A set of 40-odd essays that the award-winning novelist, playwright and screenwriter has written over the past 20 years, it is a polymorphous delight that always retains at its core the notion of identity: how it is constructed, how it is thrust upon us, how we can change it.
The revelation (since the sacking) of the 50-odd other essay-scribbling servicemen gives the unavoidable impression of those radicalised officers' messes of the 1930s, out of which the Japanese military grabbed control of civilian rule; the rest was, well, history.
In fact, in the first English attempt to pin down this odd new creature, the essay — William Cornwallis's "Of Essays and Books," from Discourses upon Seneca, published in 1601 (the year in which Robert Johnson defines his own Essais as "imperfect offers") — Cornwallis, with a comedy both intentional and un-, bygins by arguing that Montaigne had actually been misusing the term.
It is odd, then, that his essay consists almost entirely of repetition and prescription.
He is also a photographer whose work appeared in "Odd Jobs," a photographic essay for children about unusual occupations.
It's a little odd writing a "goodbye" essay about Seth Meyers when you take into account that we're all about to get a whole lot more Seth Meyers in our lives once he leaves "Saturday Night Live" after the Feb. 1 broadcast.
While it may seem odd to summarize your essay before you've begun, writing your thesis at the beginning of your outline will help you organize your ideas and select the most important details that you want to present.
Stating the obvious in time-honoured fashion and essaying the odd one liner – "There's Cliff Richard, wearing his duvet," he said of our brightly attired singing knight – seems to be his stock in trade.
The title of the Irish novelist Colm Toibin's nonfiction book, "New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families," is so vivid that it feels churlish to point out that a more accurate one would be something like: "Side Work: Recent Book Reviews, Essays and Odd Bits".
