Editor's Shelf

George Garrett recommends The Buddha in Malibu, stories by William Harrison: “A collection of seventeen short stories set in Hollywood, Africa, and the future.” (Missouri)

Dan Wakefield recommends The Collected Fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman, stories by Bruce Jay Friedman: “One of the funniest writers of our time, the first American master of black humor fiction, he’s collected his best stories in one volume. ‘Brazzaville Teenager’ is the best thing since Ring Lardner.” (Donald I. Fine)

Anne Bernays recommends The Consolations of Philosophy, essays by Alain de Botton: “Makes the abstruse fascinating.” (Pantheon)

Philip Levine recommends The Dear Past & Other Poems, a collection by Janet Lewis (Robert L. Barth): “These poems were written over a period of seventy-five years, from 1919 to 1994, and though they demonstrate a variety of strategies and structures, they are brought together by the extraordinary precision and clarity of Lewis’s artistry, as…

Jane Hirshfield recommends The Dumbbell Nebula, poems by Steve Kowit: “A book of rangy, big-hearted, capacious poems, full of surprising wisdoms and affection for the world as it is.” (Heyday)

   Justin Kaplan recommends The Edge of Marriage, debut stories by Hester Kaplan: “Winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award and praised by The New York Times Book Review for the work’s ‘graceful, accomplished prose’ and by The Boston Globe for the portrayal of ‘articulate adults, fully aware at every moment of the agony they are…

Thomas Lux recommends The Forgiveness Parade, poems by Jeffrey McDaniel: “A terrifying, hilarious, and utterly alive second book by a young poet still in his early thirties. Read this book. If you get a chance to hear him read/perform, don’t miss it: he can do it on the stage and on the page.” (Manic D)

Charles Baxter recommends Somebody Else: Arthur Rimbaud in Africa, a biography by Charles Nicholl: “An eerie, brilliant, and weirdly comic story about a poet who gradually became a real-life Joseph Conrad character.” (Chicago)

George Garrett recommends The Hatbox Baby, a novel by Carrie Brown: “Carrie Brown’s third novel is set in the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933 and concerns the ‘Infantorium’-an exhibit of live premature babies.” (Algonquin)