Realism ... ‘ Realism’ I. ...
Art Of Essay Writing ... The title of essay does not strictly depend on the essay topic: the title can also serve as a starting point in your reflection; it can express the relation of the whole and the parts... A free composition of essay is subject to its inner logic, it is an emphasized position of the author....
What are these essays but grotesque and monstrous bodies, pieced together of different members, without any definite shape, without any order, coherence, or proportion, except they be accidental?
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
I have been reporting club meetings for four years and I am tired of hearing reviews of the books I was brought up on. I am tired of amateur performances at occasions announced to be for purposes either of enjoyment or improvement. I am tired of suffering under the pretense of acquiring culture. I am tired of hearing the word “culture” used so wantonly. I am tired of essays that let no guilty author escape quotation.
—Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)