Inevitably the first and most engaging effect of Edward Hoagland's two new books [The Edward Hoagland Reader and African Calliope] is to draw our interest to the writer himself. Despite his rooted WASP belief that "personality is quarrelsomeness," his personality, or rather his character, emerges and we're glad. Our estimation of it becomes essential to our appreciation of his work. One thing his admirers like most about his writing is his quite distinctive combination of subjectivity and authority. (p. 30)

Maybe the reason novels exist is to disguise human musings. The novelist, afraid his ideas may be foolish, slyly puts them into the mouth of some other fool and reserves the right to disavow them…. In the essays collected in The Edward Hoagland Reader,… [Hoagland] pulls off the considerable feat of being interesting without being in disguise.

There are essayists who, like anxious hosts, amuse you with confessions, as...