Acclaimed as one of "Generation X"'s most talented writers, the author of Infinite Jest presents seven witty, compelling essays on subjects ranging from tennis to literary theory to forced fun aboard an ocean liner. Reprint. Tour. NYT.

An award-winning author, cultural critic and activist selects the best essays of the year from hundreds of magazines, journals and websites. Original. 30,000 first printing.

A collection of essays examines the memory evoked by the scent of lavender, meditations on the world's great cities, looking for the meaning of life on a street corner and much more. By the author of Eight White Nights. 10,000 first printing.

One of O, The Oprah Magazine’s Ten Best Books of the Year! The New York Times bestselling collection of essays from beloved poet, Mary Oliver. “In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.” So begins Upstream, a collection of essays in which reveredpoet Mary Oliver reflects on her willingness, as a young child and as an adult, to lose herself within the beauty and mysteries of both the natural world and the world of literature. Emphasizing the significance of her childhood “friend” Walt Whitman, through whose work she first understood that a poem is a temple, “a place to enter, and in which to feel,” and who encouraged her to vanish into the world of her writing, Oliver meditates on the forces that allowed her to create a life for herself out of work and love. As she writes, “I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.” Upstream follows Oliver as she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor, her boundless curiosity for the flora and fauna that surround her, and the responsibility she has inherited from Shelley, Wordsworth, Emerson, Poe, and Frost, the great thinkers and writers of the past, to live thoughtfully, intelligently, and to observe with passion. Throughout this collection, Oliver positions not just herself upstream but us as well as she encourages us all to keep moving, to lose ourselves in the awe of the unknown, and to give power and time to the creative and whimsical urges that live within us.

"This book is something new and wonderful--honest, funny, positive, completely original, and inspiring in the very best way: it made me remember I was alive." --George Saunders Hello! I looked into my brain and found a book. Here it is. Inside you will find: - The smell of honeysuckle - Heartbreak - A French-kissing rabbit - A haunted house - Death - A vagina singing sad old songs - Young geraniums in an ancient castle - Birth - A dog who appears in dreams as a spiritual guide - Divorce - Electromagnetic energy fields - Emotional horniness - The ghost of a sea captain - And more I hope you enjoy these little weirds. Love, Jenny Slate

The author of Fargo Rock City explores a range of modern cultural phenomena, including Internet pornography, tribute bands, baseball rivalries, and reality television, as he explores the role of the media in American life. Reprint. 100,000 first printing.

The award-winning author of Varieties of Disturbance presents a selection of essays, commentaries and lectures on the art of reading and writing, exploring subjects ranging from John Ashbery

"Collection of Elizabeth Hardwick's essays"--

Combining memoir, criticism and journalism, the New York Times best-selling author of The Empathy Exams offers readers 14 new essays that are by turns ecstatic, searching, staggering and wise. 25,000 first printing.