In a D’Agata’s Vida (Halls of Fame by John D’Agata)

Clever? Sure. But John D’Agata’s collection of essays Halls of Fame (Graywolf) makes great use of its peculiar structural tactics (textual collages, narratives hidden in footnotes, essay as poetry) to examine the strange ambition of America’s stranger inhabitants—famous twentieth-century dancers, outsider artists, Flat Earth theorists, casino engineers, and D’Agata himself, a compassionate and baffled cicerone who turns the detritus of the culture into examples of where contemporary essay writing is headed or should be.