Beyond the Macabre: ‘Henri Duchemin and His Shadows’ by Emmanuel Bove

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French author Emmanuel Bove wrote novels and short stories that combined the psychological insight of Fyodor Dostoevsky with Edgar Allan Poe’s penchant for the macabre. His fiction shed a light on young men dangling precariously above disaster, men whose neurotic impulses frequently led to their ruin. Born in 1898, Bove’s own life proved as strange and fortuitous as that of his downtrodden characters. The author spent many of his earliest years living in abject poverty until his father’s second marriage introduced him to a world of wealth and privilege. The outbreak of World War I once again dashed the family […]

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‘To Bloom, to Burst, to Blaze’: 2015 Best American Essays Notable, Issue No. 100

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Three essays we published in our 100th issue received a Notable from the 2015 Best American Essays. The first of those we’re excerpting is Katie Crouch’s “To Bloom, to Burst, to Blaze.” A study on Sylvia Plath and a first-hand account of San Francisco during its first tech boom, Crouch’s essay is also a meditation on a friendship gone wrong and its accompanying guilt, which is felt many years later.

Katie Crouch has written numerous essays, which have appeared in The New York Times, Slate, the Rumpus, and Garden & Gun. She is also the best-selling author of the novels “Girls in Trucks,” “Men and Dogs,” and most recently, “Abroad” (Picador), now in paperback.

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‘Mendocino Fire’: 2015 Best American Short Stories Notable, Issue No. 100

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Since 2011, when ZYZZYVA underwent a redesign, a beefed up web site, and a change in masthead, work appearing in the journal has been attracting wide recognition. For its issues appearing in 2011 through 2014, ZYZZYVA has received twenty Notables from the Best American series, as well as inclusions in the Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Poets, and Best Nonrequired Reading anthologies; the journal has also received two Pushcart Prizes and four Pushcart Special Mentions in that time.

This month, when the Best American anthologies are in stores, we’d like to excerpt the many stories and essays from 2014 that received Notables from that prestigious series. We’re starting with a story by Elizabeth Tallent, “Mendocino Fire,” from our celebrated 100th issue. The story of the peripatetic life of a young female tree-sitter, raised, and arguably forsaken, in the wilds of the forests of Northern California, it delves into the haunting ache of abandonment and an intense yearning for connection. (It’s also the title story of Tallent’s new collection, published by Harper this month.) Of Elizabeth Tallent’s work, Richard Ford has said, “Her ear is perfect; her gaze searing and unmistakable.” We think you’ll agree.

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