67 pages • 2 hours read
Ross GayThe Book of Delights
Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Ross Gay’s Study of Joy
On Ross Gay’s website, the first four sentences of the “about” page read as follows: “Ross Gay is interested in joy. Ross Gay wants to understand joy. Ross Gay is curious about joy. Ross Gay studies joy” (Ross Gay). Gay is a self-proclaimed student of joy; many of his works reflect this study. Before releasing his poetry collection Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude in 2015, he was already writing lyric inquiries into how humans might better love one another. His poetry books Against Which (2006), Bringing the Shovel Down (2011), and Lace & Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens (2014, co-authored with Aimee Nezhukumatathil) all explore the concepts of love, community, hope, and growth. Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude marks a shift in Gay’s writing and was the first of his works to intentionally focus on the ideas of joy, delight, and gratitude. He released The Book of Delights in 2019 and released another collection of essays, Inciting Joy, in 2022.
The Book of Delights is full of stories from Gay’s life, and he frequently reflects on his childhood as the second son of a white mother and Black father growing up in Levittown, Pennsylvania. He is a gardener, teacher, lecturer, son, brother, partner, and friend. His family, partner, and friends frequently appear in his writings. While Gay is primarily a poet, with an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and a PhD in English from Temple University, the Book of Delights was a New York Times Bestseller and was named one of the Best Books of 2019 by the Washington Independent Review of Books and Shelf Awareness, named one of five books every high-schooler should read by the School Library Journal and was a best-reviewed book of 2019 by Lit Hub. His second essay collection, Inciting Joy, was also a New York Times Bestseller and was considered one of Publisher Weekly’s Best Books of 2022.
Literary Context: Lyric Essays and Micro-Memoirs
Though many consider The Book of Delights to be “genre-defying,” the works included in this collection can be considered lyric essays and micro-memoirs. Lyric essays are a form of non-fiction writing where the author “combines the autobiographical information of a personal essay with the figurative language, forms, and experimentations of poetry” (Glatch, Sean. “Writing Without Limits: Understanding the Lyric Essay.” Writers.com, Feb. 28 2023). Similarly, a micro-memoir attempts to combine the briefness of poetry with the truth of a memoir. The phrase “micro-memoir” was popularized by Beth Ann Fennelly’s book Heating and Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs (2017).
The Book of Delights fits into both categories. Gay’s poetic, flowery, and descriptive writing makes the essays read like streams of consciousness, similar to his style of poetry. He does not edit his pieces to be more “prose-worthy,” but includes run-on sentences, fragments, and other experimental elements that are not commonly found in prose. There is also a rhythmic and repetitive quality to his writing that is reminiscent of poetry.
At the same time, Gay is telling succinct stories about his current life and his childhood, blending them into short, truth-packed memoirs. The shortest of Gay’s essays is a single, paragraph-length sentence while the longest is nearly seven pages. He creates a world and invites the reader into his memories in as few words as possible, lending them the tension of a flash-fiction piece. Each essay can stand alone, and many have been published separately. They also each explore a specific topic or moment in time, limiting each essay to one main idea. While The Book of Delights may exist in multiple genres at once, it is most clearly linked to lyric essays and micro-memoir.
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