The Fiction Issue 2009
Jim Shepard
In lovingly researched stories and novels, Jim Shepard traverses the globe and glides through history in such a way that reading through his collected output, you’re as likely to encounter ancient Greeks or discontented American teens as you are...
Duncan Fallowell
At 21 Duncan Fallowell was the Spectator’s first rock critic. He then released the anthology Drug Tales in 1979, before promptly giving up drugs to prevent “burning out.”
“3 Stories”
Robert Walser was underappreciated in his time and is still sort of a loosely kept secret today, passed around by writers and literature nerds like a test of how good one’s taste really is.
David Simon
David Simon is responsible for one of the greatest feats of storytelling of the past century, and that’s the entire five-season run of the television series The Wire.
“The Ghost Business”
T. Christopher Gorelick is a mortgage underwriter by day, and by night he’s usually sleeping. He aspires to become a professional writer.
“Sits the Queen”
Damion Searls is an author and award-winning translator, most recently of Rilke’s The Inner Sky: Poems, Notes, Dreams, Proust’s On Reading, and the Robert Walser stories in this issue.
“Dr. Morton’s Folly”
The term “living legend” gets tossed around without qualification all the time, but we think that the 83-year-old genius who literally wrote the horror classic titled I Am Legend has more than earned it.
“A Better World”
Blake Bailey is the author of Cheever: A Life, published earlier this year by Knopf. His previous book, A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
“Fathers and Snakes”
Clancy Martin used to make a living as a jewelry salesman. Now he is a translator of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri.
Wands And Swords, Pentangles And Cups
For W.B. Yeats, the ordinary world would fade away, and he would walk and talk in a spiritual realm that he believed truly existed around and outside the physical world.
“little Red Riding Hood And Blind Boy Willy The Pirate”
When Eric Dando’s first novel, Snail, came out in Australia in 1996, he was the youngest author to ever have been published by Penguin.
“3 Stories”
Robert Walser was underappreciated in his time and is still sort of a loosely kept secret today, passed around by writers and literature nerds like a test of how good one’s taste really is.