Critic's Notebook: Essays tiptoe up to grab us unawares

Essays sneak up on us. They are — or often feel — accidental: the record of a writer wrestling with an idea, an observation, a slice of experience, of a writer figuring it out. They have a conditional quality, as if they could go in any direction, offering impressions more than conclusive points of view. As Tom Bissell notes at the beginning of "Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation": "When I am asked ... for advice on how to get started as a nonfiction writer, I tell them to start small and look around."

By David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times Book Critic

June 10, 2012