learn to read. Now Fadiman returns with At Large
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and Small, a collection in which she considers various things because...well, because she thinks they are neat. My favorite familiar essays allow me to 1) learn interesting things, and 2) enjoy the company of a writer whose company is congenial to me. Fadiman scores on both counts.Topics covered: ice cream (and how to make it with liquid nitrogen), polar explorers (including one who published a recipe for seal blood soup), mail of various kinds, the charming waifishness of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, coffee (did you you know that pure caffeine is such a dangerous poison that it must be handled with gloves?), morning persons vs. night owls, the "unfuzzy" Charles Lamb...
Fadiman is funny but not jokey, learned but not pedantic, a master of prose but not showy about it, accomplished as hell but still seemingly approachable...too bad she's married. Isn't that the way? All the witty female familiar essayists are always taken...
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LibraryThing member BookAngel_a
A lovely book of essays by a talented writer. Fadiman mixes a good blend of information with personal anecdotes, keeping me interested while I learned things.
Topics touched on are varied: collecting butterflies, Charles Lamb, ice cream, "night owls", Samuel Coleridge, mail, moving, the american
Ex Libris is still my favorite of hers, though. It touched me emotionally, while this book of essays was more intellectual, in my humble opinion.
Topics touched on are varied: collecting butterflies, Charles Lamb, ice cream, "night owls", Samuel Coleridge, mail, moving, the american
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flag, tastes in literature, arctic explorers, coffee, and tragedy.Ex Libris is still my favorite of hers, though. It touched me emotionally, while this book of essays was more intellectual, in my humble opinion.
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Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2007
Physical description
240 p.; 5.05 inches
ISBN
0374531315 / 9780374531317