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Monday June 1st, 2009

Bro Lit

brothers-coverHaving only sisters (three of them) myself, I’m still interested in Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry, partly because I figure the sibling experience has plenty of resonance across genders, and partly because the lineup in the book is formidable. It includes Richard Ford, Ethan Canin, Mikal Gilmore, Tobias Wolff and Second Pass contributor (among many other, more illustrious things) Daniel Menaker.

The collection also includes a piece by David Kaczynski, who, like Gilmore, has a notorious brother. He writes: “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.”