Success Stories - Softcover

Banks, Russell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060927194 ISBN 13: 9780060927196

Publisher: Ecco, 1996

Synopsis

In Sucess Stories, an exceptionally varied yet coherent collection, Russell Banks proves himself one of the most astute and forceful writers in America today. Queen for a Day, Success Story, and Adultery trace fortunes of the Painter family in there pursuit of and retreat from the American dream. Banks also explores the ethos of rampant materialism in a group of contemporary moral fables. The Fish is an evocating parable of faith and greed set in a Southeast Asian village, The Gully tells of the profitability of violence and the ironies of upward mobility in a Latin American shantytown, and Chrildren's Story explores the repressed rage that boils beneath the surface of relationships between parents and children and between citizens of the first and third worlds.

About this title

About the Author:

Russell Banks, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, is one of America’s most prestigious fiction writers, a past president of the International Parliament of Writers, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous prizes and awards, including the Common Wealth Award for Literature. He lives in upstate New York and Miami, Florida.

 

From Library Journal:

In these 12 stories, the author of Conti nental Drift sounds a cautionary note for the 80s, writing about people who get what they want but find themselves dissatisfied to varying degrees. For in stance, the title character of "Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story" wins the body, and perhaps even the love, of a man far more attractive than she, but not his respect. In "Firewood," the last of six stories that take Earl Painter from childhood in New Hampshire to young manhood in Florida before the 60s boom, Earl's father finally gains the freedom from love that he confuses with independence. Interspersed with this sequence are some fables and un classifiable tales that display Banks's formal range and social concerns but not much else. Both librarians and Banks's fans will want to purchase this collection, but neither should recom mend it as a place to begin reading him. Hugh M. Crane, Brockton P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0060927194
• ISBN 13: 9780060927196
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208