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.

(Oxford)

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Observer Only a novelist would ever think up such a project. Only a very good one could pull it off.

(Oxford)

STORIES INCLUDE; 1. Rip Van Winkle; 2. The Wives of the Dead; 3. The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids; 4. The Tell-Tale Heart; 5. The Ghost in the Mill; 6. Cannibalism in the Cars; 7. The Storm; 8. The Yellow Wallpaper; 9. The Middle Years; 10. In a Far Country; 11. The Little Regiment; 12. A Journey; 13. A Death in the Desert; 14. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place; 15. An Alcoholic Case; 16. The Girl with the Pimply Face; 17. He; 18. Red-Headed Baby; 19. A Late Encounter with the Enemy; 20. Sonny's Blues; 21. There will Come Soft Rains; 22. Where is the Voice Coming From; 23. The Lecture; 24. My Son the Murderer; 25. Something to Remember Me By; 26. The Death of Justina; 27. Texts; 28. The Persistence of Desire; 29. Are These Actual Miles?; 30. Heat

(Oxford)