ESQUIRE'S BIG BOOK OF FICTION

When it comes to fiction, writes Esquire's literary editor Miller in her introduction, the magazine's mandate has always been to "publish stories that take hold of you and don't let go." To see just how those stories have evolved over the past 70 years is one of the pleasures of this anthology, which gathers 54 pieces that have appeared in the magazine since its 1933 launch. The collection shows off Esquire's distinguished literary tradition with stories by the leading lights of each era, from Ernest Hemingway to David Foster Wallace. Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," John Steinbeck's "The Lonesome Vigilante," Flannery O'Connor's "Parker's Back" and Vladimir Nabokov's "The Visit to the Museum" mingle with pieces by Thomas McGuane, Russell Banks, Tony Earley, Aleksandar Hemon and Antonya Nelson. Esquire was among the first to publish Raymond Carver, with the 1971 "Neighbors," about a couple enthralled with their vacationing neighbors' apartment. The magazine also published early work by Philip Roth, such as "A Jewish Patient Begins His Analysis," perhaps more familiar to readers as the opening of Portnoy's Complaint, and by Don DeLillo, whose "In the Men's Room of the Sixteenth Century" follows Lady Madonna, a cop dressed as a woman, as he wanders Times Square on the anniversary of the beheading of St. Thomas More. Most of the contributors will probably be familiar to readers, but then, this isn't the place to find the latest crop of baby geniuses—it's a chance to rediscover some of the best of 20th-century short fiction. (May)

Due to a production error, the following review was omitted from a previous issue.