Table Of ContentAlso Edited by Lex Williford and Michael Martone
The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction
ALSO BY LEX WILLIFORD
Macauley’s Thumb
ALSO BY MICHAEL MARTONE
Michael Martone: Fictions
Unconventions
The Flatness and Other Landscapes
The Blue Guide to Indiana
Seeing Eye: Stories
Pensées
Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler’s List
Touchstone
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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New York, NY 10020
Copyright © 2007 by Lex Williford and Michael Martone
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof
in any form whatsover. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights
Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
continuation of the copyright page.
TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster,
Inc.
Designed by Mary Austin Speaker
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Touchstone anthology of contemporary creative nonfiction : work from 1970 to
the present / [edited by Lex Williford and Michael Martone].
p. cm.
“A Touchstone Book.”
1. American essays — 20th century. 2. American essays — 21st century. 3.
Reportage literature, American. 4. English essays — 20th century. 5. English
essays — 21st century. 6. Reportage literature, English. I. Williford, Lex, 1954–.
II. Martone, Michael.
PS688.T68 2007
814′.5408 — dc22
2007039255
ISBN-10: 1-4165-4511-5
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-4511-8
Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonSays.com
Acknowledgments
The editors would like to thank editors Cherise Davis and Meghan Stevenson for
their hard work and advocacy for this anthology. Putting the anthology together
took much longer than any of us expected — problems with crashed computers,
software, long negotiations over authors’ permissions, and the like — and we
appreciate their patience in the face of delays in fast-approaching production
deadlines. We’d also like to thank Jeff Wilson, executive director of contracts at
Simon & Schuster, for his calm and generous support with permissions and
contracts, as well as Amit Ghosh and his terrific BorderSenses Technology team
(http://bstelpaso.com) — Javier Sanchez, Ernesto Flores, and Edevaldo Orozco
— who designed the website and the survey’s complex databases, administered
the surveys, and then compiled all the data for simpleminded literary types who
can barely add up a column of numbers.
Thanks also go to Scott Russell Sanders for his marvelous introduction and
the many distinguished teaching writers who took time out of their busy
summers — the only time many of them could write — to take our survey:
Diana Abu-Jaber, Laurie Alberts, Marcia Aldrich, Rilla Askew, Christopher
Bakken, Kim Barnes, Helen Barolini, Randolph Bates, David Borofka, Andrea
Hollander Budy, Bobby Byrd, David Carkeet, Kelly Grey Carlisle, Christopher
Chambers, Kelly Cherry, Rita Ciresi, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Burke Davis, Jeffrey
DeLotto, Janet Desaulniers, Julie Edelson, David Galef, Albert Garcia, Gaynell
Gavin, Denise Gess, Tod Goldberg, Benjamin Grossberg, Marian Haddad, J. C.
Hallman, Jane Hammons, Janet Heller, Richard Hoffman, Noy Holland, Sonya
Huber, T. R. Hummer, Laura Kasischke, Patricia Kirkpatrick, Wayne
Koestenbaum, Martin Lammon, David Leavitt, Sara Levine, Paul Lisicky,
Elizabeth Macklin, Lee Martin, Richard McCann, Thomas McConnell, Margaret
McMullan, Gregory McNamee, Bart Midwood, Kathleen Volk Miller, Kyle
Minor, Roger Mitchell, Dinty W. Moore, Patricia Murphy, James Nolan, Judith
Pascoe, Joe Ashby Porter, Lynn Powell, Lia Purpura, Keith Ratzlaff, John Repp,
Kathryn Rhett, Natania Rosenfeld, Margaret Rozga, Andrew Schelling, Marc
Sheehan, Sue Silverman, Linda Simone, Floyd Skloot, Ron Smith, Angela
Sorby, David St. John, Maureen Stanton, Martin Steingesser, Judith Strasser, Pia
Taavila, David Taylor, Richard Terrill, Jessica Treat, Lee Upton, Martha
Vertreace-Doody, G. C. Waldrep, Charlotte Walker, Gabriel Welsch, Tom
Whalen, Laurance Wieder, Chris Willerton, Paul Winner, and Mark Wunderlich.
Lucky for us, work by many of these same distinguished writers also appears
in this anthology, not because they nominated their own work or had friends
nominate it for them but because their work is powerful and important.
Without these and other authors, such an anthology as this would never have
been possible. Although permissions costs have doubled and even tripled over
the last decade, authors, their agents, and their publishers were willing to receive
the same low permissions fee to keep the cost of this anthology affordable. We
thank them all.
For interested writers who have published at least three essays in nationally
distributed literary magazines, please email [email protected], and we’ll add your
name to our database so you may participate in surveys for any future editions.
Contents
Foreword
Introduction by Scott Russell Sanders
Jo Ann Beard The Fourth State of Matter
Wendell Berry Getting Along with Nature
Eula Biss The Pain Scale
Mary Clearman Blew The Unwanted Child
Charles Bowden Torch Song
Janet Burroway Embalming Mom
Kelly Grey Carlisle Physical Evidence
Anne Carson The Glass Essay
Bernard Cooper Burl’s
Michael W.Cox Visitor
Annie Dillard Living Like Weasels
Mark Doty Return to Sender
Brian Doyle Leap
Tony Earley Somehow Form a Family
Anthony Farrington Kissing
Harrison Candelaria Fletcher The Beautiful City of Tirzah
Diane Glancy Sun Dance
Lucy Grealy Mirrorings
William Harrison Present Tense Africa
Robin Hemley Reading History to My Mother
Adam Hochschild World on a Hilltop
Jamaica Kincaid A Small Place
Barbara Kingsolver High Tide in Tucson
Ted Kooser Small Rooms in Time
Sara Levine The Essayist is Sorry for Your Loss
E.J. Levy Mastering the Art of French Cooking
Phillip Lopate Portrait of My Body
Barry Lopez Flight
Thomas Lynch The Undertaking
Lee Martin Sorry
Rebecca Mcclanahan Interstellar
Erin Mcgraw Bad Eyes
John Mcphee The Search for Marvin Gardens
Brenda Miller The Date
Dinty W. Moore Son of Mr. Green Jeans
Kathleen Norris Celibate Passion
Naomi Shihab Nye This is Not Who We Are
Lia Purpura Autopsy Report
Richard Rhodes Watching the Animals
Bill Roorbach Shitdiggers, Mudflats, and the Worm Men of Maine
David Sedaris Repeat After Me
Richard Selzer Imelda
Sue William Silverman The Pat Boone Fan Club
Floyd Skloot A Measure of Acceptance
Lauren Slater Black Swans
Cheryl Strayed The Love of My Life
Amy Tan Mother Tongue
Ryan Van Meter If You Knew Then What I Know Now
David Foster Wallace Consider the Lobster
