R V Cassill: 5 books

A masterful, multifaceted story collection from one of American literature’s most influential writers and teachers As a creative writing teacher whose students included Raymond Carver, Joy Williams, and Andre Dubus, and as longtime editor of The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, R. V. Cassill...

A “jolting, disturbing” novel from “a writer of the first rank,” about a midcentury housewife’s secret sexual drives (The New York Times). Beautiful, intelligent, and charming, Leslie Daniels is the wife of a successful Illinois physician. To her friends and family, she appears to...

Beautifully rendered and psychologically astute tales of life, family, and art from a true American master “The Sunday Painter,” a surprisingly comic tale, is the account of an amateur artist whose obsession with distilling his work to its most basic form—light—leads to a mental breakdown....

A brilliant, bewitching novel inspired by one of the twentieth century’s most infamous sex scandals Michael Cobb is a skilled osteopath, a gifted painter, and a lover extraordinaire. In 1960s England, the good doctor makes a startling diagnosis: the nation is sick, fast approaching its demise,...

“The best novel I know of on the subject of writing, or on the condition of being a writer.” —Richard Yates Widely recognized as R. V. Cassill’s masterpiece, Clem Anderson is the story of an author whose astonishing talents are outmatched only by his capacity for self-destruction. Arrogant,...