Age enters Thoughts and Things at the end. The forlorn narrator of La Casse, who has spent his life assiduously collecting bits of scrap metal, remnants of tools used to conquer, has a momentary vision of a world where people are linked in a human community.

Hammer has done a wonderful service, mining every conceivable archive for this mammoth undertaking, but also tracking down as many of Merrill’s peers, friends, and lovers as are now to be found. Hammer comments that his subject “enjoyed people, and needed lots of them.

Looking at what he terms the “homicidal homosexual” in the history of American theater, Schildcrout asks us to rethink the links between deviant sexualities and murderous plot lines.

A Work in Progress by Connor Franta Atria/Keywords Press 212 pages, $16.99 I’VE COME TO AN AGE (65) when I realize I live in an entirely different world…More

Adult Onset by Ann-Marie MacDonald Tin House Books. 388 pages, $25.95 ADULT ONSET spans one week, but from within that boundary it frequently comes unstuck in time. Its…More

Darius in the Shadow of Alexander by Pierre Briant. Translated by Jane Marie Todd Harvard University Press. 579 pages, $39.95 HISTORY is written by the winners, but in recent…More