Reviews

The Best American Essays 2001 by Robert Atwan, Kathleen Norris

galengreen's review

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5.0

Best essays: the bone garden of desire (Charles Bowden), exquisite corpse (ashraf rushdy), the last word (earl shorris), and upside down and backward (William vollman)

thatbookishwriter's review against another edition

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informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

legsbian's review against another edition

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Overall, I don't think I share the same taste in essays as Kathleen Norris. Despite this, there were a few from this curated selection that I liked:
  • The Bone Garden of Desire by Charles Bowden, about being alive and eating things.
  • Vin Laforge by Jeffrey Heiman, about — you guessed it — Vin Laforge, the man who ran a town dump in the Berkshires.
  • Refugium by Barbara Hurd, about the human need for (occasional) isolation, protection, and swamps.
  • Facing the Village by Lenore Look, about seeing her father return to his childhood home for the first time.
  • Cut Time by Carlos Rotella, about the emotional entrails of being a good fighter.
  • The Last Word by Earl Shorris, about losing languages and therefore 'dictionaries of reality' — ways of understanding and describing consciousness.
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