Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry

by Editor: Andrew Blauner; Foreword by: Frank McCourt

• ISBN13: 9780470458891
• ISBN10: 0470458895
• Format: eBook
• Copyright: 2009-03-01
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass

Summary

"The next best thing to not having a brother (as I do not) is to have Brothers."-Gay TaleseHere 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.

Table of Contents

Civil War by Benjamin and Fred Cheever

Missing Parts by David Kaczynski

The Sensations of Jim by David Maraniss

My Brother, Life (with apologies to Pasternak) by Phillip Lopate

Secrets and Bones by Mikal Gilmore

We Were Men by Richard Ford

American Beauty by Ethan Canin

Doing Time by John Edgar Wideman

My Brother's a Keeper by Chris Bohjalian

Headlock by Daniel Menaker

Denis by Pete Hamill

You Can't Kill the Rooster David Sedaris

Heavy Lifting by Geoffrey Wolff

A Brother's Story by Tobias Wolff

Documents by Charles D'Ambrosio

Get Away from Me by Jim Shepard

The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst

The Roberts Boys by Steven V. Roberts

A Death in the Family by Dominick Dunne

Jambon Dreams by Floyd Skloot

Imagining Robert by Jay Neugeboren

King of the Cleveland Beatniks by Herbert Gold

The Blessing by Gregory Orr

Sacraments of Reconciliation by Jerald Walker

Chang & Eng by Darin Strauss

Brothers on Brotherhood by Nathaniel and Simon Rich

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