Ander Monson

Monson is a fiction writer and memoirist who applies pressure on those categories until they almost collapse. His books tend to feature multiple fonts and multiple digressions. In his latest work, Vanishing Point, he writes: "My resistance to memoir is multifold, is many, is plethora." But even as he dodges and weaves, focusing on topics as scattershot as New Order songs and junk food, he manages to eke out an innovative meditation on writing and self-portraits, even if he sometimes relies too much on jaunty eccentricities.