Though not widely known in the United States, Mr. Crace is one of Britain's most remarkable writers, and has been for the past couple of decades.
The other books I especially admired this year break new ground and revive two remarkable writers in the context of their times.
This is Week One, and I thought I would put before you two pieces about the same event, from the same year, by two remarkable writers: Janet Flanner (who used the byline Genêt) and Rebecca West.
The University of Iowa Writers Workshopp, which since its founding in 1936 has fostered thousands of remarkable writers, among them winners of virtually every major literary award, invites applications for an Assistant Professor of Caucasian Slam Poetry.
As I wrote in my book about eating and drinking, "The Table Comes First," one of my early editorial occupations was taking two remarkable writers, Mordecai Richler and Wilfrid Sheed, once a month out to a largely liquid lunch.
Finally, by connecting his analytical brilliance to his painfully candid account of his schooling at Eton college, Connolly ensured that his ebullient celebration of some remarkable writers was edged with a poignant sense of personal failure.
