Atwan Robert - The Best American Essays 2013

Copyright 2013 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Introduction copyright 2013 by Cheryl Strayed

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ISSN 0888-3742

ISBN 978-0-544-10388-7

e ISBN 978-0-544-10574-4
v1.1013

The Art of Being Born by Marcia Aldrich. First published in Hotel Amerika, Spring 2012. Copyright 2013 by Marcia Aldrich. Reprinted by permission of Marcia Aldrich.

Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel by Poe Ballantine. First published in The Sun, June 2012. Copyright 2012 by Poe Ballantine. Reprinted by permission of Poe Ballantine.

What Happens in Hell by Charles Baxter. First published in Ploughshares, Fall 2012. Copyright 2012 by Charles Baxter. Reprinted by permission of Darhansoff & Verrill Literary Agents.

Letter from Majorca by J. D. Daniels. First published in The Paris Review, Summer 2012. Copyright 2012 by J. D. Daniels. Reprinted by permission of J. D. Daniels.

His Last Game by Brian Doyle. First published in Notre Dame Magazine, Autumn 2012. Copyright 2012 by Brian Doyle. Reprinted by permission of Brian Doyle.

A Little Bit of Fun Before He Died by Dagoberto Gilb. First published in ZYZZYVA, Fall 2012. Copyright 2012 by Dagoberto Gilb. Reprinted by permission of Dagoberto Gilb. Fun by Wyn Cooper originally appeared in The Country of Here Below, Ahsahta Press, 1987. Reprinted by permission of the author.

When They Let Them Bleed by Tod Goldberg. First published in Hobart, Winter/Spring 2012. Copyright 2012 by Tod Goldberg. Reprinted by permission of Tod Goldberg.

The Book of Knowledge by Steven Harvey. First published in River Teeth, Spring 2012. Copyright 2012 by Steven Harvey. Reprinted by permission of Steven Harvey.

Breeds of America by William Melvin Kelley. First published in Harpers Magazine, August 2012. Copyright 2012 by William Melvin Kelley. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Triage by Jon Kerstetter. First published in River Teeth, Spring 2012. Copyright 2011 by Jon R. Kerstetter. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Confessions of an Ex-Mormon by Walter Kirn. First published in The New Republic, August 2, 2012. Copyright 2012 by Walter Kirn. Reprinted by permission of Walter Kirn.

Epilogue: Deadkidistan by Michelle Mirsky. First published in McSweeneys, November 8, 2012. Copyright 2012 by Michelle Mirsky. Reprinted by permission of Michelle Mirsky.

The Exhibit Will Be So Marked by Ander Monson. First published in Normal School, Spring 2012. Copyright 2013 by Ander Monson. Reprinted by permission of Ander Monson.

The Girls in My Town by Angela Morales. First published in Southwest Review, 97/2. Copyright 2012 by Angela Morales. Reprinted by permission of Southwest Review and Angela Morales.

Night, from Dear Life by Alice Munro, copyright 2013 by Alice Munro. Used by permission of Random House, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House, Inc. for permission. First published in Granta, Summer 2012.

Pigeons by Eileen Pollack. First published in Prairie Schooner, Spring 2012. Copyright 2012 by The University of Nebraska Press. Reprinted by permission of The University of Nebraska Press.

Im Jumping Off the Bridge by Kevin Sampsell. First published on Salon.com, August 3, 2012. Copyright 2012 by Kevin Sampsell. Reprinted by permission of Salon.com.

Sometimes a Romantic Notion by Richard Schmitt. First published in The Gettysburg Review, Autumn 2012. Copyright 2012 by Richard Schmitt. Reprinted by permission of Richard Schmitt.

El Camino Doloroso by David Searcy. First published in The Paris Review, Spring 2012. Copyright 2012 by David Searcy. Reprinted by permission of Aragi, Inc.

Some Notes on Attunement by Zadie Smith. First published in The New Yorker, December 17, 2012. Copyright 2012 by Zadie Smith. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Channel B by Megan Stielstra. First published in The Rumpus, November 9, 2012. Copyright 2012 by Megan Stielstra. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Ghost Estates by John Jeremiah Sullivan. First published as Where Hope and Human History Dont Rhyme The New York Times Magazine, February 12, 2012. Copyright 2012 by John Jeremiah Sullivan. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.

Highway of Lost Girls by Vanessa Veselka. First published as The Truck Stop Killer in GQ, November 2012. Copyright 2012 by Vanessa Veselka. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Keeper of the Flame by Matthew Vollmer. First published in New England Review, 33/1. Copyright 2013 by Matthew Vollmer. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Field Notes on Hair by Vicki Weiqi Yang. First published in South Loop Review, 14. Copyright 2013 by Vicki Weiqi Yang. Reprinted by permission of Vicki Weiqi Yang.

My Fathers Women by Mako Yoshikawa. First published in The Missouri Review, Spring 2012. Copyright 2012 by Mako Yoshikawa. Reprinted by permission of Mako Yoshikawa.

W HEN I BEGAN STUDYING literature as a graduate student in the early 1960s, I approached the subject in ways so many of my generation did, as the study of poetry, fiction, and drama. My bible at the time was a critical volume published in the late 1940s by Ren Wellek and Austin Warren called Theory of Literature, which clearly privileged fictive works over nonfiction, though literary works then were so exclusively identified with poems, novels, and plays that the privileging barely went noticed. When in the mid-sixties I took a seminar on Ralph Waldo Emerson with the brilliant critic and quintessential Emersonian Richard Poirier, we concentrated on Emerson as a thinker and prose stylist, as the central figure of American literature, but I dont recall a single bit of discussion that regarded Emerson as an essayist, as a writer wholly engaged with a particular literary genre.

Essays were a minor genre, at best, and at worst one of the many forms of subliterature. They didnt reward critical study except in the growing discipline of freshman composition, where students were exposed to the work of George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, E. B. White, Loren Eiseley, Joan Didion, and many other essayists past and present, though in an academic setting that generally prioritized rhetoric over literature. As someone serving in the trenches of freshman composition, I also grew familiar with these writers, often through college essay anthologies designed to assist young instructors in teaching first-year students how to write effectively. My reading was thus divided between two opposing curriculathe main graduate school curriculum, which favored fiction, poetry, and drama, and the freshman writing curriculum, which permitted essays and literary nonfiction, such as that of Gay Talese, Gloria Steinem, Terry Southern, George Plimpton, Nora Ephron, and Norman Mailer, all of whose work I eagerly read and taught. It wasnt exactly schizoid, but it was always clear which works fell into the realm of serious literature and which didnt.