Michael Martone

There were several really great essays in this collection, and as an essayist, I got a lot of instruction and ideas for my own nonfiction writing. There were a handful that I didn't much care for, but that's almost always the case when it comes to large collections. I'd definitely recommend for writers and teachers as well as nonfiction readers.

My one gripe is with all anthologies that use a random organizational structure, like alphabetical order. It's probably great for people who like to show more skip around anyway, but I read everything front-to-back and like there to be some emotional story told through the arrangement of the pieces. show less

"The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm: usually because they could not walk." - The Portable Nietzsche

It appears from the bios that "Creative Nonfiction" means poets writing elliptically about the saddest and darkest of topics: death, mental and neurological disorders, a pederast father, an assaulting pet, the after effects of promiscuity (Cheryl Strayed) and more. That certainly covers the bulk of the book. Toward the end, there are some exceptions like John show more McPhee seeking the "Marvin Gardens" from Monopoly. Don't get me wrong. This is affecting, moving material. Just apparently, at least to this editor, there is not much room for joy in contemporary creative nonfiction. Also, I keep hearing great things about David Foster Wallace, but his reportage of a Maine lobster festival dwelling on crustacean nociception left me "meh". show less

"Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story," by Russell Banks (1984): 8.5
- I'd read this before. I remember flipping through a girlfriend's Scribner short story collection and reading this story about a beautiful man fucking and fucking over the ugliest woman alive and being strangely moved. He threads every very delicate needle carefully, and you're often unsure whether he falls too much on the side of self-incrimination or self-aggrandizement and gendered projection or full-fleshed humanity and show more that ambiguity is exactly what works here, esp. as it's coupled with the narrator's own wonder at his actions, at his motivations, and ultimately his own burning desire to want to know whether he's good or bad, whether this thing, this affair, was "good" or "bad."

"The School," by Donald Barthelme (1974): 8.25
- I've read Barthelme and I've not liked Barthelme. Two-thirds through this short short-story I was prepared to amend all of that, throw off those immature thoughts that, while the absurd had its place, the imperative had passed by the time his work made its way to my hands (oh, and that the humor was too little or too droll). Indeed, two-thirds through this simple story of a school where an escalating series of deaths happens (from plants to snakes to puppies to Korean boys and classmates), I felt overturned--the humor was there, and not simply in the dry language, but embedded in the trajectory of the story itself (i.e. once you realize that things are going to keep dying and that these things will be increasingly 'meaningful', thus the puppy and boy turns are a bit humorous), and the surreality was working. All of that held, that is until the final page, when he leans EVEN further into the same and makes the school a complete Anarchosurrealworld. The thread was lost, despite the image of the gerbil walking into the class on its own, and I'm back to where I started.

"The Hermit's Story," by Rick Bass (2002): 7.75
- The piece: recounting of a near-death exp. under a frozen lake during a blizzard, in which we Learn Something and humans, animals, and what connects us. Of the breed of plodding, contemplative litfic that corkscrews a Big Theme overtop of an otherwise mundane story — and the thing about these is that they often work. Here we're about halfway there.

"The Fireman's Wife," by Richard Bausch (1989): 9
- A churning little present-tense portrait of ineffable domestic disaffection. Bausch's hand is never heavy on the story, and there's little overt authorial intercession in the narrative, save the implicit centering/privileging of the wife's emotional state on account of being tied to her perspective. show less

I’ve been reading on this book, a dab at a time, all summer. It was the required reading for my personal essay writing class this summer. I went to look for it at B&N and it wasn’t there. I was happy to find I could download it, immediately, on my Kindle. An excellent use of my Kindle, as I could carry it with me to Utah and read it while waiting for an oil change and even just before I went to sleep. I had no idea the book had 576 pages; on the Kindle, all books feel equally light. So show more what about the…what do I call them? I want to call them stories, but I suppose, for accuracy’s sake, I will call them essays. Brilliant. Writing so good I could almost see the sheen of the words on my Kindle. But sad. All were sad. No happy stories. A school shooting. An unwanted child. An alcoholic dad. That left me thinking, Are there no happy stories? Is it only the traumatic events of one’s life that people want to read? I’ll leave that question, and just say one more time: These are excellent essays. Amazing. I want to read them again. And again. show less