Crabcakes: A Memoir

With the same grace and lyrical precision that distinguish his vibrant short stories, James McPherson surveys the emotional upheaval of his last twenty-one years. From Baltimore, Maryland, to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Iowa and Japan, Crabcakes witnesses McPherson's confrontation with the past, and his struggle to make sense of it and to bind it, peacefully, to the present. His elliptical search for meaning — and his ultimate understanding of what makes us human — finds in Crabcakes a powerful and enduring voice.

With the same grace and lyrical precision that distinguish his vibrant short stories, James McPherson surveys the emotional upheaval of his last twenty-one years. From Baltimore, Maryland, to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Iowa and Japan, Crabcakes witnesses McPherson's confrontation with the past, and his struggle to make sense of it and to bind it, peacefully, to the present. His elliptical search for meaning — and his ultimate understanding of what makes us human — finds in Crabcakes a powerful and enduring voice.

Library Journal

McPherson, whose many honors include the Pulitzer Prize (Elbow Room, 1978), is currently a professor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Spanning two decades, this autobiographical compilation of brief pieces, most reprinted from literary journals, connects his emotional life to his experiences, and his development as a writer. The result is a sort of literate scrapbook of disconnectedly remembered sequences guided by the theme of the search for place and self and anchored in the author's meaningful childhood in Baltimorehome of those famous crab cakes. An African American, McPherson explores the universal conflict of good and evil, racism and common humanity, as he traces his own footsteps, ultimately coming to the realization that the interior landscape is the only terrain worth exploring. This dramatic memoir reaches for the essence of life in search of an epiphany. Highly recommended for literary collections of academic and large public libraries.Richard K. Burns, Hatboro, Pa.

James Alan McPherson is the author of Hue and Cry, Railroad, and Elbow Room, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1978. His essays and short stories have appeared in numerous periodicals — including The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Newsday, Plough-shares, The Iowa Review, and Double-Take — and anthologies such as volumes of The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Essays, and O. Henry Prize Stories. McPherson has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Prize Fellows Award. He is currently a professor of English at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in Iowa City.