Doubletakes: Pairs of Contemporary Short Stories » (1st Edition)

Since the 1980s, T. Coraghessan Boyle has been challenging readers with a smart, surreal style that manages to satirize America's past, present and future all at once. As Barbara Kingsolver wrote of him, "What Boyle does, and does well, is lay on the line our national cult of hypocrisy."

Selected by celebrated author and professor T. Coraghessan Boyle, DOUBLETAKES: PAIRS OF CONTEMPORARY SHORT STORIES gives readers the opportunity to enjoy the works of today's literary lights through close reading and analysis.

ANN BEATTIE: The Burning House. The Four-Night Fight. AIMEE BENDER: The Rememberer. Quiet Please. JORGE LUIS BORGES: Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote. Funes the Memorious. T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE: She Wasn't Soft. Greasy Lake. ITALO CALVINO: Spring: 1. Mushrooms in the City. Summer: 2. Park Bench Vacation. Autumn: 3. The Municipal Pigeon. Winter: 4. The City Lost in Snow. EMILY CARTER: East on Houston. Parachute Silk. RAYMOND CARVER: The Bath. A Small, Good Thing Put Yourself in My Shoes. JOHN CHEEVER: Goodbye My Brother. The Five-Forty-Eight. ROBERT COOVER: The Convention. The Brother. ROALD DAHL: Dip in the Pool. Taste. LYDIA DAVIS: Almost No Memory. St. Martin. JUNOT DIAZ: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl or Halfie. LOUISE ERDRICH: Saint Marike. The Red Convertible. RICHARD FORD: Rock Springs. Great Falls. MARY GAITSKILL: Secretary. A Romantic Weekend. GABRIEL GARCÍA MÉRQUEZ: A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings. The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World. ELLEN GILCHRIST: Rich. In the Land of Dreamy Dreams. AMY HEMPEL: In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried. Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep. ISABEL HUGGAN: Celia Behind Me. Sorrows of the Flesh. DENIS JOHNSON: Car Crash While Hitchhiking. Beverly Home. JAMAICA KINKAID: Poor Visitor. Figures in the Distance. LEONARD MICHAELS: Murderers. In the Fifties. LORRIE MOORE: People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk. How to Become a Writer. JOYCE CAROL OATES: Tick. The Abduction. TIM O'BRIEN: The Things They Carried. Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong. FLANNERY O'CONNOR: A Good Man is Hard to Find. Good Country People. ANNIE PROULX: The Half-Skinned Steer. Brokeback Mountain. STACEY RICHTER: The Beauty Treatment. My Date With Satan. GEORGE SAUNDERS: The Barber's Unhappiness. I Can't Speak! DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: Forever Overhead. Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, #20,19-26, New Haven, CT. JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN: Presents. Doc's Story. TOBIAS WOLFF: Powder. Bullet in the Brain.