The Boys of My Youth
Jo Ann Beard · 1998
"The Fourth State of Matter" is an essay about a mass shooting at the University of Iowa, written with a structural audacity that changed what personal essays could do. Beard is a central figure in the lyric essay movement.
The case against
'The Fourth State of Matter' is one of the great American essays, and it sits in this collection like a cathedral in a subdivision: the pieces around it are quieter and smaller, and everyone knows which one they came for. Beard also reconstructs scenes and dialogue no one could have remembered verbatim, which is either the art of the thing or a quiet cheat, depending on your church of nonfiction.
Essays · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
