Anthologies

The term “cyberpunk” entered the literary landscape in 1984 to describe William Gibson’s pathbreaking novel Neuromancer . Cyberpunks are now among the shock troops of postmodernism, Larry McCaffery argues in Storming the Reality Studio, marshalling the resources of a fragmentary culture to create a startling new form. Artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, multinational machinations, frenetic bursts of prose, collisions of style, celebrations of texture: although emerging largely from science fiction, these features of cyberpunk writing are, as this volume makes clear, integrally related to the aims and innovations of the literary avant-garde. By bringing together original fiction by well-known contemporary writers (William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Kathy Acker, J. G. Ballard, Samuel R. Delany), critical commentary by some of the major theorists of postmodern art and culture (Jacques Derrida, Fredric Jameson, Timothy Leary, Jean-François Lyotard), and work by major practitioners of cyberpunk (William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, John Shirley, Pat Cadigan, Bruce Sterling), Storming the Reality Studio reveals a fascinating ongoing dialog in contemporary culture. What emerges most strikingly from the colloquy is a shared preoccupation with the force of technology in shaping modern life. It is precisely this concern, according to McCaffery, that has put science fiction, typically the province of technological art, at the forefront of creative explorations of our unique age. A rich opporunity for reading across genres, this anthology offers a new perspective on the evolution of postmodern culture and ultimately shows how deeply technological developments have influenced our vision and our art. Selected Fiction contributors: Kathy Acker, J. G. Ballard, William S. Burroughs, Pat Cadigan, Samuel R. Delany, Don DeLillo, William Gibson, Harold Jaffe, Richard Kadrey, Marc Laidlaw, Mark Leyner, Joseph McElroy, Misha, Ted Mooney, Thomas Pynchon, Rudy Rucker, Lucius Shepard, Lewis Shiner, John Shirley, Bruce Sterling, William Vollman Selected Non-Fiction contributors: Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Joan Gordon, Veronica Hollinger, Fredric Jameson, Arthur Kroker and David Cook, Timothy Leary, Jean-François Lyotard, Larry McCaffery, Brian McHale, Dave Porush, Bruce Sterling, Darko Suvin, Takayuki Tatsumi

From Washington Irving to Zora Neale Hurston, Edgar Allan Poe to Allen Ginsberg, more than one hundred writers of the twentieth century pay testament to the unique charms and foibles of Manhattan, in an annotated hundredth-anniversary anthology.

They imbued their art with the truth about love and sex and seduction. They pushed erotic writing to the center stage of American fiction. They took risks, fed our imaginations, and explored our fantasies. Drawn from the works of dozens of the best contemporary American writers, The Good Parts is American writing at its most unabashedly erotic.Contributors include: * Saul Bellow * Harold Brodkey * Philip Roth * Don DeLillo * Scott Spencer * William Styron * Joan Mellen * Kathy Acker * Rebecca Goldstein * Joyce Carol Oates * Lynne Sharon Schwartz * Elizabeth Tallent * Pat Califia * Toni Morrison * Michael Chabon * Robert Boswell * E.L. Doctorow * Mary Gordon * Oscar Hijuelos * Susanna Moore * Pam Durban * Dani Shapiro * Frederick Busch * Mary Caponegro * A.M. Homes * Charles Johnson * Jane Smiley * Robert Olen Butler * Siri Hustvedt * Susan Sontag * Amy Bloom * Steve Erickson * Amanda Filipacchi * Anna Monardo * Maria Flook * Dale Peck * Joan Wickersham * Lynne McFall * Gwendolyn M. Parker * Charles D'Ambrosio * Jennifer Egan * Anchee Min * Rick Moody * Charlotte Watson Sherman * Paula Huston * James McManus * Mary Gaitskill

Robert Frost never felt more at home in America than when watching baseball "be it in park or sand lot." Full of heroism and heartbreak, the most beloved of American sports is also the most poetic, and writers have been drawn to this sport as to no other. With Baseball: A Literary Anthology , The Library of America presents the story of the national adventure as revealed through the fascinating lens of the great American game. Philip Roth considers the terrible thrill of the adolescent centerfielder; Richard Ford listens to minor-league baseball on the radio while driving cross-country; Amiri Baraka remembers the joy of watching the Newark Eagles play in the era before Jackie Robinson shattered the color line. Unforgettable portraits of legendary players who have become icons-Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Hank Aaron-are joined by glimpses of lesser-known characters such as the erudite Moe Berg, who could speak a dozen languages "but couldn't hit in any of them." Poems in Baseball: A Literary Anthology include indispensable works whose phrases have entered the language-Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat" and Franklin P. Adams's "Baseball's Sad Lexicon"-as well as more recent offerings from May Swenson, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Martin Espada. Testimonies from classic oral histories offer insights into the players who helped enshrine the sport in the American imagination. Spot reporting by Heywood Broun and Damon Runyon stands side by side with journalistic profiles that match baseball legends with some of our finest writers: John Updike on Ted Williams, Gay Talese on Joe DiMaggio, Red Smith on Lefty Grove.

The New Yorker dishes up a feast of delicious writing–food and drink memoirs, short stories, tell-alls, and poems, seasoned with a generous dash of cartoons. “To read this sparely elegant, moving portrait is to remember that writing well about food is really no different from writing well about life.”— Saveur (Ten Best Books of the Year) Since its earliest days, The New Yorker has been a tastemaker—literally. In this indispensable collection, M.F.K. Fisher pays homage to “cookery witches,” those mysterious cooks who possess “an uncanny power over food,” and Adam Gopnik asks if French cuisine is done for. There is Roald Dahl’s famous story “Taste,” in which a wine snob’s palate comes in for some unwelcome scrutiny, and Julian Barnes’s ingenious tale of a lifelong gourmand who goes on a very peculiar diet. Selected from the magazine’s plentiful larder, Secret Ingredients celebrates all forms of gustatory delight. A sample of the menu: Roger Angell on the art of the martini • Don DeLillo on Jell-O • Malcolm Gladwell on building a better ketchup • Jane Kramer on the writer’s kitchen • Chang-rae Lee on eating sea urchin • Steve Martin on menu mores • Alice McDermott on sex and ice cream • Dorothy Parker on dinner conversation • S. J. Perelman on a hollandaise assassin • Calvin Trillin on New York’s best bagel Whether you’re in the mood for snacking on humor pieces and cartoons or for savoring classic profiles of great chefs and great eaters, these offerings from The New Yorker ’s fabled history are sure to satisfy every taste.

The Secret Is Out Exploring an alternate history of science fiction, this ingenious anthology showcases eighteen brilliant authors leading the way to a new literature of the future. These award-winning stories defy trends, cross genres, and prove that great fiction cannot be categorized. Two strangely detached astronauts orbit Earth while a third world war rages on. A primatologist’s lover suspects her of obsession with one of her simian charges. The horrors of trench warfare dovetail with the theoretical workings of black holes. A dissolving marriage and bitter custody dispute are overshadowed by the arrival of time travelers. An astonishing invention that records the sense of touch is far too dangerous for Thomas Edison to reveal. The future is here. Read it.

Who is dear to you? PEN America 13: Lovers features short fiction by Don DeLillo, new poetry by John Ashbery and Marilyn Hacker, a conversation between Patti Smith and Jonathan Lethem, and much more—including a forum on literary love with John Barth, Jessica Hagedorn, Yusef Komunyakaa, Lily Tuck, and many others.

Considered by many to be the greatest writer of his generation, David Foster Wallace was at the height of his creative powers when he committed suicide in 2008. In a sweeping portrait of Wallace’s writing and thought and as a measure of his importance in literary history, The Legacy of David Foster Wallace gathers cutting-edge, field-defining scholarship by critics alongside remembrances by many of his writer friends, who include some of the world’s most influential authors. In this elegant volume, literary critics scrutinize the existing Wallace scholarship and at the same time pioneer new ways of understanding Wallace’s fiction and journalism. In critical essays exploring a variety of topics—including Wallace’s relationship to American literary history, his place in literary journalism, his complicated relationship to his postmodernist predecessors, the formal difficulties of his 1996 magnum opus Infinite Jest, his environmental imagination, and the “social life” of his fiction and nonfiction—contributors plumb sources as diverse as Amazon.com reader recommendations, professional book reviews, the 2009 Infinite Summer project, and the David Foster Wallace archive at the University of Texas’s Harry Ransom Center. The creative writers—including Don DeLillo, Jonathan Franzen, George Saunders, Rick Moody, Dave Eggers, and David Lipsky, and Wallace’s Little, Brown editor, Michael Pietsch—reflect on the person behind the volumes of fiction and nonfiction created during the author’s too-short life. All of the essays, critical and creative alike, are written in an accessible style that does not presume any background in Wallace criticism. Whether the reader is an expert in all things David Foster Wallace, a casual fan of his fiction and nonfiction, or completely new to Wallace, The Legacy of David Foster Wallace will reveal the power and innovation that defined his contribution to literary life and to self-understanding. This illuminating volume is destined to shape our understanding of Wallace, his writing, and his place in history.