Interview with an Essayist

David Marshall in conversation

Introduction

We live in a climate shaped by arbitration — systems that sort, rank, filter, and flatten. Consensus forms around things that may not deserve consensus. Horizons narrow. Authenticity becomes difficult to sustain.

Some writers resist this climate not by argument or polemic, but by stance: a way of seeing that refuses deformation.

David Marshall is one of those writers.

His essayism is not a technique or a literary posture. It is a disposition — a way of moving through the world with readers beside him, not behind him. In this interview, he speaks about horizon, companionship, responsibility, risk, and the strange, necessary compulsion to write.

What follows is the complete conversation.

Q1 — How does the climate of arbitration shape the way you write?

David: Arbitration is everywhere. It’s the climate we live in. Systems decide what is relevant, what is visible, what is permissible. Consensus forms around things that may not deserve consensus. And if you’re not careful, your own authenticity gets deformed by it.

So when I write, I’m trying to let authenticity re‑emerge. Not as a performance, not as a declaration, but as a movement. A horizon. A way of seeing that isn’t flattened by the climate around me. But that creates a problem: for whom am I writing? For me, or for a reader? And what do I know about the reader?

Imagine having two friends. One is totally familiar with astronomy. The other is blind. Now the task is to explain to both of them what you see when you gaze into the night sky. Immediately there are three audiences.

Myself — I have arrived at a new grouping of constellations, based around characters in the Chronicles of Sigi. My astronomer friend — familiar with thousands of manuscripts that use the existing constellations. My blind friend — who has no means of imagining what a night sky might look like.

I have to decide what benefit from my new way of seeing constellations my two friends could derive. Then I make that the ambition of the essay. Not where I am, not where they are now, but to add to their current perceptions in the world. And to do it in a manner that will keep them alongside me.

If my ambition is to eventually help them see what I see, I must understand where they stand, and construct a viable path for us to walk along and enjoy together.

Q2 — When you construct that shared path, do you consider the reader’s limits or their potential?

David: Neither. Limits and potential are judgements. It’s important to avoid such judgements. I try to describe to myself what their landscape is like. What kind of things and relations are in their life. What matters to them, what doesn’t. I try to understand them as my friend. Then I extend that out — what connections or associations might be valuable in conversation and explanation with them. What feelings, notions, perceptions do we share, do they value. I want to know them in that kind of context as well as I can.

Q3 — Once you understand their landscape, how do you decide where the shared path should begin?

David: Some might think to start with the promise of the ending — the view from the top of the mountain. “Great,” says my friend, “send me a picture.” I reveal almost nothing of our destination. Being there, being together, sharing the landscape — that’s what matters.

I start with the first step. What will encourage them to walk on with me. How can I engage them in this moment so they arrive almost unnoticed at the next. Remember the smell of the heather that day in the Mountains of Mourne — look here, the path is strewn with it. Who would have thought the rhododendrons would smell so sweet.

Experience, association, new information, laid out step by step. Always with the knowledge that my friend can walk away from the words at any moment. Together we advance.

Q4 — When you walk that path with a reader, what part of you is most present: the guide, the companion, or the witness?

David: The whole of me.

Essayism is not a role. Not a mask one wears. I’m not being a father, an uncle, or a friend. I’m being me. All of me, open and I hope honest. And yes — companion first. Why else would you come. We go together. Then we notice we share. We sometimes guide. And sometimes — almost as surprise — we didn’t see that coming. We witness.

Q5 — If you bring the whole of yourself to the page, what is the greatest risk you take each time you begin an essay?

David: It can hurt. There is no other way to say it. Catharsis can be quite common with some essays. If you really are exploring how you and your readers might feel, and you touch honestly those parts of you that might still be raw, it can be disturbing.

The discovery that something you held dear, or had long assumed, is actually not true — it’s not always easy to live with. You shape yourself. It is active shaping. You contradict yourself. You disappoint yourself. And sometimes, all of it descends — totally — and you are there, wherever that is. It’s you.

Q6 — When an essay has hurt you or reshaped you, what brings you back to the page again?

David: Writing isn’t a choice — it’s a compulsion. But a shopping list is writing. Essayism, as I’ve said, is disposition. Between the compulsion and the disposition arises responsibility to self. And the shopping list of notions, ideas, tensions becomes an essay.

Q7 — When that shopping‑list‑of‑tensions becomes an essay, what place does the reader occupy in that moment?

David: Someone has to hold me accountable.

I see them. My thoughts embrace them. My pen touches paper, or my fingers tap the keys, and I speak to them: “Remember that crack in the floorboards”.

Q8 — Final Question: If essayism is companionship, accountability, risk, responsibility, and the whole of you — why write essays at all, rather than simply live your life and keep these recognitions private?

David: It’s who I am.

Closing Note

What emerges from this conversation is not a method but a stance: a way of writing that begins with companionship, moves through shared noticing, accepts risk, honours responsibility, and arrives — quietly, without fanfare — at authenticity.

Essayism, for David Marshall, is not a craft. It is not a genre. It is not a role.

It is identity.

And that is why the reader walks with him.