Mona Simpson

A one-of-a-kind celebration of America's greatest comic strip--and the life lessons it can teach us--from a stellar array of writers and artists Peanuts, Charles Schulz's beloved comic strip, has given the world a cast of characters for the ages--Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and Lucy among them. Here, in an unprecedented collection of thirty-two essays, artists and writers ranging from Ann Patchett to Chris Ware consider the deeper truths of Peanuts, its influence on their lives and on the culture more broadly, and the lessons it can teach us about disappointment, melancholy, and those fleeting moments of warm-puppy happiness. The contributors reflect on the experience of discovering Peanuts as a child, their identification with its characters and predicaments, and, for the artists in the book, the momentous effects of their encounters with the strip on their later careers. Taken together, the essays and comics of The Peanuts Papers enrich our understanding of the Peanuts gang and its world, with contributions not only about Charlie Brown and Snoopy but also Linus, Sally, Pigpen, and Peppermint Patty. The Peanuts Papers is an enchanting, poignant gathering of responses to the greatest American comic strip, enabling us to see it anew in fresh and revealing ways.

Tom Owens had dropped out of college to invent, right in his parents' basement, a new kind of business; it was no time to suffer any distractions, much less to legitimize the family he in fact had already started on his own. So he stayed on in the sleepy, Edenic valley town of his youth, and it was here that Owens became famously successful, his charisma and peerless business acumen also creating a seductive, if aimless, political persona. Then, suddenly, a raggedy grade-schooler turns up smack in the middle of his hectic life, claiming to be his daughter. Born in an Oregon commune, Jane has led an itinerant life with her mother, Mary, and only a vague notion of her father - a rich man, she was told. Now, years later, she finds herself becoming another of his complex relationships. There's the dependent yet unsettled Mary, with whom he eventually shares custody. And Olivia, his beautiful long-standing girlfriend, not to mention her rivals for his fleeting affection. There's Noah Kaskie, his best friend and intellectual alter ego, who craves what Owens takes for granted, ignores, sometimes flees. And, finally, the company that made his reputation is now subject to the very market forces Owens had exploited and refined. . How Jane helps transform this odd constellation into a strangely cohesive family, and how her father eventually discovers his true self, is revealed in this ambitious, often comic account of the pursuit, rewards and cost of greatness.

In this flawless novella, Mona Simpson turns her powers of observation toward characters who, unlike Ann and Adele August in her bestselling Anywhere but Here, choose to stay rather than go. As a high school student in Green Bay, Bea Maxwell raised money for good causes; later, she became a successful real estate agent and an accomplished knitter. The one thing missing from her life is a romantic relationship. She soon settles comfortably into the role of stylish spinster and do-gooder. Woven into Bea's story are stories of other lifelong residents of Green Bay and the changes time brings to a town and its residents. This pure and simple work once again proves Mona Simpson one of the defining writers of her generation.From the Trade Paperback edition.

American Wild: it can kill you, or exhilarate you. It's always there, a character in its own right in the great unfolding narrative of American writing. This issue of Granta is dedicated to stories of the wild, from MELINDA MOUSTAKIS on gutting fish in Alaska to CLAIRE VAYE WATKINS on a lost child in a dystopian California. Also: ANTHONY DOERR on a family of pioneers in Idaho, ADAM NICOLSON on tracking wolves in New Mexico and DAVID TREUER on cage fighting and his Ojibwe heritage.