The Kenyon Review has published its second anthology, Readings for Writers, featuring works from the journal's archives from 1939 through 2009. Review editor David H. Lynn '76, who also edited the collection, explains in his introduction that one goal is to challenge and inspire writers, much as the journal's summer workshops use stories, poems, and essays to jump-start student efforts. The list of authors reflects the Review' s enduring stature: Dylan Thomas, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Sylvia Plath, V.S. Naipaul, Don DeLillo, Annie Dillard, Pablo Neruda, W.S. Merwin, and on and on. Notable Kenyon alumni are represented here as well, from Robert Lowell '40 to Nancy Zafris '76 H'93.
Homer & Langley, the new novel by E.L. Doctorow '52, was scheduled for release around the time the Bulletin was going to press. Based loosely on lives of the eccentric Collyer brothers of New York-compulsive, reclusive hoarders who lived in a Harlem brownstone-the novel moves through the decades of the twentieth century, as figures from gangsters to hippies enter the brothers' bizarre, increasingly cluttered world. Narrated by Homer, the blind brother, the book displays Doctorow's usual exquisite mastery of language as well as his social insight. Look for more on Homer & Langley in the next issue of the Bulletin.
Mine All Mine, a novel by Adam Davies '94, was named to the 2009 list of top ten crime novels by Booklist. According to Booklist, the novel is "remarkably imaginative" for its portrayal of a future where investigators are called "pulses" because they can sense what the bad guys are up to.