The City at Three P.m. ― Writing, Reading, and Traveling

In The City at Three PM, award-winning fiction writer Peter LaSalle offers 11 startlingly original personal essays dealing with his longtime quest for world travel.

These literary errands range from driving recklessly across the county to seek out Saul Bellow in Chicago to settling in for long evenings at a pub in Dublin with Christy Brown, the celebrated Irish author afflicted with cerebral palsy who typed with his toes.

In Buenos Aires LaSalle senses metaphysical transport while investigating Borges' work; in Cameroon he attends the wonderful opening of a small bookstore; in Hollywood he finds himself caught in a crazy mob scene while researching the work of 1930s master American novelist and screenwriter Nathanael West; in Tunisia he follows in the footsteps of Flaubert at the ruins of ancient Carthage. And those are just some of the adventures.

Having first appeared in distinguished publications here and abroad, including The Best American Travel Writing, these are beautifully crafted pieces, heartfelt, honest, observant, and often moving toward genuine transcendence. Overall they conjure up those fine moments when travel intersects with the important role of literature in our lives, in this case yielding writing entirely unique and satisfying.

Peter LaSalle is the author of several books of fiction, most recently the novelMariposa's Song and a story collection, What I Found Out About Her. His essays on literary travel have appeared in magazines and journals such asThe Nation, Worldview, Agni, Tin House, and Profils Americans (France), as well as being anthologized inThe Best American Travel Writing. He currently divides his time between Austin, TX, where he is a member of the creative writing faculty at the University of Texas, and Narragansett in his native Rhode Island.