Where essayism appears, not in an essay, but elsewhere.
The essay is not confined to the essay. At its heart, essayism is a disposition: a willingness to attend carefully, to remain open to uncertainty, and to allow understanding to emerge through inquiry.
That disposition can take many forms. Sometimes it appears in essays. Sometimes it appears in criticism, research, policy, or fiction.
The projects below extend my essayism into other domains.
The Marshall Review
Reviews, reflections, and critical responses to books, ideas, and publications.
The essayist approaches reading not as consumption but as conversation. Every review is an attempt to understand what a work reveals and how it participates in a broader culture of ideas.
Marshall on Policy
Public policy examined through the lens of inquiry rather than advocacy.
Policy debates are often framed as contests between fixed positions. An essayistic approach begins elsewhere: with questions, evidence, context, and the possibility that understanding may alter the terms of the discussion.
INQ
An exploration of inquiry itself.
INQ examines the structures, methods, and practices through which knowledge is created. If the essay is a form of inquiry, INQ investigates the conditions that make inquiry possible.
Unlike my other publications, INQ begins without a settled destination. It is intended as a space where I am no longer bound by my own rules and assumptions. Rather than defining its scope too tightly, I want to observe where inquiry leads when given greater freedom to develop.
INQ is new. For now, I am content to watch where it goes. Oh, and I love the name.
The Marginalia of 𝑺igi
Fiction as a form of exploration.
Not every question can be addressed directly. Fiction provides another way of approaching uncertainty, experience, memory, and imagination. Through Sigi, essayistic inquiry enters the realm of narrative.
The History of Music
History as a live performance.
Music does not live inside notation; a score is merely a map of possibilities. An essayistic history of music looks past the rigid rules of the music stand to explore how performers, cultures, and listeners inhabit those symbols through time. It examines cadence, resonance, and space, treating musical evolution not as a settled chronicle of dates and names, but as an ongoing acoustic inquiry into how humanity gives shape to sound.
Outdoors & Travel
Landscape and place as a performance
Much of my work on travel and the outdoors is now decades past. The book Best Walks in Ireland may still be available in libraries, and the legacy website Best Walks remains online. Looking back, I see that my interest was never primarily in walking itself. Rather, walking provided a means of investigation. It revealed how places acquire meaning through movement, attention and repeated encounter. The landscapes of Ireland offered more than scenery; they provided a setting in which questions of history, identity, belonging and change could be explored. In that sense, the work belongs as much to inquiry as it does to travel writing.
An Activst’s Notebook
Public life examined through the lens of collective action.
While contemporary politics often treats the public as an audience waiting to be acted upon, an essayistic approach to civic action begins with companionship and the quiet architecture of shared experience. This project steps inside the rooms where people gather; classrooms, union halls, and community meetings; to diagnose the environments where change happens. It explores the vital distinction between institutions that act for people and communities that learn to act with each other, investigating how organizing and power-building can force the conditions for true dialogue into existence.
Where Does Your Inquiry Move Next?
The path from here divides depending on whether you wish to look at the living present or the historic lineage of the craft:
Explore Essayistic →
Contemporary writers who are currently in motion, applying the method to the modern world.
Explore Essayists →
The deep lineage of the craft, exploring the historical masters who built the tradition.
This page is a living surface. Last revised: August 2026