best american essays 1999

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The Best American Essays 1999 Hardcover – January 1, 1999

There is a newer edition of this item:.

• Print length 297 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date January 1, 1999
• Dimensions 6 x 1 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 0395860547
• ISBN-13 978-0395860540
• See all details

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First Edition (January 1, 1999)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 297 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0395860547
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0395860540
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.02 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches
• #2,933 in American Fiction Anthologies
• #3,415 in American Literature Criticism
• #7,578 in Essays (Books)

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Edward hoagland.

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The Best American Essays 1999

. houghton mifflin harcourt (hmh), $27.5 (297pp) isbn 978-0-395-86054-0.

Reviewed on: 10/04/1999

Genre: Nonfiction

Paperback - 297 pages - 978-0-395-86055-7

Prebound-Sewn - 978-1-4177-1141-3

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THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 1999

edited by Edward Hoagland ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 29, 1999

A feast of fine, important writing.

Atwan’s annual series unfailingly delivers the highest quality writing, essays that display “literary [and] ruminative characteristics,” work that shows the “mind in process.”

This year’s editor, Edward Hoagland—a fine essayist in his own right—has collected essays by some of the best writers in the country: Joyce Carol Oates, Ian Frazier, Scott Russell Sanders, Mary Gordon, Dagoberto Gilb, David Quammen, and others. Hoagland echoes Atwan in noting that essays “simulate the mind’s own process.” He connects the current revival of the essay to that of the rage for personal memoir. (And he never once uses the phrase “creative nonfiction.”) Sanders’s marvelous piece tackles a traditional essay theme, as Hubble photographs and his daughter’s wedding spur musings on the origin of the cosmos and an examination of the concept of beauty. He is “certain that genuine beauty is not in my eye alone but out in the world.” In a startlingly revealing essay, “After Amnesia,” Joyce Carol Oates recalls a “humiliating experience” that occurred while she was touring a New Jersey detention center. Gordon’s personal essay relates the opening of a Bonnard exhibit at MOMA at the same time that her mother, in a nursing home, turns 90: “1 wonder if Bonnard could do anything with this lightless room.” John Lahr revisits his youth with his famous father, Bert, on the re-release of The Wizard of Oz and finds the ubiquitous commercialization of the Cowardly Lion “the enduring monument to Dad’s comic genius.” There’s also Joan Didion’s brilliant argument against the release of Hemingway’s unpublished work, Annie Dillard’s examination of religious belief, Gilb’s chance encounter with actress Victoria Principal, Toure’s boxing days at the Body and Soul Gym and Frazier’s delightful recollection of the “hundred pointless things we did in the woods” as 10-year-olds.

Pub Date: Oct. 29, 1999

ISBN: 0-395-86054-7

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1999

GENERAL NONFICTION

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BOOK REVIEW

by Edward Hoagland

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

More by E.T.A. Hoffmann

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

Episodes from the life of lady mendl (elsie de wolfe).

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

More by Ludwig Bemelmans

developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno

by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno

by Ludwig Bemelmans

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The Best American Essays 1999 (The Best American Essays)

By edward hoagland , andré aciman , charles bowden , franklin burroughs , michael cox , joan didion , annie dillard , brian doyle , ian frazier , dagoberto gilb , mary gordon , patricia hampl , barbara hurd , john lahr , hilary masters , john mcneel , ben metcalf , arthur miller , joyce carol oates , cynthia ozick , david quammen , daisy eunyoung rhau , scott r. sanders , mark slouka , toure , and george w. s. trow.

• 7 Want to read
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The Best American Essays

Ponder life. Read an essay today.

The Best American Essays 1999

Edited and with an Introduction by  Edward Hoagland Robert Atwan , Series Editor

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Essays by Robert Bly

Introduction, the best american poetry 1999.

Scribner, 1999

Across the highway a heron stands in the flooded field. It stands as if lost in thought, on one leg, careless, as if the field belongs to herons. The air is clear and quiet. Snow melts on this second fair day. Mother and daughter, we sit in the parking lot with doughnuts and coffee. We are silent. For a moment the wall between us opens to the universe; then closes. And you go on saying you do not want to repeat my life.

I see sparkling glass ponies come sailing at me out of the reaches of the impermeable night.

If only she were not so eager for a rub behind the ears, so acrobatic in her welcomes, if only I were not her god.

. . . Hold my hand, dear . I should have hugged him, taken him up, held him, in my arms. I should have let him know I was here.

There are openings in our lives of which we know nothing. Through them the belled herds travel at will, long-legged and thirsty, covered with foreign dust.

The apple I held and bit into was for me. The friend who spoke to me was for me. My mother and father were for me. . . . The bed I slept in was for me. The clothes I wore were for me. The kindness I showed a dead bird one winter by placing it in my warm pocket was for me . . . . The music on the radio, the books I was beginning to read, were all for me. I had hold of a good thing, me, and I was going to give of my contentment to others, for me. . . . I had found that for me was everybody's way. . . . And so when I looked up at the night stars, for me remained silent, and when my grandmother died, for me became a little boy sent on an errand of candles to place at the foot and head of her coffin.

On Christmas Eve, I prepared a warm place for my mother and father, sister and brothers, grandparents, all my relatives, none dead, none missing, none angry with another, all coming through the woods.

My father walked the night. My father walked the night. It seemed deeper than all Shakespeare.

I took off my hat, a mistake in the presence of my father's God, wiped my brow with what I had, the back of my hand, and marveled at what was here: nothing at all except the stubbornness of things.

Wild, lashing snow, which thumps against the windshield Like earth tossed down upon a coffin lid, Half clogs the wipers, and our Buick yaws On the black roads of 1928. Father is driving; mother, leaning out, Tracks with her flashlight beam the pavement's edge, And we must weather hours more of storm To be in Baltimore for Christmastime.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

The lithe swinging of that rhythmical easy stride which circles down to the tiniest hub is like a dance of energy around a point in which a great will stands stunned and numb.

I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill. The wilderness rose up to it, And sprawled around, no longer wild. The jar was round upon the ground And tall and of a port in air. It took dominion everywhere. The jar was gray and bare. It did not give of bird or bush Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Storm on Mount Asama! Wind blowing Out of the stones.

Yesterday toads no bigger than houseflies took small hops across our path. It would have been easy to miss them – under the tall trees and the charm of the wind in their tops – those perfectly shaped little black toads along the black path.

. . . This morning, when I looked at a lily, just beginning to open, its long, slender pouch tipped with soft, curling-back lips, and I could peek just slightly in, and see the clasping interior, the cache of pollen, and smell the extreme sweetness, I thought they were shyly saying Mary's body, he came from the blossom of a woman, he was born in the beauty of her lily.

At night outside it all moves or almost moves–trees, grass, touches of wind. The room you have in the world is ready to change. Clouds parade by, and stars in their configurations. Birds from far touch the fabric around them–you can feel their wings move. Somewhere under the earth it waits, that emanation of all things. It breathes. It pulls you slowly out through doors or windows and you spread in the thin halo of night mist.

M'llumino D'immenso.

Immensity fills Me with light.

My sun inside Rises from space.

I pull in immense Space and am in glory.

I light up my soul With the hugeness of space.

I will die in Paris, on a rainy day, on some day I can already remember. I will die in Paris – and I don't step aside – perhaps on a Thursday, as today is Thursday, in autumn.

Death is inside the bones like a barking where there are no dogs. * * * It so happens I am sick of being a man. And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

She had fallen in love with her doctor's stethoscope, the way it listened to her heart.

There isn't a way in the world I'd bite on that thing. But I might swim in just a little closer.

What the hell is going on here, I said? At which the barber rushed over And threw a hot towel over my eyes.

Little time now and so much hasn't been put down as I should have done it. But does it matter? It's all been written so well by my betters, and what they wrote has been my joy.

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