The Oxford Book of American Short Stories

In The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, Joyce Carol Oates offers a sweeping survey of American short fiction, in a collection of fifty-nine tales that combines classic works with many `unexpected gems', and that invites readers to explore a wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers. Some selections simply can't be improved upon, Oates admits, and she happily includes such time-honoured works as Irving's `Rip Van Winkle', Poe's `The Tell-Tale Heart' and Hemingway's `A Clean, Well-Lighted Place'. Alongside these classics, Oates introduces such little-known stories as Mark Twain's `Cannibalism in the Cars' a story that reveals a darker side to his humour. From Melville come the juxtaposed tales, `The Paradise of Bachelors' and the `Tartarus of Maids' of which Oates says, `Only Melville could have fashioned out of `real' events ... such harrowing and dreamlike allegorical fiction.' From Flannery O'Connor we find `A Late Encounter with the Enemy', and from John Cheever, `The Death of Justina', one of Cheever's own favourites.

The reader will also delight in the range of authors found here, from Charles W. Chesnutt, to William Carlos Williams. Contemporary artists abound, including Bharati Mukherjee and Amy Tan, Alice Adams and David Leavitt, Bobbie Ann Mason and Tim O'Brien, Louise Erdich and John Edgar Wideman. Oates provides fascinating introductions to each writer, blending biographical information with her own trenchant observation about their work, plus a long introductory essay, in which she offers the fruits of years of reflection on a genre in which she herself is a master.