Is it truth or fiction? Memoir or essay? Narrative or associative? To a writer like Michael Martone, questions like these are high praise. Martones studied disregard of form and his unruffled embrace of the prospect that nothingno story, no lifeis ever quite finished have yielded some of todays most splendidly unconventional writing. Add to that an utter weakness for pop Americana and what Louise Erdrich has called a deep affection for the ordinary, and you have one of the few writers who could pull off something like Racing in Place.

MICHAEL MARTONE is a professor of English at the University of Alabama. He is the author of several books, including The Flatness and Other Landscapes, Unconventions: Attempting the Art of Craft and the Craft of Art, and Racing in Place (all Georgia). His stories and essays have appeared in Harper's, Esquire, Story, Antaeus, North American Review, Benzene, Epoch, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, Third Coast, Shenandoah, BOMB, and other magazines.