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A self-genuflective essay is an essay in which the writer is obviously and oftentimes blatantly self-absorbed, narcissistic, solipsistic. It is not always religious in nature. The term is purported to have been coined by one Peabody Winkler, no relation to Henry, who on the morning of Thursday, January 9, 1997 was accosted by one of his previous semester composition students.

The student, Irving Spalding, all of nineteen and looking very much like a future hall of fame quarterback, strode in to the adjunct office where Mr. Winkler was holed up and said, “You ruined my break.”

“Spalding,” Winkler said, for he called all his students by their last names, “what a surprise to see you here. All semester I said come and see me and now you have—a month after grades were due.”

The young Mr. Spalding proceeded to decry the ‘D’ he’d been given in Composition I. Mr. Spalding did not understand why his final portfolio had been scored so low; he had, after all, done everything required.

“It was really,” Winkler explained, “the self-reflective essay that held back the portfolio from passing.”

“But I followed the instructions!” Spalding blurted.

“Yes, but you also included quite a bit of material that was not germane to the class or the semester or this institution of higher learning. The classic car you collected and are now fixing up. The miles you run each day, even in the snow. The cereal you eat. The size of your biceps. How much you can bench press. So on, so on….It’s true you wrote about writing and the class and your work over the semester, but I’d say the required bits, though there, comprised a mere ten percent of the nine pages. And so….”

Spalding raised his hands and sputtered in self-defense. “I don’t know how you can fail me for being honest,” he said. “You asked us to write a self-reflective essay. That’s what I did. I reflected on myself.”

“No,” Winkler said. “You genuflected on yourself.”

“What?”

“You know how in some religions,” said Winkler, “people get down on one knee as an act of obeisance….”

“An act of what?”

“They essentially bow to someone else to show respect for that person, or thing, or idea. Their allegiance. In your writing it’s like you’re bowing to yourself.”

“And that’s wrong?” was the student’s honest answer.

“You wrote a self-genuflective essay, Spalding, not a self-reflective one.”

Winkler then concluded the conversation by curtly referring his former student to the department chair should Spalding wish to file a formal grade challenge.

in use: “Do you know how many self-genuflective essays I see from these first-years at Saint Marguerite de Navarre? Unbelievable! Maybe hell does exist after all.”