ON TIME AND THE OBVIOUS FOR AMERICAN ESSAYS WRITTEN IN 2001:
"This BAE edition is obsessed with time. Although each edition of the BAE is distinguished by its moment, this BAE seems more interest in pointing out the difference between the past and present. It seems intent on focusing on what has gone wrong in the now and what we have lost from the then. It is a collection of essays that, written in the year that the twin towers fell, are uncertain whether there will be a future, perhaps not even a present, we must eulogize the past."
ON TIME AND THE WORLD AFTER 2001:
"It’s not quite that terrorism has brought us together (there is no ‘us’ except in that they are also us) but that terrorism, or terror, wraps around the globe as warmly as carbon dioxide does."
ON BAE2002 AS BOOKMARK:
"The BAE doesn’t always function as a placeholder for the very year. It doesn’t always function as a slice of the American brain as featured on an MRI. But this edition marks a distinction between what was and what might be. Not knowing what might be, it hides under the covers of what once was.
...
"I wondered about not only the way this edition had been selected and organized but also how in 13 years, how I understood the essay differently, the 9/11 attacks differently, the importance of diversity differently. It’s a bit programmatic but still a glimpse, MRI-like, into a slice of this edition’s brain."
...And the second half: ANOTHER FOUND ESSAY CULLED FROM FAVORITE LINES!!! Read the whole thing here!