FROG

A miscellany of engaging essays.

New York Times journalist Sam Anderson, in his warm introduction, praises Fadiman’s work as “lovingly open and inviting.” That praise is amply borne out in witty, sometimes wistful, always sharply observed pieces that include reflections on the family’s long-lived pet frog, computer printers, the conundrum of the singular pronoun “they,” the challenge of teaching on Zoom, and the creation of Antarctica’s only magazine, the South Polar Times. If the purported subject of her essays may seem trifling (the frog came in a kit for one of her children), mundane (the printers, one by one, went to the dump), or esoteric (pronouns, really?), Fadiman’s real subjects are much more profound. “Every Fadiman essay,” Anderson says, “no matter how seemingly small in scope, turns out to be a great expedition.” Her deep attachment to her first bulky Hewlett-Packard LaserJet Series II printer, for example, made her sad to relinquish it when replacement parts were no longer available. “We cling to our obsolete equipment,” she writes, “because we are afraid that we will be discontinued, that we will be hauled away on Bulky Waste Day, that we will end up so devalued that we will be available for a song on eBay, but, because we’re so much trouble, no one will bid.” Loss recurs as a theme, most movingly in a paean to an extraordinary student who ebulliently said “yes to everything.” In an essay on Hartley Coleridge, the firstborn son of the acclaimed poet, she empathizes with his aspiration to step out of his father’s shadow. As the daughter of successful writers, she grew up fearing “that no matter what I did, my parents would already have done it better.” These deft, graceful essays prove otherwise.

A delightful gathering.