The Best American Essays 2014
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
The acclaimed author of Pulphead collects “21 of the year’s most urgent and at times painfully truthful pieces of nonfiction published in the U.S.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
In our age of trigger warnings and jeopardized free expression, The Best American Essays 2014 does not shy away from shocking extremes, ambiguities, or dualities. As guest editor John Jeremiah Sullivan notes, the essay assumes many two-sided forms, and these diverse pieces capture all the conceptions of what an essay can be: the loose and the strict, the flourish and the finished, the try and the trial.
Sullivan’s choices embrace the high and the low, the memoirist’s confession and the journalist s reportage, and all the gray area in between. From a hotel in Mongolia to a Clockwork Orange like Baltimore, from a Rome emergency room to Burning Man, these diverse pieces surprise and entertain, inform and titillate.
The Best American Essays 2014 includes entries by Kristin Dombek, Dave Eggers, Leslie Jamison, Ariel Levy, Yiyun Li, Barry Lopez, Zadie Smith, Wells Tower, Emily Fox Gordon, James Wood, and others.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This illustrious annual anthology returns for its 29th year with a vengeance, featuring 21 of the year's most urgent and at times painfully truthful pieces of nonfiction published in U.S. periodicals. The introduction from editor Sullivan (Pulphead) traces the tangled etymological history of the term "essay," asking "How could we honestly trust any creature that comes into the world wearing such a caul of ambiguity?" Series editor Atwan's preface also touches on this theme, referencing the recent spate of dishonest memoirs but deeming the offerings here "simultaneously intense, intellectual and inventive." This multifaceted approach to narrative can be seen in Wendy Brenner's "Strange Beads," wherein she takes on the unfathomable burden of mourning her ex-fianc 's recent death while also facing her own ongoing struggle with cancer. It also appears in Barry Lopez's "Sliver of Sky," in which Lopez bravely revisits his horrific experience of sexual abuse during his 1950s childhood. Other impactful selections include Wells Tower's "The Old Man at Burning Man," Jerald Walker's "How to Make a Slave," and James Wood's "Becoming Them." This eclectic, powerful array of thought-provoking essays is sure to appeal to a broad array of readers.
