These essayistic ventures, like the traditional American essay, are uninhibited in their range of interests. The general condition humaine, life and death and peace and war, attracts its fair share of attention, as does the political world, democracy, autocracy and imperialism. Matters philosophical, psychological, religious, scientific and economic provide plentiful fodder for discussion, and America's cultural/social world-its government and sundry institutions, its medical care, education and prisons, and its age of electronics-is ready matter for chronic studied comment. And current events of general significance and personal interest, and a few public dignitaries and notorieties have their merited share of attention. These essayistic ventures and asides emulate the manner of the traditional essay no less than they do its matter. Their variable brevity, studied structure and formal language are reminiscent of the composition of the old essay. And like the traditional essay, these current efforts are intent upon information, instruction and improvement. It is hoped that this return to the traditional American essay resonates positively with readers and writers, and so much as to persuade a fair number of these to attempt their own essays. Such could help to energize a pending popular revival of the venerable essay.
About the Author: Joseph Mileck was born in Sanktmartin, Roumania in 1922, immigrated to Canada in 1926 and again in 1931. He has a B.A. Degree from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario (1945), and a PhD. from Harvard University (1950). Joseph was a member of the German Department of the University of California, Berkeley from 1950 to 1991. He has published five books and numerous articles, dealing with such German authors as Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse. He has also edited two cultural-historical books about Sanktmartin, a typical German community in Roumania, and has published a book-length study of that community's dialect. To these scholarly works, published from 1951 to 2003, Joseph has added four collections of his own poetry and epigrams: A Trail of Poetic Reflection (Berkeley, California: Beatitude Press, 2008); A Medley of Piquant Poetry and Edgy Epigrams (Berkeley, California: Beatitude Press, 2010); More Salt and Pepper. Poems and Epigrams (Berkeley, California: Beatitude Press, 2012); and Pensive Pauses. Epigrams and Poems (Berkeley, California: Pensive Oasis Press, 2016). To his many literary bibliographical, linguistic, and socio-political books, Mileck added a critical appraisal of the United States: America. An Empire in Disarray (Berkeley, California, Beatitude Press, 2013).