Bookworm

 Jamaica Kincaid's beautiful notes on gardening uncover the same imperialistic and racist assumptions she exposes in her fiction.

The author of Fight Club gives an intense and raw description of his world view.

Motherless Brooklyn (Doubleday) The western, the hard-boiled mystery, the sci-fi epic; these are the screens behind which Jonathan Lethem's oedipal dramas loom.

Kurt Vonnegut &quotBagombo; Snuff Box" (Putnam) Kurt Vonnegut began by writing conventional short stories. Here, he talks about the development of his wild style, his comic voice and his moral code.

Chang-rae Lee says the Asian-American experience is written about "in a yellow light." Here, he turns off that light to penetrate a harsh reality.

Michael Ondaatje, discussing his poetry, explores the mystery of language itself--the language of his birth, its ancient poetry and mythologies.

Timbuktu (Holt) In life, as in his metaphysical mystery novels, the elegant Paul Auster implies and evades, implies and evades -- as he does in his newest novel, featuring a talking dog.

Wayne Johnston &quotThe; Colony of Unrequited Dreams" (Doubleday); &quotThe; Divine Ryans" (Anchor) In each of these novels a secret is revealed-a secret history in one, a family secret in the other. But why has this Canadian novelist, of the quality of Robertson Davies or Margaret Artwood, remained a secret to Americans?

Sylvia Brownrigg &quotThe; Metaphysical Touch" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) In this novel, a romance, of sorts, is struck up via the internet. This, then, is a conversation about the creation of characters, how they reveal themselves, how they invent themselves, and what they tell us about that invisible presence, their author.

Edward Hirsch &quotHow; to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry" (Harcourt Brace). Some poems are so strong that they leave permanent impressionson the reader; the poems Edward Hirsch introduces are meant to alter the soul.