Another reason to buy this issue is the excerpt from Paul Auster's forthcoming novel, Invisible (to be published in November). I have recently had the intense pleasure of reading this novel in galleys and it's among Auster's best — headlong, sexy, funny with a real villain and the most memorable ending in all his fiction. Howe, Lahiri/Gallant, and Auster alone are well worth the $16.99 Granta cover price.
I don't want to stint the other fictioneers in this issue, but it seems wrong to review single stories. I can say this: the range is broad enough so that most readers will be introduced to at least one writer whose work they will want to follow. In my case, it is the fiction of William Pierce whom I have known as Agni's Senior Editor. His story "American Subsidiary" deals with an American working for a German company. If, as Calvin Coolidge once famously said, "The chief business of the American people is business," Pierce caused me to think of how little recent American fiction I have read that has anything to do with the nation's national preoccupation. When his novel A Man of Restraint appears I will buy a copy to see what Pierce is up to.
Related:
The Ploughshares years, Review: Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, And Conversations, Hip-hop history, More 
- The Ploughshares years
After reading an item on the Boston Globe book page noting that DeWitt Henry had published a memoir, I bought a copy of the book.
- Review: Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, And Conversations
If you are interested in the great painter Philip Guston (1913–1980), you will want this book. If you are interested in American painting from 1945 on, and into the future, you will want this book. If you enjoy a great talker in top form, you will want this book.
- Hip-hop history
Dan Charnas is aware that some disgruntled rap purists may eschew his epic tome on planet hip-hop's animated cast of titanic dick swingers.
- Photos: Michele McPhee hosts book signing party for A Date With Death
Michele McPhee meets fans and signs copies of her book about the Craigslist killer, A Date With Death , at Jerry Remy's Sports Bar & Grill on January 3, 2011.
- Interview: Christian Lander
With his first book, Stuff White People Like , and his blog of the same name, Christian Lander poked savage fun at the urban bourgeoisie. He hit a nerve and the bestseller list; it all culminated in an appearance on Conan .
- artist: Tricia Rose, Brown University’s hip-hop scholar, discusses rap’s creative crisis
Some 40 years in, rap is nothing less than a cultural juggernaut. But it has not lost its power to provoke.
- Interview: The authors of Future Boston on building the Boston of tomorrow
We only have three years before the aliens land. This was the future envisioned in Future Boston , an anthology by a group of local science-fiction writers published in 1995 .
- How to create a readable future
The actual future is a collaboration between nearly seven billion people worldwide. But creating a future can be a fun indoor sport for you and your friends.
- I was a teenage Sandinista
As a freshman philosophy major at the University of Colorado, Deb Olin Unferth fell in love with a junior named George. A pious Evangelical, George felt it was his duty to help his Communist brethren in Central America fight against their capitalist oppressors. So he did, and Unferth went with him.
- Corsets, goggles, and game geeks in Warwick
Are you an aspiring warlord, dragon slayer or munchkin? Do you find Queen Victoria strangely sexy? Well TempleCon 2011 might be right up your alley.
- An (almost) A-to-Z guide to Boston
Welcome to Boston, college kids.
- Less
Topics:
Books
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, Media, Books, Agni, Summer Guide 2009, SummerGuide2009, Amy Bloom, Poetry, Boston University, Boston University, Calvin Coolidge, Less
