Editor's Corner

Tim O’Brien, Tomcat in Love, a novel: In his seventh novel, O’Brien makes a brave and hilarious turn with Thomas Chippering, a professor of linguistics, Vietnam vet, spurned husband, and unrivaled womanizer. (Broadway)

Chase Twichell, The Snow Watcher, poems: Twichell’s fifth book presents an extraordinary sequence of poems that asks a single obsessive question: What is the self? This is a radical reenvisioning of what makes us human rather than animal. (Ontario)

Derek Walcott, What the Twilight Says, essays: In his first prose collection, Walcott brilliantly and lyrically discusses the works of Lowell, Brodsky, and other writers, and the state of West Indian literature and culture. (FSG)

Alan Williamson, Res Publica, poems: The title sequence of Williamson’s new collection serves as a stunning elegy for Vietnam-era America and the war’s aftermath of media saturation, multiculturalism, and violence. (Chicago)

Richard Ford, editor of The Essential Tales of Chekhov, stories translated by Constance Garnett: Ford selects twenty stories by the Russian master, including provocative lesser-known pieces by Chekhov in his youth, as well as widely anthologized classics. (Ecco)

George Garrett, Bad Man Blues, stories and essays: Subtitled A Portable George Garrett, this book of stories, anecdotes, and personal essays shows Garrett at his playful and eloquent best. (SMU)

Ann Beattie, Park City: New and Selected Stories: Nearly five hundred pages long, this generous and sparkling collection of thirty-six stories is as much a cultural chronicle as it is a showcase of Beattie’s enormous talents. She goes from the seventies to the present (eight of the stories are brand-new), incisively charting the relational and…

Andre Dubus, Meditations from a Movable Chair, essays: This new collection of twenty-five essays is a radiant follow-up to Broken Vessels. Confined to a wheelchair since a 1986 accident, Dubus reflects on writing, Catholicism, divorce, family, and everyday life in a handicapped-inaccessible world. Resonant, thoughtful, passionate, and superbly written. (Knopf)

George Garrett, Days of Our Lives Lie in Fragments: New and Old Poems, 1957-1997: Garrett has long been admired for his fiction, but in the past forty years, he had amassed a large body of poetry as well. From bawdy satires to quiet lyrics, Garrett’s poems splendidly showed his affection for the world through unique sensibilities….