Gish Jen lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, eight-year-old son, and one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and the hectic pace of her life is reflected in her rapid-fire speech. The celebrated author of two novels and a collection, Jen is known for her humor and brimming intelligence, her ready opinions and easy laugh, her charm, and, not…
Slice of yellow wind in yellow curtains I sewed although the house was never mine except where the rod went through. Breeze does it. Or snow on pines. Faint click of yellowing spoons. Or crow-call piercing snow-pine reflected in the spoon-shaped past, its wing its crescent moon. Seeking any equally black thing. There,…
Glad to see people thought of it, brought Warren’s darts, a bag of chewing tobacco, his baseball cap, a book of poems, some photos. Glad that the mortician tried his best to dress him in coat, shirt, and tie—the wound was through the back and out the chest, I keep thinking—and firm the lip, close…
A certain college professor used to say that one sits down to write ABC, but in the process discovers — ah! — DEF! He was talking about writing nonfiction, but there is DEF in fiction, too. We discover through writing that we know more than we know — hopefully, if we’re writing with honesty and…
Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love, a novel: An instant classic, Baxter’s third novel is a sensual and luminous reimagination of Midsummer Night’s Dream in Ann Arbor, Michigan-a gradually darkening comedy, powered by a dozen voices speaking to a somewhat shadowy figure named Charlie Baxter. (Pantheon)
Son of a felon, his father was famous for eating through the wall of a Wisconsin prison. Seven hours later his conception in a Villanova railcar. It was a year of locusts. All he knows is clothing: days with the flat iron and dry cleaning fluids. Starch. I tape my hems straight, and nothing gets…
Like following a woodland path again and again Used to We made love like nobody’s business Things so far Have been good for me only the first time around The deeper the day, the lonelier the blue Thank the Lord the window’s open Baby’s got gas Like smoke in humid air We’re graceful, our hair…
Carleyville left late because of the rain. That morning the phone had finally been disconnected, after a ridiculous argument with the phone company, when the supervisor he was finally connected with agreed to disconnect after asking a series of questions he could not possibly answer. With his credit card, his “code” was his mother’s maiden…
Russell Banks, The Angel on the Roof, stories: A magnificent, generous collection of thirty-one stories, many of them set in hardscrabble New Hampshire, eloquently probing the lives of parents and children, husbands and wives. (HarperCollins)
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