The Story I Am

Roger Rosenblatt is indeed mad about the writing life." The Story I Am, a collection of new and beloved pieces drawn from his vast body of work, celebrates the art, the craft, and the soul of writing. Rosenblatt has written enthusiastically and successfully all his life, as a journalist and essayist (The New Republic, The Washington Post), a New York Times best-selling memoirist (Making Toast), and a novelist (Lapham Rising). Kirkus Reviews noted that Rosenblatt has excelled in every form. And The Washington Post called Making Toast "a textbook on perfect writing and how to be a class act." Here are essays and excerpts on the rewards and punishments of the life of a writer, along with thoughts on how to write, what to write, and why writing lies at theheart of human hope and experience. Reviewing Rosenblatt's memoir The Boy Detective in the New York Times Book Review, Pete Hamill said Rosenblatt "writes the way a great jazz musician plays, moving from one emotion to another." For Rosenblatt, writing, like jazz, is the art of improvisation. He writes "Writing makes justice desirable, evil intelligible, grief endurable, and love possible." In a nutshell, it's worth a life"--