Selected Stories from the Southern Review (Southern Literary Studies) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807114901 ISBN 13: 9780807114902

Publisher: LSU Press, 1988

Synopsis

In the twenty years of its existence, the second series of the Southern Review continued the editorial orientation of the first series by presenting a range of regional and cosmopolitan works of fiction. This anthology is a collection of twenty-five short stories from the nearly three hundred published in the journal between 1965 and 1985. The editors have sought to illustrate the diversity of subject matter and the tremendous range of tone, voice, and technique that have characterized short fiction in the Southern Review.

Although many of the contributors to Selected Stories from the “Southern Review” are southern, the collection also includes national and international, new and established writers. The focus of the anthology is on literary merit rather than regional considerations. “Abroad” by Nadine Gordimer, which depicts the experiences of a white South African visiting his son in Zimbabwe, is in the collection, along with John William Corrington’s “Pleadings,” the powerful account of an incident in the life of a south Louisiana attorney. Mary Lavin’s “The Face of Hate” addresses life amidst the conflict in Northern Ireland, and Elizabeth Spencer’s “The Cousins” explores the entanglements and coming of age of five young adults on a European vacation. Joyce Carol Oates’s “Détente” interweaves the personal and political aspects of a Soviet-American literary conference, and Robb Forman Dew follows the adventures of two naive Natchez girls in New Orleans in “Two Girls Wearing Perfume in the Summer.”

From Louis D. Rubin’s tentative young newspaperman in “The St. Anthony Chorale” to William Mills’s sure-footed X-ray technician in “Sweet Tickfaw Run Softly, Till I End My Song,” from Rita Dove’s compelling “Secondhand Man” to John E. Wildeman’s Satirical “Surfiction”―these are characters and stories from the new series of the Southern Review which offer resounding proof that the brilliant publishing tradition originating with Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren has been preserved by a magazine that still maintains its national literary reputation.

About this title

About the Author:

Lewis P. Simpson (1916-2005) was Boyd Professor and William A. Read Professor of English, emeritus, at Louisiana State University. Among his many books are The Man of Letters in New England and the South; The Dispossessed Garden; The Brazen Face of History: Studies in the Literary Consciousness in America; Mind and the American Civil War: A Meditation on Lost Causes; and The Fable of the Southern Writer. He was a founding member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, president of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, and coeditor of the Southern Review from the inauguration of the New Series in 1965 until his retirement in 1987.

From Publishers Weekly:

There are several outstanding stories among the 25 in this hefty collection. "Detente," a penetrating political tale by Joyce Carol Oates, explores with feeling and delicate irony the meeting of intellectuals at an East-West cultural conference. When Antonia becomes suddenly involved with Soviet writer Vasily, language resonates as both a symbolic force and impediment, full of social and sexual implications. Politics also informs Mary Lavin's "The Face of Hate," set in Belfast. An aging white workingman revisits Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, in Nadine Gordimer's "Abroad"; Gordimer masterfully handles Manie Swemmer's hardbitten racial attitudes, while maintaining a measure of dignity, even pity for him. Pat Carr's exquisite "Party" affords a brief, pointed childhood glimpse into adult vulnerability. Two fine dramas of family life are Richard Perry's "Blues for My Father, My Mother, and Me," about a sophisticated black man galvanized into confronting his parents, and Anne Tyler's "The Artificial Family," which deals with a shaky second marriage. Reynolds Price's "Truth and Lies" captures the stylized, incantatory speech rhythms of a betrayed woman. Many of the remaining entries, however, are genteel, old-fashioned stories, personal reminiscences and musings, dinosaurs of the genre without much bite.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0807114901
• ISBN 13: 9780807114902
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 388
• Editor: Simpson Lewis P., Stanford Donald E., Olney James, Gulledge Jo