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On Wed., Mar. 7, Jessie Van Eerden visited the Saint Leo Campus for a reading and discussion on her work in the Cannon Memorial Library. Eerden is a college professor from West Virginia who has authored portrait essays and novels, such as “The Long Weeping” and “Glorybound.”
She read an excerpt from “The Long Weeping,” which has themes such as grace and love. The essay she chose was the thought-provoking “Without,” a portrait essay inspired by the French philosopher Simone Weil. The essay began with the slaughtering of hens, a circumstance she used to emphasize a connection between food and love. The essay emphasized the discomfort of holding a dead hen and watching the process of killing, boiling, and plucking the creature for the satisfaction of devouring it.
“My love is the essay,” remarked Eerden. She went on to describe her passion for studying a person in depth and capturing them with her words.
“Without” was a mix of Weil’s words and experiences and Eerden’s interpretation of them. Weil, the subject of the essay, fasted to clarify her hunger and love. Eerden noticed that fasting was a rehearsal for loving without devouring. “Without” went on to discuss how we often love gluttonously, much like how we eat. We take from a partner more than we may need and that can destroy a person or the relationship. Love is a being as necessary as food, but we must not take advantage of it, suggested Eerden.
“Without,” interestingly, continuously referenced bread. Eerden spoke to this after her reading, connecting it to a larger theme. Eerden advised, “Don’t spend time on bread that is not bread.” She was trying to convey that one should consider what truly nourishes them, and to not waste time, or calories, on things that do not.
Eerden gets her inspiration from the people she meets and studies. She said she likes to, “bring together surprising elements, connecting things that wouldn’t normally go together.” She enjoys juxtaposition and showing things in a new light.
“A lot of it is giving it the time to steep,” Eerden remarked about her writing process.
Eerden said many of her published essays come from failed essays. She will reflect on what she is truly trying to write about, then come back to her work and edit the pieces. She drew a comparison between making essays to people who own a lot of used cars. You can pull different parts from different cars and add them to one car to make a well-finished piece. Though some individual essays may not have been cutting it on their own, she can pull paragraphs from them and place them into a stronger piece where they can add to the essay.
Eerden’s perspective was intriguing and new. She is an author who thinks deeply about her work and the message she wants to communicate to her audiences. Her essays are not quick to write, but instead ones that often come from failed attempts at conveying a message. The connections she draws between situations and their deeper meanings seem eccentric at first, but they are sure to make a reader curious and cause them to think deeper about their decisions.
