The Oxford Book of American Short Stories - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199744394 ISBN 13: 9780199744398

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2012

Synopsis

In The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, Joyce Carol Oates offers a sweeping survey of American short fiction, in a collection of nearly sixty tales that combines classic works with many "different, 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 on, Oates admits, and she happily includes such time-honored works as Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" and Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." But alongside these often-anthologized tales, Oates introduces such little-known stories as Mark Twain's "Cannibalism in the Cars," a work that reveals a darker side to his humor. 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." The reader will also delight in the range of authors found here, from Charles W. Chesnutt, Jean Toomer, and Sarah Orne Jewett, to William Carlos Williams, Kate Chopin, and Langston Hughes, to Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King.

For the second edition, Oates has introduced a wide range of new stories from writers who represent the state of American literature today. These new works include Lorrie Moore's "How to Become a Writer," Richard Ford's "Under the Radar," Junot Diaz's "Edison, New Jersey," David Foster Wallace's "Good People," Philip Roth's "Defender of the Faith," and Amy Hempel's "Today Will Be a Quiet Day." As in the original volume, Oates provides fascinating introductions to each writer, blending biographical information with her own trenchant observations about their work. In addition, she has written a new preface that contemplates our shifting literary culture, and has revised her introductory essay to the first edition, in which she offers the fruit of years of reflection on a genre in which she herself is a master.

About this title

About the Author

Joyce Carol Oates is the National Book Award-winning author of over fifty novels, including bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, and The Gravedigger's Daughter. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University.

Reviews

*Starred Review* Short-story master Oates resumes her editorial command to refit this cornerstone anthology for the twenty-first century. As in the first edition, published 20 years ago, Oates begins with such classic American writers as Hawthorne, Poe, Wharton, and Cather and moves on to Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Welty, Baldwin, and Cheever. But she now includes H. P. Lovecraft, Nelson Algren, Stephen King, T. C. Boyle, Amy Hempel, Ha Jin, David Foster Wallace, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Junot Diaz. Deeply schooled in the history of the form, Oates suggests that “the most profound change in the American short story” may be “the movement from the mythic to the anecdotal, from a mode of impersonal storytelling . . . to a mode of storytelling that is intensely personal, self-conscious, and narrated in a distinctive ‘voice.’” This, along with a multiplicity of cultures and “unifying issues,” has radically altered American fiction in parallel with social transformations, and Oates’ striking selections embody this literary vitality and the embracing empathy it engenders. Oates’ “personal definition of the form is that it represents a concentration of imagination,” and the resulting “intensification” is evident and thrilling in every short story she presents, each preceded by a lively author miniprofile. The result is a substantial and superb treasury that will deepen every fiction collection. --Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199744394
• ISBN 13: 9780199744398
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 896
• Editor: Carol Oates Joyce