by David Brooks
GEOFFREY BENT has published several pieces of Shakespearean criticism with Oxford University Press and the Antioch Review, one of which was reprinted in the international anthology Shakespearean Criticism. He has also published essays on art and book reviews in Boulevard, North American Review, Pleiades, and Southern Review. His novel Silent Partners appeared in 2003. He has written sixteen books and painted five hundred oils, and his paintings have been exhibited in museums and galleries in nineteen states. He lives in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, with his wife, Jeanette, and their daughter, Emily, and is currently working on a collection of his essays on art and artists.
ROBERT BOYERS is the editor of Salmagundi, director of the New York State Summer Writers Institute, and professor of English at Skidmore College. He is the author of nine books, including Excitable Women, Damaged Men (a collection of short stories) and The Dictator’s Dictation: Essays on the Politics of Novels and Novelists. “A Beauty” will be included as a chapter in a just-completed memoir titled Anecdotage and Polemic: Memoir of a Life in Ideas.
DUDLEY CLENDINEN, a journalist and author who particularly relished his years as a columnist for the St. Petersburg Times, and a national correspondent and later editorial writer for the New York Times, had a daughter, friends, a house, and an independent life in Baltimore that he loved, but not nearly enough money or income, in 2010, when he turned sixty-six. He needed a compelling new book subject. Those problems were solved when he was diagnosed that November with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, which has no treatment or cure, and wrote this essay about knowing how to live and when to die the following summer for the New York Times Sunday Review. In response to his essay, he received almost a thousand letters and calls and messages, from all over the world, and a book contract with Algonquin Press. He does not expect to be alive when this anthology is published. He just hopes he is able to finish the book. Dudley Clendinen died on May 30, 2012, at the age of sixty-seven.—Ed
PAUL COLLINS is a writer specializing in history, memoir, and antiquarian literature. His seven books have been translated into eleven languages; his most recent is The Murder of the Century (2011). In addition to appearing on NPR’s Weekend Edition as its “literary detective” on odd and forgotten old books, he edits the Collins Library imprint of McSweeney’s Books. Collins lives in Oregon, where he teaches nonfiction in the MFA program at Portland State University.
MARK DOTY’s essay “Insatiable” will appear in What Is the Grass, a forthcoming book-length meditation on Walt Whitman, desire, and the ecstatic. A winner of the National Book Award for Poetry, Doty teaches at Rutgers University and lives in New York City.
MARK EDMUNDSON is the author of seven books, including Why Read?, The Fine Wisdom and Perfect Teachings of the Kings of Rock and Roll, and Teacher. His newest book, Fellow Teachers, Fellow Students, is forthcoming and will contain “Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?” He teaches at the University of Virginia.
A new collection of JOSEPH EPSTEIN’s, called Essays in Biography, will be published this autumn. He has begun work on a book on charm.
JONATHAN FRANZEN was educated in the Missouri public schools and at Swarthmore College. He is the author of the novels The Twenty-Seventh City, Strong Motion, The Corrections, and Freedom, along with a collection of essays, How to Be Alone, and The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History. He lives in New York City.
MALCOLM GLADWELL is a staff writer for The New Yorker. He is also the author of four books, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000); Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005); Outliers: The Story of Success (2008); and What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (2009).
PETER HESSLER is a staff writer at The New Yorker and has written three books about China. He lived in southwestern Colorado for a number of years but is now a resident of Cairo, Egypt.
EWA HRYNIEWICZ-YARBROUGH is a literary translator and essayist. Her essays have appeared in the Normal School, Ploughshares, the American Scholar, TriQuarterly, the Threepenny Review, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Her most recent book of translations is They Carry a Promise, a collection of poems by Janusz Szuber published in 2009. A native of Poland, she divides her time between Boston and Kraków.
GARRET KEIZER is the author of Privacy (2012), The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want: A Book About Noise, Help, The Enigma of Anger, God of Beer, A Dresser of Sycamore Trees, and No Place but Here. His work has appeared in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2002, The Best American Poetry 2005, and The Best American Essays 2007 and 2009. A contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine and a recent Guggenheim Fellow, he is currently at work on a book based on the essay that appears in this volume. He and his wife live in northeastern Vermont.
DAVID J. LAWLESS is president emeritus of St. Mary’s University College in Calgary, Alberta. He was its founding president after retiring as president of St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia. He also served as vice president (academic) of the University of Manitoba. He met his wife, Maria-Pilar Ruiz, who was from Madrid, Spain, while he was a graduate student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. They were married for more than fifty years and had six children. Maria-Pilar died suddenly in 2010 after a lengthy illness. Dr. Lawless is the author of textbooks and research papers in psychology. This is his first published work outside his professional field. He was born in Victoria, British Columbia, a long time ago. He now lives in Calgary and is an avid vegetable gardener.
ALAN LIGHTMAN is a novelist, essayist, and physicist, with a PhD in theoretical physics. He has served on the faculties of Harvard University and MIT and was the first person to receive dual faculty appointments at MIT in science and in the humanities. His essays and articles have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, the Atlantic, The New Yorker, Granta, and other publications. Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams was an international bestseller and has been translated into thirty languages. His novel The Diagnosis was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. His latest book is Mr g, a novel about the Creation as told by God.
SANDRA TSING LOH is a contributing editor at the Atlantic, a frequent commentator on public radio, and a monologist who has performed several solo shows off-Broadway. Her books include Depth Takes a Holiday, A Year in Van Nuys, Aliens in America, and Mother on Fire. Her next book, tentatively titled The Bitch Is Back (or Menopalooza), inspired by this essay, is scheduled to be published next year.
KEN MURRAY was a family doctor and clinical assistant professor of family medicine in Los Angeles until his retirement in 2006. He is a regular contributor to Zocalo Public Square and was adviser to “Weekly Briefings from the New England Journal of Medicine.” He was a contributor to the seminal book How to Report Statistics in Medicine by Thomas Lang and Michelle Secic. His volunteer activities in water quality led to his sharing in the 2011 U.S. Water Prize.
FRANCINE PROSE is the author of more than twenty books. Her most recent is a novel, My New American Life. She is a distinguished visiting writer at Bard College, a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
RICHARD SENNETT teaches at New York University and at the London School of Economics. His most recent book is Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Co-operation (2012).
LAUREN SLATER is the author of Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century, Prozac Diary, Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir, and several other books of fiction and nonfiction. She publishes regularly in Elle, More, the New York Times Magazine, and O Magazine. Her most current book is The $60,000 Dog: My Life with Animals, to be published in November 2012. This is Slater’s fourth appearance in The Best American Essays, and she served as its guest editor in 2006. Slater lives with her family on Sitting Rock Farm in Harvard, Massachusetts.
JOSE ANTONIO VARGAS, a multimedia storyteller, is the founder of Define American, a media campaign that seeks to ele
vate the immigration conversation. He has written for The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and the Atlantic and covered technology, culture, HIV/AIDS, and the 2008 presidential campaign for the Washington Post, where he shared a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre. He’s working on a memoir inspired by his essay “Outlaw.”
WESLEY YANG is a contributing editor at New York. His writing has also been published in the New York Times, n+1, Bookforum, and Tablet Magazine, among others, and he has won a National Magazine Award. He lives in New York and is working on his first book.
Notable Essays of 2011
MARCIA ALDRICH
Of Pumps and Death, Normal School, Spring.
SUE ALLISON
Made to Measure, Antioch Review, Winter.
JACOB M. APPEL
An Absence of Jello, Southwest Review, vol. 96, no. 2.
CHRIS ARTHUR
Reading Life, Southwest Review, vol. 96, no. 4.
MATTHEW JAMES BABCOCK
The Handicap Bug, Fiddleback, vol. 1, no. 6.
CHRIS BACHELDER
The Dead Chipmunk, Believer, February.
NICHOLSON BAKER
Why I’m a Pacifist, Harper’s Magazine, May.
POE BALLANTINE
Hope, Ecotone, Spring.
ELIZABETH BANICKI
Wrong Side of the Track, Slake, no. 2.
HELEN BAROLINI
My Bernini Box, Southwest Review, vol. 96, no. 3.
CHARLES BAXTER
Hatching Monsters, Lapham’s Quarterly, Winter.
JOHN BERGER
One Message Leading to Another, Massachusetts Review, vol. 52, no. 3–4.
EMILY BERNARD
The Refuge of the Classroom, Oxford American, no. 74.
SVEN BIRKETS
The Mother of Possibility, Lapham’s Quarterly, Spring.
TOM BISSELL
The Last Lion, Oustide, October.
CHARLES BOWDEN
The Lives of the Saints, Aperture, Winter.
ANDREW BOYD
First Empty Your Cup, Sun, December.
MICHAEL P. BRANCH
Freebirds, Orion, November/December.
BILL CAPOSSERE
Fog, Alaska Quarterly Review, Spring/Summer.
RON CAPPS
Yellow, JMWW, Fall.
MAURICIO CASTILLO, MD
The Evolution of the Page, American Journal of Neuroradiology, July 21.
ALEXANDER CHEE
Fanboy, Morning News, May 11.
JAMES M. CHESBRO
Night Running, Connecticut Review, Spring.
CAROL CIAVONNE
The Book, the Leaf, the Skive of the Cover: Why I Love Damaged Books, Pleiades, vol. 31, no. 1.
ROBERT CLARK
Scott and Ben, Conjunctions, no. 57.
ELEANOR CLIFT
Hospice and the “End Game,” Health Affairs, August.
ANDREW D. COHEN
Boys School, Colorado Review, Summer.
MICHAEL COHEN
A Fountain Pen of Good Repute, New England Review, vol. 31, no. 4.
TED CONOVER
Brown Road (1853–1932), Common, no. 1.
ALFRED CORN
Shakespeare’s Epitaph, Hudson Review, Summer.
BOB COWSER, JR.
Poor White, River Teeth, Spring.
ELIZABETH CREELY
Daire Nua: The New Oak Grove, New Hibernia Review, Summer.
HARRY CREWS
We Are All of Us Passing Through, Georgia Review, Winter.
JOHN CROWLEY
The Next Future, Lapham’s Quarterly, Fall.
RACHEL CUSK
Aftermath, Granta, no. 115.
ROBERT DARNTON
The Old-Girl Network, Raritan, Summer.
JOHN DAVIDSON
The Demands of Cold Blood, Morning News, November 8.
ALISON HAWTHORNE DEMING
A New England Childhood, Chautauqua, no. 8.
SARAH DEMING
Against Mixology, Threepenny Review, Winter.
NICOLAS DESTINO
Travel of Sound, Bellevue Literary Review, Spring.
JAQUIRA DIAZ
Baby Lollipops, Sun, November.
JUNOT DÍAZ
Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal, Boston Review, May/June.
CHRISTOPHER DICKENS
Resurrections, Florida Review, vol. 36, no. 1–2.
JOAN DIDION
In Sable and Dark Glasses, Vogue, October.
ELIZABETH DODD
Constellation, Ascent, February 11.
BRIAN DOYLE
The Creature Beyond the Mountains, Orion, September/October.
LITSA DREMOUSIS
After the Fire, Nerve, January.
PATRICK DUNNE
Into the Deep, Notre Dame Magazine, Spring.
S. J. DUNNING
For(e)closure, Creative Nonfiction, Summer.
GEOFF DYER
On Being an Only Child, Threepenny Review, Spring.
JOHN M. EDWARDS
Beirut in the Baltics, Hackwriters, July.
GRETEL EHRLICH
Where the Burn Meets the Dead, Orion, July/August.
JOHN W. EVANS
Elegy and Narrative, Missouri Review, Summer.
ANNE FADIMAN
My Old Printer, Yale Review, April.
SUSAN FALCO
Catcher’s Hang, Ploughshares, Fall.
DREW GILPIN FAUST
Telling War Stories, New Republic, June 30.
SASCHA FEINSTEIN
Children of Paradise, Hunger Mountain, no. 16.
HARVIE FERGUSON
Moodiness: The Pathos of Contemporary Life, Hedgehog Review, Spring.
GARY FINCKE
Shibboleth, Five Points, vol. 14, no. 1.
CAITLIN FLANAGAN
The Glory of Oprah, Atlantic, December.
BRANDEL FRANCE DE BRAVO
I’ll Make Room, Gargoyle, no. 57.
BONITA FRIEDMAN
The Watcher, Image, no. 7.
RICHARD FROUDE
The Girl Who Fell Through the Ice, Witness, vol. 24, no. 1.
KIP FULBECK
Fishing for Identity, Asian American Literary Review, Winter/Spring.
P. N. FURBANK
On Drawing, Threepenny Review, Winter.
JOHN GAMEL
Dangerous Doctors, Alaska Quarterly Review, Fall/Winter.
J. MALCOLM GARCIA
Now Ye Know Who the Bosses Are Here Now, McSweeney’s, no. 37.
ATUL GAWANDE
Personal Best, The New Yorker, October 3.
DAVID GESSNER
A Man’s Life: My Father’s Voice, Wabash College Magazine, May 6.
THOMAS GIBBS
Moved On, Gettysburg Review, Winter.
SARAH GILBERT
Veterans Day, Water-Stone Review, no. 14.
COREY GINSBERG
The Other Girl, Cream City Review, Spring/Summer.
ANNE GOLDMAN
Ode to Energy, Southwest Review, vol. 96, no. 4.
LAURA BRAMON GOOD
Into Deep Waters, Image, no. 69.
EUGENE GOODHEART
Darwinian Hubris, Michigan Quarterly Review, Winter.
JOHN STEELE GORDON
My Uncle, Oscar Hammerstein, Commentary, April.
L. P. GRIFFITH
The Auctioneers, Cream City Review, Spring/Summer.
DORIS GRUMBACH
The View from Ninety, American Scholar, Spring.
SUSAN GUBAR
In the Chemo Colony, Critical Inquiry, Summer.
MARGARET MORGANROTH GULLETTE
Wintry Absence, Chicago Tribune, March 13.
DEBRA GWARTNEY
Drown, Oregon Humanities, Spring.
KATHERINE HAAKE
Diptych: Chrysalis, Prayer, Crazyhorse, Fall.
JOHN HALES
Helpline, Missouri Review, Spring.
JEFFREY HAMMOND
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbo
ard, Hotel Amerika, Fall.
RACHAEL HANEL
Bello Rostro de la Muerte, New Delta Review, June.
NICOLE HARDY
Single, Female, Mormon, Alone, New York Times (Modern Love), January 9.
JOHN HASKELL
The Persistence of Muybridge, A Public Space, no. 12.
SUSAN CAROL HAUSER
Measures of Loss, Terrain: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments, Spring/Summer.
AMES HAWKINS
Optickal Allusion, Water-Stone Review, no. 14.
CLARISSA HAY
Queens of Pain, New Letters, vol. 78, no. 1.
ROBIN HEMLEY
To the Rainforest Room, Orion, May/June.
ALEKSANDAR HEMON
The Aquarium, The New Yorker, June 13/20.
MICHELLE HERMAN
No Place Like Home, River Teeth, Fall.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Widow of Opportunity, Vanity Fair, December.
JEAN HOEFLING
Remission, Relief, 5/2, Winter.
RICHARD HOFFMAN
Love and Fury, River Teeth, Fall.
LINDA HOGAN
Snow, Orion, March/April.
KAREN HOLMBERG
In the Museum of the Body, Alone, Black Warrior Review, Spring/Summer.
AMY HOLWERDA
Family History, Sycamore Review, Winter/Spring.
LANDON HOULE
The Plains We Cross, Natural Bridge, Fall.
DANIEL WALKER HOWE
Classical Education in America, Wilson Quarterly, Spring.
HUA HSU
Seeing Jay-Z in Taipei, Daedalus, Winter.
ANDREW HUDGINS
Helen Keller Answers the Iron, Kenyon Review, Spring.
WILLIAM HUHN
I Know You Rider, Jabberwock, Summer.
T. R. HUMMER
A Length of Hemp Rope, Crab Orchard Review, Summer/Fall.
