‘The next best thing to not having a brother (as I do
not) is to have Brothers.’
–Gay Talese
Here is a tapestry of stories about the complex and unique
relationship that exists between brothers. In this book, some of
our finest authors take an unvarnished look at how brothers admire
and admonish, revere and revile, connect and compete, love and war
with each other. With hearts and minds wide open, and, in some
cases, with laugh-out-loud humor, the writers tackle a topic that
is as old as the Bible and yet has been, heretofore,
overlooked.
Contributors range in age from twenty-four to eighty-four, and
their stories from comic to tragic. Brothers examines and
explores the experiences of love and loyalty and loss, of altruism
and anger, of competition and compassion–the confluence of
things that conspire to form the unique nature of what it is to be
and to have a brother.
‘Brother.’ One of our eternal and quintessential
terms of endearment. Tobias Wolff writes, ‘The good luck of
having a brother is partly the luck of having stories to
tell.’ David Kaczynski, brother of ‘The
Unabomber’: ‘I’ll start with the premise that a
brother shows you who you are–and also who you are not.
He’s an image of the self, at one remove . . . You are a
‘we’ with your brother before you are a
‘we’ with any other.’ Mikal Gilmore refers to
brotherhood as a ‘fidelity born of blood.’
We’ve heard that the apple doesn’t fall far from the
tree. But where do the apples fall in relation to each other? And
are we, in fact, our brothers’ keepers, after all?
These stories address those questions and more, and are, like
the relationships, full of intimacy and pain, joy and rage, burdens
and blessings, humor and humanity.
Tabla de materias
Frank Mccourt
foreword xi
Benjamin Cheever and Fred Cheever
civil war 1
David Kaczynski
missing parts 15
David Maraniss
the sensations of jim 31
Phillip Lopate
my brother, life (with apologies to pasternak) 41
Mikal Gilmore
secrets and bones 49
Richard Ford
we were men 59
Ethan Canin
american beauty 65
John Edgar Wideman
doing time 85
Chris Bohjalian
my brother’s a keeper 91
Daniel Menaker
headlock 97
Pete Hamill
a drinking life 113
David Sedaris
you can’t kill the rooster 117
Geoffrey Wolff
heavy lifting 125
Tobias Wolff
a brother’s story 141
Charles D’Ambrosio
documents 149
Jim Shepard
get away from me 157
James Hurst
the scarlet ibis 167
Steven V. Roberts
the roberts boys 173
Dominick Dunne
a death in the family 183
Floyd Skloot
jambon dreams 195
Jay Neugeboren
imagining robert 209
Herbert Gold
king of the cleveland beatniks 221
Gregory Orr
the accident 231
Jerald Walker
sacraments of reconciliation 243
Darin Strauss
chang and eng 251
Nathaniel Rich and Simon Rich
brothers on brotherhood 257
About The Editor And Contributors 263
Acknowledgments 269
Sources And Permissions 271
Sobre el autor
Andrew Blauner is founder of Blauner Books Literary Agency, editor of COACH: 25 Writers Reflect on People Who Made a Difference, and coeditor of Anatomy of Baseball.