The Best American Essays 2006 »

ROBERT ATWAN has been the series editor of The Best American Essays since its inception in 1986. He has edited numerous literary anthologies and written essays and reviews for periodicals nationwide.

"The essays in this volume are powerful, plainspoken meditations on birthing, dying, and all the business in between," writes Lauren Slater in her introduction to the 2006 edition. "They reflect the best of what we, as a singular species, have to offer, which is reflection in a context of kindness. The essays tell hard-won tales wrestled sometimes from great pain."

The twenty powerful essays in this volume are culled from periodicals ranging from The Sun to The New Yorker, from Crab Orchard Review to Vanity Fair. In "Missing Bellow," Scott Turow reflects on the death of an author he never met, but one who "overpowered me in a way no other writer had." Adam Gopnik confronts a different kind of death, that of his five-year-old daughter's pet fish -- a demise that churns up nothing less than "the problem of consciousness and the plotline of Hitchock's Vertigo."

A pet is center stage as well in Susan Orlean's witty and compassionate saga of a successful hunt for a stolen border collie. Poe Ballantine chronicles a raw-nerved pilgrimage in search of salvation, solace, and a pretty brunette, and Laurie Abraham, in "Kinsey and Me," journeys after the man who dared to plumb the mysteries of human desire. Marjorie Williams gives a harrowing yet luminous account of her life with cancer, and Michele Morano muses on the grammar of the subjunctive mood while proving that "in language, as in life, moods are complicated, but at least in language there are only two."

Publishers Weekly

Veteran essayists (Joseph Epstein, Oliver Sacks, Susan Orlean) share space with accomplished newcomers (Michele Morano, Laurie Abraham, Poe Ballantine) in this rich and thoughtful collection. Ethnic variety is one strain: Emily Bernard writes about being a black teacher in a white class; Ken Chen deciphers the cultural mix of Hong Kong. Peter Selgin's account of the maiming of his hand and Robert Polito's search for his unknown grandmother convey the poignancy of loss, and Scott Turow regrets never having met Saul Bellow. But the dominant theme is death. Toi Derricotte, Kim Dana Kupperman and David Rieff write about the deaths of their mothers (Rieff's mother was Susan Sontag). Sam Pickering's elegiac essay about putting his dog to sleep is also a lament on lost youth and coming age; Adam Gopnik wittily demonstrates how the death of a goldfish provides a watershed moment for his family. The most affecting piece is an excerpt from Marjorie Williams's elegant, unsparing The Woman at the Washington Zoo, in which she describes the progress of the cancer that was to kill her in 2005. Eugene Goodheart explains this preoccupation best: "I think of [the personal essay] as the genre of the posthumous," he says. (Oct. 11) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Foreword by Robert Atwan ix Introduction by Lauren Slater xv

Laurie Abraham. Kinsey and Me 1 from Elle

Poe Ballantine. 501 Minutes to Christ 11 from The Sun

Emily Bernard. Teaching the N-Word 25 from The American Scholar

Ken Chen. City Out of Breath 43 from MÁnoa

Toi Derricotte. Beginning Dialogues 48 from Creative Nonfiction

Joseph Epstein. The Culture of Celebrity 54 from The Weekly Standard

Eugene Goodheart. Whistling in the Dark 70 from The Sewanee Review

Adam Gopnik. Death of a Fish 85 from The New Yorker

Kim Dana Kupperman. Relief 96 from Hotel Amerika

Michele Morano. Grammar Lessons: The Subjunctive Mood 107 from Crab Orchard Review

Susan Orlean. Lost Dog 122 from The New Yorker

Sam Pickering. George 133 from Southwest Review

Robert Polito. Shame 153 from Black Clock

David Rieff. Illness as More Than Metaphor 159 from The New York Times Magazine

Oliver Sacks. Recalled to Life 172 from The New Yorker

Peter Selgin. Confessions of a Left-Handed Man 185 from The Literary Review

Alan Shapiro. Why Write? 197 from The Cincinnati Review

Lily Tuck. Group Grief 208 from The Hudson Review

Scott Turow. Missing Bellow 225 from The Atlantic Monthly

Marjorie Williams. A Matter of Life and Death 238 from Vanity Fair

Biographical Notes 265 Notable Essays of 2005 270