Stone Child

摘要

I came to the personal essay by a roundabout path. An omnivorous reader as achild, if I did not have a book or newspaper handy, I would pore over the milk carton or the cereal box at the breakfast table. And although a painfully slow reader, I have never aspired to quicken my pace. I relish the taste of words, savoring the way they sound between the tongue and the palate of my mind. The delicious rhythms and the rhymes of thoughtfully crafted phrases, sentences, and paragraphs accentuate the pleasures of exploring personalities and the responsibilities of considering new ideas. A well-crafted sentence stimulates my emotions in exactly the same way that an exquisite ballet or painting or piano piece does. But words on paper have the added quality of being able to stir me to action. Words are affirming. Words are challenging. And although other genres or media of expression permit me to see the world through the author's or the narrator's eyes, the personal essay invites me to do so. Other genres may possess the same qualities to greater or lesser degrees; however, the personal essay stands alone in its devotion to art, to intimacy, and to ideas.