The Pavilion of Former Wives

A man and woman carry out an unusual courtship through a series of letters that gradually strip away their facades. A husband and wife argue about an infidelity that may never have happened. A liaison that hinges on a lost car ends before it begins when dreams influence reality. And a man confronts the specters of his failed relationships in the mysterious Pavilion of Former Wives. In 14 thematically linked stories, Jonathan Baumbach explores the sour and bitter sweetness of relationships just beginning and already over, and the frailty that love makes of us.

A staple in the literary scene for over 40 years, Jonathan Baumbach is the author of 14 books of fiction, including You, or The Invention of Memory, On The Way To My Father’s Funeral: New and Selected Stories, and B, a novel. He has published over ninety stories in Esquire, Open City, Boulevard, and elsewhere, and his fiction has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize, and The Best of Tri-Quarterly.

Jonathan Baumbach is the author of 14 books of fiction, including You, or The Invention of Memory, On The Way To My Father’s Funeral: New and Selected Stories, B, a novel, D-Tours, Separate Hours, Chez Charlotte and Emily, The Life and Times of Major Fiction, Reruns, Babble and A Man to Conjure With. He has also published over 90 stories published in such places as Esquire, Open City and Boulevard.

Jonathan, co-founder of The Fiction Collective in 1973 (it was reinvented as FC2 in 1988), the first fiction writers cooperative in America, has seen his work widely praised. His short stories have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, O.Henry Prize, and The Best of Tri-Quarterly. The New York Times Book Review referred to him in 2004 as “. . . an underappreciated writer. He employs a masterfully dispassionate, fiercely intelligent narrative voice whose seeming objectivity is always a faltering front for secret passion and despair.' He lives in New York, NY.