Griffin

For over two decades, Albert Goldbarth has been cultivating his own hybrid essay variety. A marriage of warmth and intelligence, his essays are narratively driven but poetically lyrical, and openly personal while remaining dedicated to the pleasures of arcane research. "These are a whole new breed," Robert Atwan writes. "Albert Goldbarth has spliced strands of the old genre with a powerful new gene -- and the results are miraculous." In Griffin -- that crossbred creature comprised of eagle, lion, and serpent -- Albert Goldbarth joins two essays to form one animal. The first half, written on the cusp of a friend's divorce, explores that strangely compound beast we call marriage. And the second, written on the cusp of a friend's struggle with cancer, considers that strangely compound being every one of us is: an amalgam of spirit and physical body. The resulting book is eccentric, learned, and moving.