“Fraud” established Rakoff as both a virtuoso stylist and rarefied social anthropologist, one whose anxieties and ineptitudes kept him in a constant cold war with the outside world. As a persona, this served him well. Magazines routinely sent him on adventures on which he was loath to embark yet unable (either out of journalistic curiosity or financial necessity) to resist. He explored the Nova Scotia Highlands, attended a folk art school in the Appalachians and survived a harrowing rafting trip in Patagonia with Glenn Close.
The resulting essays, despite having been collected in previous volumes, are re-collected in “The Uncollected,” as is the entirety of “Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish,” a novel in verse that Rakoff rushed to finish before his death and that was published a year later to genuine, if sometimes slightly perplexed, acclaim. Also included are occasional pieces for outlets like The New York Times Op-Ed page and Salon; a short story originally published in a 1994 anthology of fiction by gay men; a food diary for the website Grub Street; transcripts from appearances on “This American Life” (to which Rakoff was an early, frequent and especially beloved contributor); and transcripts from two interviews, one in 2001 and one in 2010, with “Fresh Air’s” Terry Gross.