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Top of the pile
81
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
96/100Critics
67/100Scholars
Author:
Phillip Lopate
Publisher:
Anchor
Date:
August 3, 2021
Phillip Lopate gathers essays by 47 of America's most esteemed contemporary writersâincluding Alexander Chee, Samantha Irby, Leslie Jamison and David Sedarisâmingling long-established eminences with newer voices and making room for a wide variety of perspectives and styles.
What The Reviewers Say
Obvious short stories like Meghan Daum’s 'Matricide' or Charles D’Ambrosio’s 'Loitering' are included here one what can be assumed to be a lark, for instance. Ander Monson’s incoherent 'Failure: A Meditation' is here, as is Floyd Skloot’s 'Gray Area: Thinking with a Damaged Brain,' which is moving in inverse proportion to the likelihood that it could have been written by somebody who’d actually experienced any of the maladies it describes. 'Dear Friend, From My Life I Write To You in Your Life,' in which Yiyun Li assembles 24 random anecdotes, is likewise here for no apparent reason. But...such inclusions total only a small fraction of the Table of Contents here, which is otherwise every bit as strong as those in all other Lopate’s anthologies, with superb pieces.
Essay expert and advocate Lopate completes his invaluable trilogy of powerhouse anthologies...showcasing the best of American essays in all their radiant and stormy voices, styles, and subject matter with a suitably kinetic twenty-first-century gathering reflecting a time 'of rupture and anxiety'.
... [a] well-balanced volume.
... the list of contributors is enviable.
