William Maxwell, who died in July 2000, was revered as one of the twentieth century's great American writers and a longtime fiction editor at "The New Yorker." Now writers who knew Maxwell and were inspired by him both the man and his work offer intimate essays, most specifically written for this volume, that "bring him back to life, right there in front of us." Alec Wilkinson writes of Maxwell as mentor; Edward Hirsch remembers him in old age; Charles Baxter illuminates the magnificent novel "So Long, See You Tomorrow"; Ben Cheever recalls Maxwell and his own father; Donna Tartt vividly describes Maxwell's kindness to herself as a first novelist; and Michael Collier admires him as a supreme literary correspondent. Other appreciations include insightful pieces by Alice Munro, Anthony Hecht, a poem by John Updike, and a brief tribute from Paula Fox. Ending this splendid collection is Maxwell himself, in the unpublished speech "The Writer as Illusionist."

"Baxter's beguiling novel illuminates the befuddled, searching hearts of a group of strangers in a Michigan town who need and want to love but continue to fall short of their desires. Gorgeous."
'Elle'

'The Feast of Love' is just that – a sumptuous work of fiction about the thing that most distracts and delights us. In this latter-day 'Midsummer Night's Dream' men and women desire their ideal mates; parents seek out their lost children; adult children try to come to terms with their own parents and, in some cases, find new ones.

Crafted with grace, power and humour, 'The Feast of Love' maps the myriad manifestations of extraordinary love between ordinary people.

"This novel can cure insomnia. It might even briefly reconcile the reader to life."
MICHAEL NEWTON, 'TLS'

"Rich, strange, alive with the miracles of daily life, this novel is a banquet for the soul. So many wonderful characters, all of whom I came to cherish. Truly, this is a novel in which the unexpected is always upon us."
ANDREA BARRETT, author of 'The Voyage of the Narwhal'

Bob Seger's House and Other Stories is a collection of short stories written by some of Michigan's most well-known fiction writers. This collection of twenty-two short stories serves as a celebration not only of the tenth anniversary of the Made in Michigan Writers Series in 2016 but also of the rich history of writing and storytelling in the region. As series editors Michael Delp and M. L. Leibler state in their preface, ""The stories contained in this anthology are a way to stay connected to each other. Think of them as messages sent from all over the map, stitching readers and writers together through stories that continue to honor the ancient art of the fire tale, the hunting epic, and all of the ways language feeds the blood of imagination."" The scope of this project reflects the dynamic and diverse writing that is currently taking place by people who consider their home to be the Great Lakes state. Stories are far-ranging, from the streets of Detroit and the iconic presence of the auto industry to the wild tracts of the Upper Peninsula, to a couple on the west coast trying to figure out parenting. The book vibrates with that tension, of metal versus rock and human frailty taking on the pitfalls and hardships of living in this world. In his foreword, Charles Baxter asks, ""Does a region give rise to a particular kind of literature? Michigan is so fiercely diverse in its landscapes, its economy, and its population demographics that it presents anybody who wants to write about it with a kind of blank slate. You can't summarize the state easily."" These storytellers exude a ""Michigan aesthetic"" in their writing, something that cannot be learned in a textbook or taught in a classroom but can be felt through the tales of these storytellers. The experience of picking up this collection is akin to taking a drive from the mechanized world and arriving several hours later in one of the wildest places on earth. Readers of short fiction will enjoy the multitude of voices in this anthology.

Charles Baxter inaugurates "The Art of," a new series on the craft of writing, with the wit and intelligence he brought to his celebrated book "Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction."
Fiction writer and essayist Charles Baxter's "The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot "discusses and illustrates the hidden subtextual overtones and undertones in fictional works haunted by the unspoken, the suppressed, and the secreted. Using an array of examples from Melville and Dostoyevsky to contemporary writers Paula Fox, Edward P. Jones, and Lorrie Moore, Baxter explains how fiction writers create those visible and invisible details, how what is displayed evokes what is not displayed.
"The Art of Subtext" is part of "The Art of" series, a new line of books by important authors on the craft of writing, edited by Charles Baxter. Each book examines a singular, but often assumed or neglected, issue facing the contemporary writer of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. "The Art of" series means to restore the art of criticism while illuminating the art of writing.

Graywolf reissues one of its most successful essay collections with two new essays and a new foreword by Charles BaxterAs much a rumination on the state of literature as a technical manual for aspiring writers, "Burning Down the House "has been enjoyed by readers and taught in classrooms for more than a decade. Readers are rewarded with thoughtful analysis, humorous one-liners, and plenty of brushfires that continue burning long after the book is closed.

Ever since the publication of "The Harmony of the World" in 1984, Charles Baxter has slowly gained a reputation as one of America's finest short-story writers. Each subsequent collection--"Through the Safety Net, A Relative Stranger, "and" Believers"--was further confirmation of his mastery: his gift for capturing the immediate moment, for revealing the unexpected in the ordinary, for showing how the smallest shock can pierce the heart of an intimacy. "Gryphon" brings together the best of Baxter's previous collections with seven new stories, giving us the most complete portrait of his achievement.
Baxter once described himself as "a Midwestern writer in a postmodern age" at home in a terrain best known for its blandness, one that does not give up its secrets easily, whose residents don't always talk about what's on their mind, and where something out of the quotidian--some stress, the appearance of a stranger, or a knock on the window--may be all that's needed to force what lies underneath to the surface and to disclose a surprising impulse, frustration, or desire. Whether friends or strangers, the characters in Baxter's stories share a desire--sometimes muted and sometimes fierce--to break through the fragile glass of convention. In the title story, a substitute teacher walks into a new classroom, draws an outsized tree on the blackboard on a whim, and rewards her students by reading their fortunes using a Tarot deck. In each of the stories we see the delicate tension between what we want to believe and what we need to believe.
By turns compassionate, gently humorous, and haunting, "Gryphon" proves William Maxwell's assertion that "nobody can touch Charles Baxter in the field that he has carved out for himself."

"From the Hardcover edition."

As a graduate student in upstate New York, Nathaniel Mason is drawn into a tangle of relationships with people who seem to hover just beyond his grasp. There's Theresa, alluring but elusive, and Jamie, who is fickle if not wholly unavailable. But Jerome Coolberg is the most mysterious and compelling. Not only cryptic about himself, he seems also to have appropriated parts of Nathaniel's past that Nathaniel cannot remember having told him about. In this extraordinary novel of mischief and menace, we see a young man's very self vanishing before his eyes.

Five Oaks, Michigan is not exactly where Saul and Patsy meant to end up. Both from the East Coast, they met in college, fell in love, and settled down to married life in the Midwest. Saul is Jewish and a compulsively inventive worrier; Patsy is gentile and cheerfully pragmatic. On Saul's initiative (and to his continual dismay) they have moved to this small town-a place so devoid of irony as to be virtually "a museum of earlier American feelings"-where he has taken a job teaching high school.
Soon this brainy and guiltily happy couple will find children have become a part of their lives, first their own baby daughter and then an unloved, unlovable boy named Gordy Himmelman. It is Gordy who will throw Saul and Patsy's lives into disarray with an inscrutable act of violence. As timely as a news flash yet informed by an immemorial understanding of human character, Saul and Patsy is a genuine miracle.

From "one of our most gifted writers" (Chicago Tribune), here is a superb new novel that delicately unearths the myriad manifestations of extraordinary love between ordinary people.

The Feast of Love is just that -- a sumptuous work of fiction about the thing that most distracts and delights us. In a re-imagined Midsummer Night's Dream, men and women speak of and desire their ideal mates; parents seek out their lost children; adult children try to come to terms with their own parents and, in some cases, find new ones.

In vignettes both comic and sexy, the owner of a coffee shop recalls the day his first wife seemed to achieve a moment of simple perfection, while she remembers the women's softball game during which she was stricken by the beauty of the shortstop. A young couple spends hours at the coffee shop fueling the idea of their fierce love. A professor of philosophy, stopping by for a cup of coffee, makes a valiant attempt to explain what he knows to be the inexplicable workings of the human heart Their voices resonate with each other -- disparate people joined by the meanderings of love -- and come together in a tapestry that depicts the most irresistible arena of life. Crafted with subtlety, grace, and power, The Feast of Love is a masterful novel.

Wright Morris (1910-1998) wrote thirty-three books, including The Home Place, also available in a Bison Books edition, and Field of Vision, which won the National Book Award. Charles Baxter is a professor of English at the University of Michigan and the author of numerous works, including The Feast of Love.