Lawrence Weschler-
Just got Lawrence Weschler's new collection of essays, Vermeer in Bosnia, and it is full of wonders-
Weschler, a longtime contributor to The New Yorker, is the author of one of my favorite books ever, Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder; he belongs to a vanishing breed of non-fiction writers and (like Joseph Mitchell, Joan Didion and John McPhee, for example) his astuteness, patience, and sensitivity to connections somehow allows him to transmute the raw material of reality into the sublime- his style and structure serve less to anatomize and frame his subjects than to simply hold them up to the reader and say "This is precious- this is worthy of your attention."
The essays on Roman Polanski, David Hockney's photocollages, and the quality of light in LA are gems-