Ah, yes, the familiar essay! As defined by essayist Anne Fadiman, that particular brand of personal essay had its heyday in the Romantic period, when authors like Charles Lamb and William Hazlett wrote about personal events that had universal significance and appeal, such as: drunkards, tailors and annoying relatives. The difference from this and say, David Sedaris, whose writing rarely stray from the topic of his family, is the amount of personal detail in it. Despite its name, the familiar essay is actually less familiar than most modern personal essays, avoiding specific details of family and friends and sticking instead to broader, more widely acknowledged generalities. After all, not everyone is related to Amy Sedaris.

Fadiman’s newest book is a collection of these familiar essays entitled At Large and At Small. She recently appeared on NPR and does a better job of explaining her craft than I did. You may listen to her do it here.

New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik says you must read Wislawa Szymborska. He claims the Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet is “as necessary as toast,” and that certainly is not an assertion to be bandied about. (I mean, who doesn’t need toast?!)

Szymborska, who spent most of her life in Krakow and endured both WWII and the lengthy Russian occupation, is not one of those European writers focused on the atrocities of war and the large dark and terrible truths behind them. Instead she writes about the small things, and as Gopnik writes, “makes much of them.” Rather than try to explain what Gopnik means, I’ll instead point you here, to the on-air discussion as well as a poem entitled “A Tale Begun,” which NPR has published on its Web site. Enjoy.