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Martin Schneider writes:

The summer fiction issue of The New Yorker comes out tomorrow. A preview of its contents, adapted from the magazine's press release:

In "Good Neighbors," Jonathan Franzen's first piece of fiction in four years, an upwardly mobile couple, Walter and Patty Berglund, deal with their recalcitrant son while their neighbors gossip and their blighted St. Paul block gentrifies in the nineteen-eighties and nineties.

The issue also features début fiction by Téa Obreht, a previously unpublished writer who graduated from Cornell University's writing program in January, 2009. Obreht was born in Yugoslavia, grew up in Egypt and Cyprus, and moved to the United States in 1997.

In an excerpt from his upcoming book, The Book of Genesis Illustrated, due out this fall from W.W. Norton, R. Crumb illustrates the story of creation and of Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Louis Menand explores the rise of university creative-writing programs.

In "Old Wounds," Edna O'Brien chronicles the difficulty that two cousins have in trying to reconnect after a long family feud.

David Grossman writes about the Jewish Polish writer Bruno Schulz, and investigates the circumstances of his death—ostensibly as a victim of a feud between two Nazi officers—in 1942.

In "A Soldier Home," Yiyun Li remembers reading Hemingway and other writers in English as a way to escape from her life during and after her military service in China.

In "Two Emmas," Roger Angell describes the bookshelves at his summer home in Maine and recalls fondly his experience reading The Garrick Year by Margaret Drabble.

In "The Magic Mountain," Aleksandar Hemon reminisces about his long solo summer reading holidays in his family's remote cabin on Jahorina, a mountain in Bosnia.

Jeffrey Toobin, in Comment, examines Sonia Sotomayor's nomination and reflects on diversity on the Supreme Court.

In The Financial Page, James Surowiecki looks at the role that fear has played in the U.S. credit crunch and Buenos Aires's recent coin shortage.

Nancy Franklin watches Nurse Jackie.

Sasha Frere-Jones listens to the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble.

Alex Ross attends a musical "marathon" of Gustav Mahler's symphonies.

Hilton Als explores race and desire in Tennessee Williams's Vieux Carré.

David Denby reviews Up, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, and Away We Go.

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