Best of
American-Fiction

1995

Memoir from Antproof Case


Mark Helprin - 1995
    An English teacher at the naval academy, he is married to a woman young enough to be his daughter and has a little son whom he loves. He sits in a mountain garden in Niterói, overlooking the ocean.As he reminisces and writes, placing the pages carefully in his antproof case, we learn that he was a World War II ace who was shot down twice, an investment banker who met with popes and presidents, and a man who was never not in love. He was the thief of the century, a murderer, and a protector of the innocent. And all his life he waged a valiant, losing, one-man battle against the world’s most insidious enslaver: coffee.Mark Helprin combines adventure, satire, flights of transcendence, and high comedy in this "memoir" of a man whose life reads like the song of the twentieth century.

The Tunnel


William H. Gass - 1995
    The story of a middle aged professor who, upon completion of his massive historical study, Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany, finds himself writing a novel about his own life instead of the introduction to his magnum opus. The Tunnel meditates on history, hatred, unhappiness, and, above all, language.

The McNally Files


Lawrence Sanders - 1995
    His latest investigation intot he low crimes of high society exposes a secret of his own that he thought was dead and buried... McNally's Luck Playboy/lover/sleuth Archy McNally is back--and the secrets of the filthy rich have never been filthier...What begins with a kidnapped cat leads to ransom and homicide. And if a sensuous psychic makes a believer out of McNally, he'll learn that humans don't have nine lives...but scandals do. McNally's Risk Archy McNally finds himself seduced by the mysterious woman he's been hired to investigate. Her name is Theodosia Johnson. Her past is as provocative as her butterfly tattoo. Her future is as questionable as her smile. But what's really risky is her shocking flirtation with McNally, and with murder...

Annotations


John Keene - 1995
    Louis. Reminiscent of Jean Toomer's Cane, the book is in part a meditation on African-American autobiography. Keene explores questions of identity from many angles - from race to social class to sexuality (gay and straight). Employing all manner of textual play and rhythmic and rhetorical maneuvers, he (re)creates his life story as a jazz fugue-in-words.

From Dusk Till Dawn: A Screenplay


Quentin Tarantino - 1995
    Mayhem ensues when they encounter a group of creatures who exist only from dusk until dawn.

Jack of Hearts


Joseph Hansen - 1995
    A funny, tender, achingly truthful coming-of-age novel from the "father of all gay and lesbian writers" (Michael Nava).