It is Mr. Muldoon's ability to walk the line between comedy and tragedy, autobiographical and universal themes, colloquial and stylized language, all with equal grace, that has made him influential.

In "Freedom," Jonathan Franzen points to the promise of a new generation discovering how to live as a result of their parents' mistakes.

Meeting Eugene Martin reminds one of reading his novel "Firework": somewhat jarring at first-compelling no less-and then you're lured in completely.

"Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters" chronicles not only the rise of a still controversial literary movement but also everything left in its wake: the anxieties, pretensions and intimacies of these two icons.

Never has the tension between collector, dealer and so-called "source" nation been higher.

Robert Walser's biography reads like the great tragedy he never wrote. H

Nobody even comes close to William Vollmann. He writes a Gravity's Rainbow every year.

It was film director David Lynch, of all people, that inspired Moby to rethink his new life as celebrity candy.