In Praise of Nothing Essays, Memoir, and Experiments

Why do we keep playing the lottery when we know we’ll lose? How does what we laugh at—those bad jokes, wry allusions, and nasty pratfalls—tell us who we are? And what happens when, through some unforeseen mishap, we lose our identities and become Jane or John Doe? Eric LeMay explores these and other questions in fifteen innovative essays that center on the American self. From reflections on small-town life and baby-making to meditations on found art, 19th century landscape gardens, webcams, and the emergence of the AIDS pandemic, these essays celebrate the layered selves we inhabit, inherent, and sometimes invent. With humor and with reverence, In Praise of Nothing beholds what Wallace Stevens has called the “nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.”

Eric LeMay is the author of Immortal Milk: Adventures in Cheese. He has taught writing at Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Chicago, and is currently on the faculty of the writing program at Ohio University. He serves as an associate editor for the New Ohio Review and the web editor for Alimentum: The Literature of Food. He is also a host on the New Books Network. LeMay’s work has also appeared in The Paris Review, Gastronomica, Poetry Daily, the Best Food Writing series, and other venues. He lives in Athens, Ohio.