Fiction 100: An anthology of short stories - Softcover

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9780023955419: Fiction 100: An anthology of short stories

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0023955414 ISBN 13: 9780023955419

Publisher: Macmillan, 1988

For Introduction to the Short Story, Introduction to Fiction, and Creative Writing: Fiction.A collection of carefully chosen, interesting stories with literary merit, the best-selling text-anthology Fiction 100 continues to offer instructors the flexibility to organize their courses in a format that best suits their pedagogical needs. Intended to ignite students' curiosity, imagination, and intelligence, these selections represent a wide variety of subject matter, theme, literary technique, and style. International in scope, it illustrates the development of short fiction from the early 19th century to the present day, and features 130 traditional and contemporary works organized alphabetically by author.

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From the Back Cover:

Fiction 100 supplies a broad, representative selection of good short fiction in a convenient, useful, and uncluttered format. Contains 125 short stories illustrating the history and development of the short story in America and in Europe. Includes 18 New Stories—by Alice Adams, Donald Barthelme, John Cheever, Sandra Cisneros, Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert F. Hever, John Irving, Henry James, Stephen King, Guy de Maupassant, Alice Munro, Robert Phillips, Daniel Stern, Amy Tan, John Updike, Liza Weiland, and Joy Williams.

This new tenth edition of Fiction 100 is a cause for both celebration and reflection. With its publication, Fiction 100 has been in print for thirty years—most of a professional lifetime. That is an honor in and of itself—and for that I have my colleagues and my students to thank. It is gratifying to know that others who enjoy reading and teaching the short story as I do continue to find the book interesting and useful. Fiction 100 is not, of course, the book it was in 1974. Neither is its editor. Both of us have grown and changed with the decades, as the world of short fiction has grown and changed. Despite the loss of many of the large-circulation magazines that once provided an outlet for short fiction, the short story as a distinctive literary genre is most certainly alive and well and flourishing. As I discover with each passing revision, the quality of the new short fiction from which I have to choose is extraordinarily high. Some of the new selections in each edition come and go. But a surprisingly large number, I find, have extraordinary staying power, in terms of both their artistry and intellectual impact, reflecting the fact that the canon of short fiction has expanded dramatically over the past three decades, making the task of doing it the justice it deserves more and more of a challenge. It is here that my colleagues have played a much larger or more important role than they can possibly imagine. Your feedback has been both wise and generous. For that I thank you.

There are also my students, particularly those I have taught in recent years at the University of Houston. You have graciously—and with good humor—allowed me to inflict my enthusiasms on you in the classroom. Please know it is your likes and dislikes, and your perceptive comments about the stories we have read and studied together, that have helped to shape this new edition of Fiction 100, as they have helped shape editions past.

One thing that has not changed significantly over the years, however, is the basic operating principles that underlie the selection process. These can be simply stated. First of all I have insisted that the stories included not only have literary merit but be interesting. This is where my students have played such a decisive role. Four decades of teaching the short story to college students have persuaded me that any story, if it is to "work" in the classroom, must engage the curiosity, imagination, and intelligence of students and provide them with a reading experience they find pleasurable. In addition, I have tried to assemble a collection of stories, international in scope, that represent a wide variety of subject matter, theme, literary technique, and style, and that, at the same time, serve to illustrate the development of short fiction—its continuity, durability, and tradition—from its identifiable beginnings in the early years of the nineteenth century to the present. To the extent possible, I have also asked that the stories "speak to one another" by way of theme and technique to make possible classroom discussion that turns on comparison and contrast. Roughly a third of the anthology is reserved for older, well-established stories—the so-called classics that are integral to the historical growth and development of the genre. They are offered without apology, for good stories, no matter how often anthologized, are a source of endless pleasure and discovery that no amount of rereading, classroom discussion, or critical analysis can ever exhaust. On the other hand, I have also tried to make certain that Fiction 100 presents a broad selection of newer and contemporary stories to suggest the direction in which short fiction is moving as we slip into and through the first decade of the new millennium.

The book's editorial apparatus also has not changed. It has been kept to a minimum to make Fiction 100 as usable is as many different kinds of fiction classes as possible. There are, of course, the study questions that follow each story. But these are, by intent, neither complete nor comprehensive, and are offered quite independent of any critical or organizational approach. Rather, they are designed to be suggestive, to help guide students in their own literary responses, and to serve as a springboard for classroom discussion. In much the same way, the Biographical Notes, Short Story Handbook, and Chronological Table of Contents are intended to provide students with additional resource tools and information without getting in the way of their instructor's course format and design.

The third critical ingredient of the success and staying power of Fiction 100 is the editors with whom I have been privileged to work. In this respect, I have been once again blessed, for in the thirty-year history of Fiction 100 there have been but three, a fact that seems incredible given the many changes that have come to the American publishing industry in recent years. Carrie Brandon, my current editor at Prentice Hall, has been a constant ally and resource, always responsive to my need for suggestions, feedback, and practical advice, ever behind-the-scenes to make certain that all the things that must come together to turn a manuscript into a book happen the way they are supposed to. For her ability to do all of that, and to do it both calmly and well, and with the appearance of ease, she has both my admiration and my thanks. Special thanks go as well to her assistant, Jennifer Migueis, who ably and promptly handled much of the day-to-day correspondence on matters large and small, to Melissa Scott of Carlisle Publishers Services, who skillfully and seamlessly guided the book through production, and James Wright of the University of Houston, who prepared materials on the new stories for the Prentice Hall website. Also to be thanked for reviewing the previous edition of Fiction are Gregory J. Beaumont, The Florida State University, Bryn Gribben, University of Washington, and Lance Larsen, University of Houston.

James H. Pickering

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