How could such a sensitive writer have been such an insensitive father? In Townie, the son wrestles with that puzzle.

Janet Malcolm refuses to buy into journalists' illusions of objectivity. That posture has earned her many critics. Count me among her admirers.

Paul Hendrickson has pursued Hemingway the way I once pursued e.e. commings. The lesson: Don't be shy. If someone has written a poem or a book that means a lot to you, reach out.

Richard Burgin's new story collection, Shadow Traffic, confirms his standing as one of America's masters of short fiction. With a voice uniquely his own, he creates a world of urban anomie and dread that Kafka would recognize.

Evil, Richard Burgin suggests in his new novel, is a radical form of schizophrenia, and the Devil has an address in a Pennsylvania exurb. Burgin writes knowledgeably about the literary scene in New York and Philadelphia and hair-raisingly about sexual predation in his continuing exploration of the underside of American life.