Surviving Crisis: Twenty Prominent Authors Write about Events That Shaped Their Lives

So searing are many of the essays here that one reads them more for technique than for pleasure. And studying how to write what Gutkind calls ""creative nonfiction"" is largely the point to this collection, in any case, so neophytes are well served. A few of the pieces have been culled from the journal Creative Nonfiction, edited by Gutkind; most, however, are book or magazine excerpts. Several of the stories have become contemporary classics, like Robert McCrum's ""My Old and New Lives,"" which was published originally in the New Yorker then expanded into a book of the same title. Few will be indifferent to the author's recollection of the cerebral trauma he suffered while he was alone in his London home. Another notable is the manic New Yorker piece by Marjorie Gross, ""Cancer Becomes Me,"" which flippantly enumerates the ""really good things"" about being terminally ill: ""You automatically get called courageous""; ""Everyone returns your calls."" Within months of publishing this piece, Gross died of ovarian cancer. Other writers collected here include such established names as John Edgar Wideman, who recreates his visit to his brother imprisoned for murder; Annie Dillard, whose article juxtaposes her attendance at Catholic masses with historical Polar expeditions; and TriQuarterly editor Reginald Gibbons's report on ""Christmas at Juvenile Court."" Several of the unfamiliar names--Kathy Dobie and Florence Epstein, especially--are writers of such promise they are unlikely to remain unfamiliar. (Sept.) FYI: Gutkind's An Unspoken Art: Profiles of Veterinary Life was reviewed in Forecasts June 23.