"Having recalled his life through the story of his physical self in Winter journal ... novelist Paul Auster now remembers the experience of his development from within through the encounters of his interior self with the outer world ... From his baby's-eye view of the man in the moon, to his childhood worship of the movie cowboy Buster Crabbe, to the composition of his first poem at the age of nine, to his dawning awareness of the injustices of American...

"In this updated collection of literary essays, interviews, prefaces, personal notes, and occasional writings, including poignant and illuminating appreciations of other poets and novelists and of New York City life, Paul Auster offers not only samplings but insights into the first fifty years of his brilliant writing career. Through critical readings of literary greats such as Hawthorne, Poe, Beckett and Kafka, as well as less well-appreciated poets...

Ever since the publication of his first essay collection, The Broken Estate, in 1999, James Wood has been widely regarded as a leading literary critic of the English-speaking world. His essays on canonical writers (Gustav Flaubert, Herman Melville), recent legends (Don DeLillo, Marilynne Robinson) and significant contemporaries (Zadie Smith, Elena Ferrante) have established a standard for informed and incisive appreciation, composed in a distinctive...