Once more to the lake was an outstanding example of a remembering essay. White used outstanding diction throughout the story, as you read you felt as if you were right there experiencing the whole summer vacation with him and his family.
I do have to say though he has quite the memory, i could never remember all of the minute details that he seems to remember so vividly. "...and the boat was the same boat, the same color green and the ribs broken in the same places...".(White 534) This story even had my mind wandering back to the hot summer days i spent in a small boat on the river behind my grandparents house. White not only has you right there beside him on that small lake in Maine but he gets your mind wandering off to times you spent during your own previous vacations.
"Up to the farmhouse to dinner through the teeming, dusty field, the road under our sneakers was only a two-track road. The middle track was missing, the one with the marks of the hooves and the splotches of dried, flaky manure."(White 535) This sentence really brought me back to my own chilhood memories, walking from the pond in the pasture back to my house carefuly stepping around the cow pies scattered down the two track trail. He seems to be able to sweep inhis audience closer and closer with each word. I felt myself wanting to read that next sentence more and more as the passage went on.
White, E.B. "Once More to the Lake." The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor, 1995. 532-538.
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Though i agree that it was a good example of a remembering essay i think it could have been much better. He jumped around and made it hard to follow as if it were actually a memory. It didn't flow the way I would expect an essay of any kind, should. I think that if he took more time to flow his essay instead of describing the smallest detail it would have been better. It definitly needed a bit more structure.
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