Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Franzen
Robert Atwan, Series Editor
A TRUE ESSAY is "something hazarded, not definitive, not authoritative; something ventured on the basis of the author's personal experience and subjectivity," writes guest editor Jonathan Franzen in his introduction. However, his main criterion for selecting The Best American Essays 2016 was, in a word, risk. Whether the risks involved championing an unpopular opinion, the possibility or ruining a professional career, or irrevocably offending family, for Franzen, "the writer has to be like the firefighter, whose job, while everyone else is fleeing the flames, is to run straight into them."
Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
Introduction copyright © 2016 by Jonathan Franzen
ISBN 978-0-544-81210-9
Contents
Foreword by Robert Atwan ix
Introduction by Jonathan Franzen xv
FRANCISCO CANTÚ Bajadas 1
from Ploughshares
ALEXANDER CHEE Girl 16
from Guernica
CHARLES COMEY Against Honeymoons 27
from The Point
PAUL CRENSHAW Names 37
from Hobart
JAQUIRA DÍAZ Ordinary Girls 40
from The Kenyon Review
IRINA DUMITRESCU My Father and The Wine 56
from The Yale Review
ELA HARRISON My Heart Lies Between “The Fleet” and “All the Ships” 69
from The Georgia Review
SEBASTIAN JUNGER The Bonds of Battle 85
from Vanity Fair
LAURA KIPNIS Sexual Paranoia 103
from The Chronicle Review
JORDAN KISNER Thin Places 117
from n+1
AMITAVA KUMAR Pyre 138
from Granta
RICHARD M. LANGE Of Human Carnage 148
from Catamaran
LEE MARTIN Bastards 161
from The Georgia Review
LISA NIKOLIDAKIS Family Tradition 171
from Southern Indiana Review
JOYCE CAROL OATES The Lost Sister: An Elegy 185
from Narrative Magazine
MARSHA POMERANTZ Right/Left: A Triptych 203
from Raritan
JILL SISSON QUINN Big Night 213
from New England Review
JUSTIN PHILLIP REED Killing Like They Do in the Movies 231
from Catapult
OLIVER SACKS A General Feeling of Disorder 242
from The New York Review of Books
KATHERINE E. STANDEFER In Praise of Contempt 249
from The Iowa Review
GEORGE STEINER The Eleventh Commandment 260
from Salmagundi
MASON STOKES Namesake 274
from Colorado Review
THOMAS CHATTERTON WILLIAMS Black and Blue and Blond 290
from The Virginia Quarterly Review
Contributors’ Notes 303
Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2015 309
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