All Intensive Purposes

I've just finished August Kleinzahler's Cutty, One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained, a short collection of essays, but I don't have much to say about it. This is no condemnation; I'm still assimilating, or something. The first and last essays concern the author's family, and are particularly the moving -- particularly the last, about his relationship with his brother. Kleinzahler writes like no one else I know -- his voice make the form seem new. A couple of the pieces in the middle didn't move me, but I guess I blame myself for that. The perils of reading on mass transit.