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A collection of the year's best essays selected by André Aciman, author of the worldwide bestseller
Call Me by Your Name. "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.
The Best American 2020 Essays includes RABIH ALAMEDDINE • BARBARA EHRENREICH • LESLIE JAMISON JAMAICA KINCAID • ALEX MARZANO-LESNEVICH • A. O. SCOTT • JERALD WALKER • STEPHANIE POWELL WATTS and others
List of contents
RABIH ALAMEDDINE: How to Bartend
ELVIS BEGO: Ghost Museum
RACHEL CUSK: Driving as Metaphor
BARBARA EHRENREICH: The Humanoid Stain
GARY FINCKE: After the Three-Moon Era
RON HUETT: Cosmic Latte
LESLIE JAMISON: A Street Full of Splendid Strangers
JAMAICA KINCAID: A Letter to Robinson Crusoe
JOSEPH LEO KOERNER: Maly Trostinets
ALEX MARZANO-LESNEVICH: Body Language
CLINTON CROCKETT PETERS: A Thing About Cancer
SUSAN FOX ROGERS: The Other Leopold
MATTHEW SALESSES: To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time
PETER SCHJELDAHL: 77 Sunset Me
A. O. SCOTT: Under the Sign of Susan
LIONEL SHRIVER: Semantic Drift
MARK SULLIVAN: Ode al Vento Occidentale
MARK SUNDEEN: Holiday Review
ALISON TOWNSEND: My Pink Lake and Other Digressions
DAVID L. ULIN: Bed
JERLALD WALKER: Breathe
STEPHANIE POWELL WATTS: The Unfound Door
PHILIP WEINSTEIN: Soul-Error
ELIZABETH WINKLER: Was Shakespeare a Woman?
About the author
ANDRÉ ACIMAN is the author of Eight White Nights, Call Me by Your Name, Out of Egypt, False Papers, Alibis, Harvard Square, and Enigma Variations, and is the editor of The Proust Project. He teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He lives with his wife in Manhattan.ROBERT ATWAN has been the series editor of The Best American Essays since its inception in 1986. He has edited numerous literary anthologies and written essays and reviews for periodicals nationwide.
Summary
A collection of the year’s best essays selected by André Aciman, author of the worldwide bestseller Call Me by Your Name.
“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.
The Best American 2020 Essays includes RABIH ALAMEDDINE • BARBARA EHRENREICH • LESLIE JAMISON JAMAICA KINCAID • ALEX MARZANO-LESNEVICH • A. O. SCOTT • JERALD WALKER • STEPHANIE POWELL WATTS and others
