Occasional Desire

David Lazar is a professor of creative writing and English at Columbia College, Chicago and the founding editor of Hotel Amerika. His works include After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the Essays, The Body of Brooklyn, Powder Town, and Essaying the Essay.

• Unfamiliar EssaysCalling for His PastManhattan CabAcross the RiverThe City Always Speaks: London, New York, San FranciscoThe CoatOstensible OccasionsOccasional Desire: On the Essay and the MemoirQueering the EssayReading "New Year's Eve"Playing Ourselves: Pseudodocumentary and PersonaThe Useable Past of M. F. K. Fisher: An Essay on ProjectsOn MentorsThe Art of SurvivalOn DatingDeath, Death, Death, Death, DeathOn GiftsSelf-Portrait: Francis Bacon's DeformityOn the Art of Survival: North by NorthwestAcknowledgments

"David Lazar is both a charmer and a challenger. His supple, cultivated mind is constantly moving, full of surprises; his puckish wit and exacting standards raise the bar for all contemporary literary nonfiction. This is an exciting collection, drawing strength from both the grand essay tradition and the cutting edge, and it is highly recommended."—Phillip Lopate, editor of The Art of the Personal Essay"David Lazar is a master of shimmering threshold moments, where acts of assertion and discovery face off (or is it hold hands?). Offering startling intimacies, gentle beckonings, and the severities of hard-won truths, Lazar is fearless about this core belief: investigations of form and self are one and the same adventure."—Lia Purpura, author of Rough Likeness: Essays"The spirits of past masters (Montaigne and Charles Lamb among them) animate and infuse the enthralling essays of David Lazar, a succinct virtuoso, whose gift is rueful, charm-filled introspection. His recollections and avowals unfurl with stellar melodiousness, and with a skilled comic's perfect timing."—Wayne Koestenbaum, author of Humiliation"Jagged pieces of a mirror that reveal a quirky, informed and immensely curious character."-Kirkus "I won’t be forgetting about this book anytime soon."-Michael Buening, PopMatters