Robert Atwan, Series Editor
"AN ESSAY IS THE CHILD OF UNCERTAINTY," André Aciman contends in his introduction to The Best American Essays 2020. "The struggle to write what one hopes is entirely true, and the long incubation every piece of writing requires of a writer who is thinking difficult thoughts, are what ultimately give the writing its depth, its magnitude, its grace." The essays Aciman selected center on people facing moments of deep uncertainty, searching for a greater truth. From a Black father's confrontation of his son's illness, to a divorcée's transcendent experience with strangers, to a bartender grieving the tragic loss of a friend, these stories are a master class not just in essay writing but in empathy, artfully imbuing moments of hardship with understanding and that elusive grace.
Copyright © 2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
Introduction copyright © 2020 by André Aciman
ISBN 978-0-358-35991-3
Contents
Foreword xi
Introduction xxv
RABIH ALAMEDDINE How to Bartend 1
FROM Freeman's
ELVIS BEGO Ghost Museum 14
FROM Agni
RACHEL CUSK Driving as Metaphor 19
FROM The New York Times Magazine
BARBARA EHRENREICH The Humanoid Stain 31
FROM The Baffler
GARI FINCKE After the Three-Moon Era 44
FROM Kenyon Review Online
RON HUETT Cosmic Latte 67
FROM The Normal School
LESLIE JAMISON A Street Full of Splendid Strangers 85
FROM The Atlantic
JAMAICA KINCAID A Letter to Robinson Crusoe 96
FROM Book Post
JOSEPH LEO KOERNER Maly Trostinets 100
FROM Granta
ALEX MARZANO-LESNEVICH Body Language 116
FROM Harper's Magazine
CLINTON CROCKETT PETERS A Thing About Cancer 129
FROM Boulevard
SUSAN FOX ROGERS The Other Leopold 138
FROM Michigan Quarterly Review
MATTHEW SALESSES To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time 148
FROM Longreads
PETER SCHJELDAHL 77 Sunset Me 156
FROM The New Yorker
A. O. SCOTT Under the Sign of Susan 180
FROM The New York Times Magazine
LIONEL SHRIVER Semantic Drift 192
FROM Harper's Magazine
MARK SULLIVAN Ode al Vento Occidentale 199
FROM The Gettysburg Review
MARK SUNDEEN Holiday Review 215
FROM Virginia Quarterly Review
ALISON TOWNSEND My Pink Lake and Other Digressions 221
FROM Cimarron Review
DAVID L. ULIN Bed 228
FROM Another Chicago Magazine
JERALD WALKER Breathe 233
FROM New England Review
STEPHANIE POWELL WATTS The Unfound Door 239
FROM Oxford American
PHILIP WEINSTEIN Soul-Error 245
FROM Raritan
ELIZABETH WINKLER Was Shakespeare a Woman? 256
FROM The Atlantic
Contributors’ Notes 273
Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2019 279
Notable Special Issues of 2019 292
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