Session Nine · Unit Three — The Building and the City
Notices on the Bulletin Board — The Hermit Crab Essay
The Genre: The Hermit Crab & Found-Form Essay
Main Points of the Lesson
- The borrowed shell. Brenda Miller, co-author of our textbook, named the hermit crab essay: a piece that borrows an existing form — a résumé, a recipe, a to-do list — as a shell for vulnerable material.
- Form creates distance. Some stories are too tender to tell directly. The cool surface of a form lets the writer approach them sideways.
- The friction is the meaning. In “Hairy Credentials,” the gap between a résumé’s neutral language and a woman’s lived experience is where the essay happens.
- A building is made of forms. Leases, maintenance requests, lobby notices, package slips, elevator inspection certificates, the resident directory — 2601 hands us shells every day.
- Play is serious. Hermit crab essays can be funny. Humor, rightly used, is a way of telling the truth.
Reading for Class — Click to Open
- Nicole Cyrus, “Hairy Credentials” (Brevity) — read at Brevity
A personal essay in the form of a professional résumé. - Brevity, “The Shared Space Between Reader and Writer” — read at Brevity
A craft essay on how hermit crab forms invite the reader in. - Textbook: Tell It Slant, Chapter 9, “Innovative Forms”; Chapter 10, “Mixed-Media, Cross-Genre, Hybrid, and Digital Works” — see the textbook guide
After Our Discussion — Critical Reception
- The Brevity Blog — essays tagged “hermit crab essay” — Writers and teachers on the form, with further examples.
- Creative nonfiction — forms and debates (Wikipedia) — Where the experimental forms sit within the larger genre.
In-Class Writing Prompt — Laptops Closed
Choose a building form: a maintenance request, a lobby notice, a package-delivery slip, a move-in checklist, or a lease clause. Using its exact headings and language, write a piece of memoir inside it. Nature of problem. Location. Date first noticed. Is entry permitted when you are not home?
Fifteen minutes. Keep the form’s voice strict; let the feeling leak through the cracks.
What happens with this: nothing is collected. It is yours, written on paper, in your notebook. No one is asked to read aloud who does not wish to.
Discussion Questions
- Why a résumé for “Hairy Credentials”? What would the essay lose as a straightforward narrative?
- When does a hermit crab essay become a gimmick? How can a writer tell?
- Which building form best fits a story you have not been able to tell directly?
- Could the whole anthology have a hermit crab frame — a resident directory, say? What would that gain or cost?
Homework
- Read Tell It Slant, Chapter 13, “The Writing Process and Revision,” and Chapter 14, “The Power of Writing Communities.”
- Finish your hermit crab essay (300–1,000 words).
- Choose one piece from the course to revise for the anthology, and bring a clean copy to Session 10.
- Read for Session 10: Montaigne, “Of Repentance.”
For the 2601 Anthology
A hermit crab piece in the shape of a building form can open or close the anthology — a lobby notice announcing the book itself, perhaps.
Before Next Time — Session 10
The Roof Garden — Revision and the Collective Memoir. Revision as re-seeing, the ethics of publishing, and the assembly of Under One Roof: Lives at 2601.