No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the proper written permission of the copyright owner unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. With the exception of nonprofit transcription in Braille, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is not authorized to grant permission for further uses of copyrighted selections reprinted in this book without the permission of their owners. Permission must be obtained from the individual copyright owners as identified herein. Address requests for permission to make copies of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt material to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available
.

ISSN
0888-3742

ISBN
978-0-544-10388-7

e
ISBN
978-0-544-10574-4
v1.1013

“The Art of Being Born” by Marcia Aldrich. First published in
Hotel Amerika
, Spring 2012. Copyright © 2013 by Marcia Aldrich. Reprinted by permission of Marcia Aldrich.

“Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel” by Poe Ballantine. First published in
The Sun
, June 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Poe Ballantine. Reprinted by permission of Poe Ballantine.

“What Happens in Hell” by Charles Baxter. First published in
Ploughshares
, Fall 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Charles Baxter. Reprinted by permission of Darhansoff & Verrill Literary Agents.

“Letter from Majorca” by J. D. Daniels. First published in
The Paris Review
, Summer 2012. Copyright © 2012 by J. D. Daniels. Reprinted by permission of J. D. Daniels.

“His Last Game” by Brian Doyle. First published in
Notre Dame Magazine
, Autumn 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Brian Doyle. Reprinted by permission of Brian Doyle.

“A Little Bit of Fun Before He Died” by Dagoberto Gilb. First published in
ZYZZYVA
, Fall 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Dagoberto Gilb. Reprinted by permission of Dagoberto Gilb. “Fun” by Wyn Cooper originally appeared in
The Country of Here Below
, Ahsahta Press, 1987. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“When They Let Them Bleed” by Tod Goldberg. First published in
Hobart
, Winter/Spring 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Tod Goldberg. Reprinted by permission of Tod Goldberg.

“The Book of Knowledge” by Steven Harvey. First published in
River Teeth
, Spring 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Steven Harvey. Reprinted by permission of Steven Harvey.

“Breeds of America” by William Melvin Kelley. First published in
Harper’s Magazine
, August 2012. Copyright © 2012 by William Melvin Kelley. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Triage” by Jon Kerstetter. First published in
River Teeth
, Spring 2012. Copyright © 2011 by Jon R. Kerstetter. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Confessions of an Ex-Mormon” by Walter Kirn. First published in
The New Republic
, August 2, 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Walter Kirn. Reprinted by permission of Walter Kirn.

“Epilogue: Deadkidistan” by Michelle Mirsky. First published in
McSweeney’s
, November 8, 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Michelle Mirsky. Reprinted by permission of Michelle Mirsky.

“The Exhibit Will Be So Marked” by Ander Monson. First published in
Normal School
, Spring 2012. Copyright © 2013 by Ander Monson. Reprinted by permission of Ander Monson.

“The Girls in My Town” by Angela Morales. First published in
Southwest Review
, 97/2. Copyright © 2012 by Angela Morales. Reprinted by permission of
Southwest Review
and Angela Morales.

“Night,” from
Dear Life
by Alice Munro, copyright © 2013 by Alice Munro. Used by permission of Random House, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House, Inc. for permission. First published in
Granta
, Summer 2012.

“Ghost Estates” by John Jeremiah Sullivan. First published as “Where Hope and Human History Don’t Rhyme”
The New York Times Magazine
, February 12, 2012. Copyright © 2012 by John Jeremiah Sullivan. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.

Foreword

W
HEN I BEGAN STUDYING
literature as a graduate student in the early 1960s, I approached the subject in ways so many of my generation did, as the study of poetry, fiction, and drama. My bible at the time was a critical volume published in the late 1940s by René Wellek and Austin Warren called
Theory of Literature
, which clearly privileged fictive works over nonfiction, though literary works then were so exclusively identified with poems, novels, and plays that the privileging barely went noticed. When in the mid-sixties I took a seminar on Ralph Waldo Emerson with the brilliant critic and quintessential Emersonian Richard Poirier, we concentrated on Emerson as a thinker and prose stylist, as the central figure of American literature, but I don’t recall a single bit of discussion that regarded Emerson as an essayist, as a writer wholly engaged with a particular literary genre.

Essays were a minor genre, at best, and at worst one of the many forms of subliterature. They didn’t reward critical study except in the growing discipline of freshman composition, where students were exposed to the work of George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, E. B. White, Loren Eiseley, Joan Didion, and many other essayists past and present, though in an academic setting that generally prioritized rhetoric over literature. As someone serving in the trenches of freshman composition, I also grew familiar with these writers, often through college essay anthologies designed to assist young instructors in teaching first-year students how to write effectively. My reading was thus divided between two opposing curricula—the main graduate school curriculum, which favored fiction, poetry, and drama, and the freshman writing curriculum, which permitted essays and literary nonfiction, such as that of Gay Talese, Gloria Steinem, Terry Southern, George Plimpton, Nora Ephron, and Norman Mailer, all of whose work I eagerly read and taught. It wasn’t exactly schizoid, but it was always clear which works fell into the realm of serious literature and which didn’t.

I will always recall one course that violated those literary boundaries. In 1965 I was fortunate to be admitted into a seminar taught by William Phillips, the prominent editor of
The
Partisan Review
. We met once a week in the offices of that illustrious literary journal to read and discuss contemporary criticism—Lionel Trilling, Philip Rahv, Dwight Macdonald, Alfred Kazin, Mary McCarthy, Leslie Fiedler. Since a number of these writers and critics would visit periodically I also had the pleasure of meeting them at readings and receptions. Hanging out at the
Partisan Review
offices, sharing the excitement of current literary gossip, hearing a glamorous Susan Sontag read “Notes on Camp” upon its publication in the magazine, or having an impromptu lunch with Philip Rahv—these experiences put me in touch with essays in a way I had never been before. It made so much academic discourse appear dull, and it also made the reading I did for my freshman writing courses seem far more engaging and relevant than the reading required for the graduate school curriculum. It was exciting to move from
PMLA
(the publication of the Modern Language Association) to
The Partisan Review
, and I realized I was far more interested in the world of public intellectuals than in literary scholarship. I began to see essays as provocative, sexy, a way of being in the world that could be both satisfyingly aesthetic and socially active. For that
Partisan Review
seminar on contemporary criticism I wrote a paper on Norman Mailer as an essayist, focusing on his rough-and-tumble collection
Advertisements for Myself
.

Years later, through the 1970s and 1980s, I continued to immerse myself in essays, inspired by the connection I had formed with the genre while studying with Mr. Phillips (we were not to call him “Professor”) at
The Partisan Review
. For me, essays could be every bit as “literary” as poems, novels, and plays, and by the mid-eighties I began to think that they deserved an annual volume that showcased the year’s best. When I began gathering essays in 1985 for the first volume in the series, I discovered that one of the unanticipated pleasures of the project was being in touch with the editors of literary periodicals. I blithely assumed I knew what these would be but very quickly came across journals I had no idea existed, and that too was a large part of the enjoyment I took in compiling the collection.

Other books

The Shadow Master by Craig Cormick

Make Me (The Club #17) by Cathleen Ross, The Club Book Series

Last Screw Before I Do by Manda McNay

Be Mine at Christmas by Brenda Novak

Royal's Wedding Secret by Lynn, Sophia

Blood Gifts by Kara Lockley

Melting Ms Frost by Black, Kat

Holding His Forever by Alexa Riley

Heidi by Johanna Spyri

Darnay Road by Diane Munier