How the West was Won

You mean Richard Gere didn't bring Buddhism to America?!

Rod Smith

Lawrence Sutin All Is Change: The Two-Thousand-Year Journey of Buddhism to the West Little, Brown Nothing gets past Fluffy. The woman behind the... More >>

The Case of the Very Large Closet

Comic-strip artist Alison Bechdel draws a messy portrait of her secretive father and the house where he hid

Chris Barsanti

Alison Bechdel Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic Houghton Mifflin It would be nice to think that if we all kept careful records of our lives—an... More >>

Are You My Mother?

Finally, someone has the answer to the binds of modern parenting—a Honduran nanny

Beth Hawkins

Caitlin Flanagan To Hell with All That Little, Brown A few weeks back, my older son busted me watching Supernanny. He came in during a scene where... More >>

Gary Shteyngart: Absurdistan

Craig Morgan Teicher

Gary Shteyngart Absurdistan Random House At 325 pounds, Misha Vainberg, the ironic, sad, and insatiably hungry protagonist of Gary Shteyngart's... More >>

Etgar Keret: The Nimrod Flip Out: Stories

Chris Barsanti

Etgar Keret The Nimrod Flip Out: Stories Farrar, Straus, and Giroux There are things one doesn't expect to hear from a girlfriend after she says... More >>

The Farmer's Daughter

What can go wrong with 80 acres, 20 cows, a bull, and a pickup?

Philip Connors

Nicole Lea Helget The Summer of Ordinary Ways Borealis Books Nicole Lea Helget grew up on a farm near Sleepy Eye, one of the great town names... More >>

Job Had It Easy

Good Grief: Joan Didion tries to write about loss without losing it

G.R. Anderson Jr.

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking Knopf In June, Joan Didion committed apostasy in the pages of The New York Review of Books. It's a... More >>

Raging Rick

Novelist Rick Moody Feels His Pain. Yours? Not So Much.

Matthew Wilder

The Diviners Rick Moody Little, Brown Step too close to The Diviners or make any sudden movements and the novel will erupt in a John Philip... More >>

A Little Bit Country, a Little Bit Neoclassical

How W.S. Merwin found his own turf--and everyone else's

Lightsey Darst

W.S. Merwin Summer Doorways Shoemaker & Hoard   Poet W. S. Merwin takes the title of his latest memoir, Summer Doorways, literally:... More >>

I Know What You Bought Last Summer

Bret Easton Ellis castigates and/or wallows in consumer Babylon

Matthew Wilder

Lunar Park Brett Easton Ellis Alfred A. Knopf   The pleasurable tension of a Bret Easton Ellis novel lies between what it seems to be (a... More >>

Mia Couto and the Case of the Dismembered Members

Jesse Berrett

Mia Couto The Last Flight of the Flamingo Serpent's Tail   Norman Rush is a white man in Africa. J.M. Coetzee is too. Alexandra Fuller,... More >>

Kristoffer A. Garin: Devils on the Deep Blue Sea: The Dreams, Schemes, and Showdowns that Built America's Cruise-Ship Empires

Jesse Berrett

Kristoffer A. Garin Devils on the Deep Blue Sea: The Dreams, Schemes, and Showdowns that Built America's Cruise-Ship... More >>

Achilles Has Some Issues He'd Like To Talk About

The myths go modern in 'Songs on Bronze'

Lightsey Darst

Nigel Spivey Songs on Bronze Farrar, Straus and Giroux   Not everyone will look at a sentence such as "'Twere long to tell all that... More >>

Salvador Plascencia, Meet Salvador Plascencia

What makes an author want to be his own leading man?

William Waltz

Salvador Plascencia The People of Paper McSweeney's  The most memorable--and quite possibly the cheesiest--scene in the 1998 Jim Carrey... More >>

Rana Dasgupta: Tokyo Cancelled

Kristin Thiel

Rana Dasgupta Tokyo Cancelled Black Cat  The next time you fly, remember to look around the cabin and locate the best storyteller.... More >>

Gilbert Sorrentino: Lunar Follies

Matthew Wilder

Gilbert Sorrentino Lunar Follies Coffee House Press  Big props go out to Gilbert Sorrentino, author of the new literary object Lunar... More >>

Mother, Father, Killer

A new book asks what murder has to do with making babies

Quinton Skinner

It is no coincidence that many of the best stories require that somebody put an end to somebody else--if possible, with extreme malice. Murder,... More >>

Poking Things of Great Importance

Don Paterson searches for the "Opposite of an Epiphany"

William Waltz

Don Paterson Landing Light Graywolf Press   With drop-dead delivery, Don Paterson wonders, "What do you call the opposite of epiphany?"... More >>

Blows Against the Empire

A former 'Playboy' model exposes Hef's silicone paradise

Diablo Cody

Jill Ann Spaulding has her French-manicured paw on the pulse of the zeitgeist. She was playing Texas Hold 'Em poker at the professional level... More >>