Author! Author! Auden, Oates, and Updike — Alan Vanneman

Author! Author! contains two short stories and a novella, with famous authors as the leading characters. In “The Transfiguration of W. H. Auden,” the great poet dies and goes, not to heaven, but someplace better. Victorian England! In “The Man Who Met Joyce Carol Oates,” an admirer discovers that encountering genius is not without peril. In “The Apotheosis of John Updike,” the poet of suburbia encounters catharses without number west of the Hudson. Alan Vanneman is the author of Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra and Sherlock Holmes and the Hapsburg Tiara. He also writes online film reviews for the Bright Lights Film Journal and maintains a blog, Literature R Us. He does not own a cat but does possess a very large television set. He enjoys reading about dinosaurs and British parliamentary figures, in that order.