I had never heard of Philip Connors (I somehow missed the mention in The Rumpus) until I happened upon his essay, “So Little to Remember,” in the latest issue of n+1. I bought it in a bookstore while waiting for a table at the incomparable Burma Superstar, because I saw the cover’s mention of a translated story by a Mexican novelist I’d never heard of. (Which, incidentally, is also excellent.) Once I finished that story, I flipped around to the contributors’ bios, saw that Connors is from New Mexico, and, as a loyal partisan of the Southwest, read it next.
The essay deals with his brother’s suicide via a selection of journals spanning years after the event. I won’t go on too much about it, but it’s a great piece of writing, honest and dark and often lyrical, one I liked so much I recommended it to a student who’s working on a nonfiction project told in vignettes.
It wasn’t until I was walking by my bookshelf today that I realized where I’d seen his name before: he also edited a book I recently purchased but have yet to read, New West Reader, a collection of essays on the modern West, featuring writers as varied and prominent as Larry McMurtry, Denis Johnson, and Sherman Alexie.
I have something of a soft spot for anthologies of Western writing. I own a handful, from my prized copy of TCU’s out-of-print A Literary History of the American West — available (legally) in full as a .pdf download here — to my fantasy-football nemesis D. Seth Horton’s New Stories From the Southwest and his subsequent revival of the Best of the West series. So I’m very curious to read Connors’ anthology. I might discuss it here at some point.
In the meantime, I highly recommend his n+1 essay. (And I’m not the only one.)