David Berman reinvents the overlooked and seemingly ordinary details of everyday life--from the suitcase of a departing girlfriend to a baseboard electrical outlet. His poems chart a course through his own highly original American dreamscape in language that is fresh, accessible, and remarkably precise. This debut collection has received extraordinary acclaim from readers and reviewers alike and is quickly becoming a cult classic. As Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Tate said, "These poems are beautiful, strange, intelligent, and funny. . . . It's a book for everyone."

Actual Air

Literature & Fiction

Berman, David

Poetry

Grove Press, Open City Books

The most important new literary journal to emerge since Granta, Open City has published some of the best work by major writers and artists such as Mary Gaitskill, Denis Johnson, Jeff Koons, David Foster Wallace, Irvine Welsh, Terry Southern, Patrick McCabe, Sam Lipsyte, and David Berman. Edited by the writers Thomas Beller and Daniel Pinchbeck and originally published by the late Robert Bingham, writing from Open City has been included in many prestigious anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize. Known for launching the careers of today's best new writers, the editors are also committed to printing important unpublished work by writers from past eras, such as Richard Yates, Delmore Schwartz, Jim Thompson, Cyril Connolly, Edvard Munch, and Gregor von Rezzori. With its innovative and daring mix of the old and the new, Open City combines undiscovered writing by classic authors with a fascinating portrait of a literary generation in the making.

Open City #2

McPhee, Martha

Foreman, Richard

SOUTHERN, Terry

SERRA, Richard

Contemporary

Open City #6: The Only Woman He Ever Left

CUNNINGHAM, Michael

PURDY, James

Saroyan, Strawberry

Garrison, Debra

The most important new literary journal to emerge since Granta, Open City has published some of the best work by major writers and artists such as Mary Gaitskill, Denis Johnson, Jeff Koons, David Foster Wallace, Irvine Welsh, Terry Southern, Patrick McCabe, Sam Lipsyte, and David Berman. Edited by the writers Thomas Beller and Daniel Pinchbeck, and originally published by the late Robert Bingham, writing from Open City has been included in many prestigious anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize. Known for launching the careers of today's best new writers, the editors are also committed to printing important unpublished work by writers from past eras, such as Richard Yates, Delmore Schwartz, Jim Thompson, Cyril Connolly, Edvard Munch, and Gregor von Rezzori. With its innovative and daring mix of the old and the new, Open City combines undiscovered writing by classic authors with a fascinating portrait of a literary generation in the making. Open City #12 includes "After the Wall," a special section on Berlin's new generation of fiction writers; a story by Lewis Cole on the end of radicalism; and debut fiction by Sam Brumbaugh and Heather Lorimer. This issue features a previously unpublished story by Ford Maddox Ford.

Open City #12

Cole, Lewis

Brumbaugh, Sam

Lorimer, Heather

Ford, Maddox

Open City features a dynamic mix of prominent writers and undiscovered aspirants, as well as lost treasures from writers of past eras. Including fiction, essays, poetry, and artwork by an exciting range of talents, Open City has presented new works by Michael Cunningham, Deborah Garrison, Rick Moody, David Foster Wallace, Geoffrey O'Brien, and previously unpublished work by Delmore Schwartz, Richard Yates, and Edvard Munch. Praised in the pages of publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Library Journal, and The New York Times, Open City is today's most important literary journal. Open City #13 includes fiction by Martha McPhee, an excerpt from Vince Passaro's long-awaited first novel, Jack Walls on his Chicago boyhood and the early days of the New York art scene, poetry by Rachel Wetzsteon, and Aleksandar Hemon on J. D. Salinger.

Open City #13

Hemon, Aleksandar

Passaro, Vince

Wetzsteon, Rachel

Walls, Jack

From the peep palaces of Times Square to the cubicles of corporate America, Sam Lipsyte's stories wander a dark, comic road full of need and regret. His damaged, searching narrators deliver their reports of addiction, lust, loneliness, grief, and the doomed dream of rock 'n' roll with a sly lyricism and eerie spareness that somehow redeem them. Listen to this chorus of gallows humor and goodwill sometimes gone bad and hear wild voices rise out of the din of city living: Gary is a failed punk icon turned petty drug dealer and amateur self- actualization guru; the Chersky girl makes a strange midnight discovery roller-skating through a Depression-era morgue. Pot-dazed Trotskyists, summer-camp sadists, and babysitters with an eye toward erotic humiliation also make themselves known in the lost, shattered landscapes of Lipsyte's fictions. "When you have an old soul like I do," deadpans one hero, "everything gets old really quick. Nothing is new. An avocado, a glass of beer, everything tastes like it's been sitting out on a table too long." These stories, loosely linked in character and setting, recall the stark realism of Denis Johnson and the wild humor of Barry Hannah. In these poignant, sharp-witted tales, Sam Lipsyte proves himself one of today's most visceral and fearless short-story writers.

Venus Drive

LIPSYTE, SAM

United States

Meghan Daum is one of the most celebrated nonfiction writers of her generation, widely recognized for the fresh, provocative approach with which she unearths hidden fault lines in the American landscape. From her well-remembered New Yorker essays about the financial demands of big-city ambition and the ethereal, strangely old-fashioned allure of cyber relationships to her dazzlingly hilarious riff in Harper's about musical passions that give way to middle-brow paraphernalia, Daum delves into the center of things while closely examining the detritus that spills out along the way. She speaks to questions at the root of the contemporary experience, from the search for authenticity and interpersonal connection in a society defined by consumerism and media; to the disenchantment of working in a "glamour profession"; to the catastrophic effects of living among New York City's terminal hipsters. With precision and well-balanced irony, Daum implicates herself as readily as she does the targets that fascinate and horrify her. In a review of The KGB Bar Reader, in which Daphne Merkin singled out Daum's essay about the inability to mourn a friend's death, Merkin wrote: "It's brutally quick, the way this happens, this falling in love with a writer's style. Daum's story hooked me by the second line. Hmm, I thought, this is a writer worth suspending my routines for."

My Misspent Youth: Essays

History

Daum, Meghan

Americas

Open City features a dynamic mix of prominent writers, undiscovered aspirants, and lost treasures from writers of past eras. Including fiction, essays, poetry, and artwork by an exciting range of talents, Open City has presented new works by Michael Cunningham, Deborah Garrison, Rick Moody, David Foster Wallace, Geoffrey O'Brien, Sam Lipsyte, Meghan Daum, David Berman, and previously unpublished work by Delmore Schwartz, Richard Yates, Edvard Munch, and Ford Madox Ford. Praised in the pages of publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Library Journal, and The New York Times, Open City is today's most important literary journal. Open City #14 includes John Seabrook on ancestor hunting; Arthur Nersessian, from Fuck-Up to makeup; new fiction by Betsy Bern and Martha McPhee; and the original treatment for the improvised cult-classic film Waiting for Guffman.

Open City #14

Seabrook, John

Nersessian, Arthur

Bern, Betsy

Reference

Open City is a rare contemporary phenomenon: a literary journal that gets people talking about literature. A dynamic mix of prominent writers, undiscovered aspirants, and lost treasures from writers of past eras, Open City includes fiction, essays, poetry, and artwork by a dynamic range of talents. The journal has brought together writing from Michael Cunningham, Nick Tosches, Rick Moody, David Foster Wallace, David Mamet, Sam Lipsyte, Meghan Daum, and David Berman, and previously unpublished work by Delmore Schwartz, Richard Yates, Edvard Munch, and Ford Madox Ford. Praised in the pages of publications such as Time Out New York, Harper's Bazaar, The Library Journal, and The New York Times, Open City is today's most vibrant and exciting literary journal. Open City #15 features Craig Chester on sexual identity at camp; new work from John McNulty; Toru Hayashi's memoirs of a travel agent. Plus Tom Frank's stock picks, and more. "Open City takes the old literary magazine format and revitalizes it for a new generation's tastes." -- Library Journal

Open City #15

Various, Contributors

In our era of apocalyptic change, everything from terrorism to a stifling cultural sameness has become globalized. World on Fire is a poet's impassioned, prophetic examination of the human and environmental consequences of transnational capitalism. From the most recent developments in biotechnology to the brainwashing effects of mass media, from the addictive rush of global currency speculation to the rapid-fire annihilation of tropical forests for chopsticks and oil, World on Fire is unsparing in its exposure of the corruption of our contemporary empire, or "Pax Americana." It suggests, paradoxically, that in this much-heralded "Age of Information," the dominant paradigms are disconnection and amnesia. The death of the author's tyrannical father after years of suffering from Alzheimer's becomes a potent symbol for a culture unable to face its own crimes or reckon with its own history. Drawing on sources including Noam Chomsky, Eduardo Galeano, and Vandana Shiva, Brownstein has created a new form combining poetry, personal narrative, and social analysis. He incites readers to look past a standardized remote-control world order and reconsider non-Western, more holistic social models. An anthem, manifesto, and call to arms, World on Fire asks the reader to step outside of ego's bomb shelter and face world upheaval without fear, thereby transforming disaster into opportunity and allowing the space for the creation of a new life. This is a stunning and timely work from a writer who "combines an acute understanding of the human soul with a bold, poetic imagination" (Paul Auster on Brownstein's story collection Music from the Evening of the World).

World on Fire

Brownstein, Michael

Essays & Correspondence

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Books by Grove Press, Open City Books