Playboy Short Stories - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1857022033 ISBN 13: 9781857022032

Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd, 1994

Synopsis

This major work from renowned scholars in the field, analyzes the role of language and symbolic media and shows how this enables us to move to new levels of understanding of contemporary organizational issues. An introductory chapter examines the role and growing importance of discourse in the study of organizations. It critically evaluates the contributions of various disciplines and defines organizational discourse as a subject area. The chapters in the first section, Talk and Action, explore the relationship between discourse, action and interaction and their impact on organizational structure and behaviour. Stories and Sensemaking focuses on the analytical potential of the 'story' as a means of illuminating the ways in which organizational members make sense of their experience of organization. "Discourse and Organization" includes contributions which demonstrate the fundamental significance of linguistic usage and discursive construction to the ontologies of 'organization'. Finally, a concluding discourse explores the claims and limitations of organizational discourse as a means of enriching our understanding of organization.

About this title

From Booklist

The usual big names are here (including Philip Roth, Irwin Shaw, Johns Updike and Cheever, and the ubiquitous Joyce Carol Oates), but up-and-comers are featured prominently. And editor Turner deserves praise for including several stories by women authors; in fact, two standouts are Laurie Colwin's poignant "My Mistress" and Bharati Mukherjee's electric "The Middle Man." Two long pieces--Nelson Algren's take on Depression-era carnival life, "The Last Carousel," and Norman Mailer's bizarre tale of black masses and Joan of Arc, "Trail of the Warlock"--are balanced by stories with traditional O. Henry-style endings, such as Roald Dahl's chilling "A Fine Son," Thomas McGuane's blunt "Like a Leaf," Bernard Malamud's wise "Naked Nude," and T. Coraghessan Boyle's funny-sad "Modern Love." There's even a laugh-out-loud "lost" segment of Catch-22, in which Joseph Heller's Yossarian determines baseball and basketball to be the stupidest sports ever invented. Glittering entries from Nabokov, Gabriel Garc{¡}ia M{ }arquez, Isaac Bashevis Singer, James Baldwin, and Haruki Murakami round out the A list, with fascinating oddball curios like Jack Kerouac's "Good Blonde," Robert Coover's bizarre "Lucky Pierre in the Doctor's Office," and John Gardner's frightening "Julius Caesar and the Werewolf" putting the finishing touches on a grand collection. Joe Collins

From Publishers Weekly

That Playboy has always showcased first-rate mainstream fiction is evident from this superlative anthology of stories by Bernard Malamud, Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac, Andre Dubus, Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas McGuane, John Cheever, James Baldwin, Isaac Bashevis Singer and others. Sex, when it occurs here, is often an arena of hazard or negotiation, as in Paul Theroux's prickly tale of a wealthy young Bostonian out for erotic adventure in Africa; or T. Coraghessan Boyle's ultimate satire of safe sex featuring an obsessive magazine editor who insists that her lover wear a full-body condom. Another human constant, death, pervades John Updike's account of smug tourists visiting an Egyptian necropolis and Vladimir Nabokov's witty tale of a seduction on a train. Women, though a decided minority, are represented by Joyce Carol Oates's withering portrait of American academics transplanted to Canada amid the 1960s counterculture; Nadine Gordimer's powerful tale of an Afrikaner farmer's disposal of the corpse of a black man; Laurie Colwin's disarmingly direct narrative of an adulterer; and pieces by Shirley Jackson, Bharati Mukherjee and Ursula LeGuin. Playboy fiction editor Turner has pulled together a smart anthology that constantly entertains and provokes.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1857022033
• ISBN 13: 9781857022032
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 609
• Editor: Alice K. Turner