THE NEXT AMERICAN ESSAY

Name: THE NEXT AMERICAN ESSAY
Author: John D’Agata
ISBN: 1-55597-375-2

edited by John D’Agata ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2003

In a note about the title, D'Agata says that by “next” he means “the essays that might be inspired by these.” Based on this...

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A sometimes challenging anthology that expands the usual definition of essay.

Iowa Workshop grad D’Agata, who collected his own unconventional essays in Halls of Fame (2001), here selects one per year starting in 1975, when he was born, bookending them with Guy Davenport’s prologue and Joe Wenderoth’s epilogue. D’Agata’s choice for 1975, John McPhee’s “The Search for Marvin Gardens,” is a relatively conventional essay by a widely read author; other choices falling into this category are Joan Didion’s “The White Album,” Susan Sontag’s “Unguided Tour,” Barry Lopez’s “The Raven,” Annie Dillard’s “Total Eclipse,” Alexander Theroux’s “Black,” and David Foster Wallace’s “Ticket to the Fair.” Some selections are fragmentary, such as Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s “Erato Love Poetry,” or stream-of-consciousness, such as Albert Goldbarth’s “Delft.” Goldbarth and Anne Carson are among several writers here who are known for their poetry at least as much as for their essays. D’Agata’s interjections between each piece sometimes comment on the year represented, sometimes discuss the author presented, sometimes appear to have nothing to do with the piece that follows. The editor is partial to making lists. He is also partial to wordplay, as when he mentions that his mother read to him while he was in the womb: “And as we now know, but did not know then, a fetus at eight weeks has developed its ears but not yet the ability to hear. What this means is that anything you read to a fetus will go in one ear, but not come out.”

In a note about the title, D'Agata says that by “next” he means “the essays that might be inspired by these.” Based on this anthology, that could mean pretty much anything.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003

ISBN: 1-55597-375-2

Page Count: 488

Publisher: Graywolf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN ESSAY
edited by John D’Agata

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT
by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal

- BOOK REVIEW
ABOUT A MOUNTAIN
by John D’Agata

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BY THE EL

THIRD AVENUE AND ITS EL AT MID-CENTURY (2ND ED.)

by Lawrence Stelter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2007

Delightful, welcome nostalgia for a sadly bygone era.

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This vivid New York City cultural history records in photographs the story of the Third Avenue elevated train, launched in 1878 as one of the first lines in the city’s rapid-transit systems.

The author’s father, Lothar Stelter, took a myriad of photographs with his Contessa camera in the early ’50s, when he worked as a cable splicer for the New York Telephone Company. Those photos, displayed here a bit too small on each page, demonstrate how teeming and alive this route was in the lifeline of the city. The steam-powered elevated trains had to accommodate the rapid growth of New York at the turn of the century, comprising four routes from Lower Manhattan to 155th Street–though the Third Avenue line would gradually extend into the Bronx–and culminating in peak ridership by 1920, before the more efficient subways began to take over. A nickel fare (up until 1948) ensured its popularity. The Third Avenue El created a distinctive look along a busy thoroughfare, casting a trellis-like pattern onto the street from the overhead webbed ironwork, wooden catwalks and Victorian glasswork in the windows of the stations. The photographer captured the construction details beautifully, and in all kinds of weather, as passengers frozen in period suits and hats gaze down at the street crammed with DeSoto taxis, Studebakers and sidewalk vendors. Chapters follow the journey up Third Avenue, lined by pawn shops, antiques stores and Irish pubs, from Chinatown to Murray Hill to Yorkville to East Harlem. Former residents, shopkeepers and commuters fondly recall here the noisy train that brought them to the Automat at 42nd Street, Wankels Hardware at 88th Street or the Ruppert Brewery at 93rd Street. Next to these arresting images of the city’s history, views of today’s sleekly transformed Third Avenue–the El was demolished in the mid-’50s–seem soulless and monolithic.

Delightful, welcome nostalgia for a sadly bygone era.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007

ISBN: 978-0-9777220-1-3

Page Count: 132

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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PROVENCE

by Peter Mayle ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1994

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Poor Provence. Like some geographical cousin to the Golden Goose, it is sentenced to an eternity of laying golden eggs for Mayle (Up the Agency, 1993, etc.). In this extravagant book, Mayle teams up with Jason Hawkes, whose aerial photographs of vineyards, asymmetrically laid out French villes, marinas, freight yards, mountains, churches, and jet skis will put American readers where they like to be—above the French. Mayle's economical text is an arch accompaniment: ``One of the features of rural France is the manner in which the farmer shows his disapproval of the way the world is going...there is always something to upset him, and he often takes his revenge in messy and spectacular fashion. He dumps. He dumps melons on the steps of the Mairie, he dumps potatoes on the autoroute, he dumps cherries in the village fountain or, as he has done here, he dumps tomatoes on the banks of the Durance.'' The photo that accompanies this tribute to Gallic gall is quite spectacular, for, by a trick of perspective, the tomatoes, in varying stages of ripeness and color, look like a carnival of fungus climbing a rock.