Sure, this did come at the end of a term when I'd been elected to four committees, produced a play, played some volleyball, applied for a part-time job and written the odd essay.
I write commercial fiction and occasionally produce the odd essay or article.
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.
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".
At NYU, she is studying "the portrayal of women in film", something she says with a smile to acknowledge both that she really can't leave the movie world alone, and that she is in an odd position of writing essays on a culture to which she herself contributes.
The author of "Bulb" and "The Tulip" has collected in THE CURIOUS GARDENER (Bloomsbury, $35) selections from 20-odd years' worth of essays published in the British newspaper The Independent.
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.
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.
