Love Stories for the Rest of Us - Hardcover

Chipps, Genie D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0916366901 ISBN 13: 9780916366902

Publisher: Pushcart Press, 1994

Synopsis

How much jabber there is in the name of love! A best-selling author tops the list with a book interchangeable with the last. Spin the radio dial and try to distinguish one lyric from the next; channel surf and the images fly by with titillating commercials, identical plots, and a surfeit of slick passion with little joy. We live in a throw-away love culture where the very nature of the thing we hunger for most is served up to us packaged in Styrofoam like fast food. Love is for sale everywhere; it keeps the cash registers ringing, the bottom line solidly in the black.
OK, so that's them. What about the rest of us? Do we seek happy endings or the beginnings of understanding? Who can voice for us the complexity of love in all its guises and illusions? Who will grapple with love's betrayals and losses and preposterous fantasies? Who will get us through the night? Over the past eight years, the stories collected in this volume were selected as among the outstanding from our literary writers and reprinted in the annual Pushcart Prize series. In Love Stories For The Rest Of Us, they have been picked again, out of hundreds, because they speak of love, all kinds of love - and they are terrific.
These tales did not spring from a commercial cookie cutter. They come from the experiences and imaginations of today's most talented writers. Consequently, the tales collected here are an unpredictable lot describing love as tragic, joyous, excruciating, ridiculous, crazy, blissful: in other words, all the emotions that the rest of us know love to be.
The rest of us, be we young, old, urban, suburban, black, white, oriental, Hispanic, rich, poor (or in between), married or single will find our hearts here. These writers are not the usual suspects. The love they speak of is told in unsentimental, often unsparing ways. Like love, these fictions will enthrall you, hurt you, enrich you and make you cry or laugh or pound the desk in outrage, but they will never bore.
We suspect that these fictions carry the voice of truth, and we also conjecture that truth is what the rest of us would like to enjoy.

About this title

About the Author:

Genie Chipps and Bill Henderson are still married and help edit The Pushcart Prize.

Bill Henderson is the founder and editor of the Pushcart Prize. He received the 2006 National Book Critic Circle’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the Poets & Writers / Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award. He is also the author of several memoirs, including All My Dogs: A Life. The founder of the Lead Pencil Club, Henderson lives on Long Island and In Maine where he runs the Pushcart bookstore – “the world’s smallest bookstore.”

From Kirkus Reviews:

Culled from the past decade's Pushcart Prize selections, a collection for those who like their tales of love light on sentimentality and with a twist. Some of the best work features strong voices from people of color. In ``Crazy Life'' by Lou Mathews, Chuey's girlfriend gets him off the hook for a murder rap, but Chuey abandons his partner to a prison term and the East LA community makes life miserable for him. Lorna Goodison's ``By Love Possessed,'' set in Jamaica, details the affair of Dottie and Frenchie, who is ``probably better looking than Ricardo Montalban'' but unemployed. Dottie looks like Olive Oyl but can support Frenchie. The tenuous trade of different currencies ends disastrously. Likewise, Joyce Carol Oates's ``The Hair'' tells of one rather ordinary couple's friendship with a pair of socialites. The first couple's efforts to hold on to their status-lending friends threaten to compromise their own marriage. Incest is a frequent theme or subplot in the collection. ``Lawns'' by Mona Simpson portrays an abusive situation and its damaging effects on the daughter in later life. ``Hush Hush'' by Steven Barthelme presents a more off-beat, yet compelling incestuous scenario. If there is a flaw in this collection, it's that it takes itself too seriously. The book could use more entries such as ``Tell Me Everything'' by Leonard Michaels--perhaps the most well- crafted and playful of the lot, featuring an epic novel embedded within the story. ``Yukon'' by Carol Emshwiller likewise provides a refreshing perspective. A north woods woman leaves her bearish, north woods man and shacks up with an actual bear in a cave. She's happier with the bear, for a while. Many of ``the rest of us'' will be pleased with this thoughtful collection of intelligent romances. However, it fails to include a number of topics: safe sex, cybersex, etc. Also, the focus is overwhelmingly heterosexual. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pushcart Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0916366901
• ISBN 13: 9780916366902
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 399
• Editor: Henderson Bill