"Jonathan Baumbach is a master at portraying coupledom - both the coming together and the coming apart. On the first page of an early novel, Reruns, we're told: "When Molly left, everything burned. I was vulnerable to the touch of air." This sounds almost like a bit of adolescent angst about the end of a crush, but Molly is the narrator's third wife, and his second wife is still vividly in the picture. And in a later novel, Separate Hours, two psychoanalysts counsel others while obsessively parsing their own shredding marriage. Passion, anger, competition, and regret are like those trick birthday candles that can't easily be extinguished by a wishful breath. With its ambivalence and suspect accuracy, the memory of a love - if not the love itself - keeps on burning. Baumbach records these emotionally charged connections as if his life and the lives of his characters depend on them, in prose and content that's by turn sly, wildly inventive, moving, and hilarious." - Hilma Wolitzer
About the Author: A staple in the literary scene for over 40 years, Jonathan Baumbach is the author of 14 books of fiction, including You, or The Invention of Memory, On The Way To My Father's Funeral: New and Selected Stories, and B, a novel. He has published over ninety stories in Esquire, Open City, Boulevard, and elsewhere, and his fiction has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize, and The Best of Tri-Quarterly.
About the Guest Editor: Hilma Wolitzer is the author of several novels, including An Available Man, Summer Reading, The Doctor's Daughter, Hearts, Ending, and Tunnel of Love, as well as a nonfiction book, The Company of Writers. She is a recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award. She has taught writing at the University of Iowa, New York University, and Columbia University.
About the Publisher: Electric Literature is an independent publisher amplifying the power of storytelling through digital innovation. Electric Literature's weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, invites established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommended great fiction. Once a month we feature our own recommendation of original, previously unpublished fiction. Recommended Reading is supported by the Amazon Literary Partnership, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. For other links from Electric Literature, follow us, or sign up for our eNewsletter.
Genre: Romance
About the Author: A staple in the literary scene for over 40 years, Jonathan Baumbach is the author of 14 books of fiction, including You, or The Invention of Memory, On The Way To My Father's Funeral: New and Selected Stories, and B, a novel. He has published over ninety stories in Esquire, Open City, Boulevard, and elsewhere, and his fiction has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize, and The Best of Tri-Quarterly.
About the Guest Editor: Hilma Wolitzer is the author of several novels, including An Available Man, Summer Reading, The Doctor's Daughter, Hearts, Ending, and Tunnel of Love, as well as a nonfiction book, The Company of Writers. She is a recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award. She has taught writing at the University of Iowa, New York University, and Columbia University.
About the Publisher: Electric Literature is an independent publisher amplifying the power of storytelling through digital innovation. Electric Literature's weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, invites established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommended great fiction. Once a month we feature our own recommendation of original, previously unpublished fiction. Recommended Reading is supported by the Amazon Literary Partnership, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. For other links from Electric Literature, follow us, or sign up for our eNewsletter.
Genre: Romance
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