Story and It's Writer Compact: An Introduction to Short Fiction » (7th Edition)

Scholar, editor, and biographer of Beat generation writer Jack Kerouac -- she even penned the preface to his groundbreaking On the Road -- Ann Charters captures the passion and promise of one of the most culturally influential decades of the century.

During her many years of teaching introduction to fiction courses, Ann Charters developed an acute sense of which stories work most effectively in the classroom. She also discovered that writers, not editors, have the most interesting and useful things to say about the making and the meaning of fiction. Accordingly, her choice of fiction in the first edition of her The Story and Its Writer was as notable for its student appeal as it was for its quality and range. And to complement these stories, she introduced a lasting innovation: an array of the writers' own commentaries on the craft and traditions of the short story. In subsequent editions her sense of what works was confirmed as the book evolved into the most comprehensive, diverse-- and bestselling -- introduction to fiction anthology. Instructors rely on Ann Charters' ability to assemble an authoritative and teachable anthology, and anticipate each edition's selection of new writers and stories.

Introduction

PART ONE: STORIES

*Chinua Achebe, Civil Peace Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
*Isabelle Allende, An Act of Vengeance Sherwood Anderson, Hands Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings James Baldwin, Sonny's Blues Toni Cade Bambara, The Lesson Russell Banks, Black Man and White Woman in Dark Green Rowboat Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
*Jorge Luis Borges, The Circular Ruins
*Raymond Carver, Cathedral
*Raymond Carver, Errand Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Willa Cather, Paul's Case John Cheever, The Swimmer Anton Chekhov, The Darling [Garnett translation]
Kate Chopin, Désirée's Baby Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness Stephen Crane, The Open Boat
*Junot Diaz, How to Date A Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie
*Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter Ralph Ellison, Battle Royal Louise Erdrich, The Red Convertible William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily William Faulkner, That Evening Sun Gabriel García Márquez, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
*Nadine Gordimer, Some Are Born to Sweet Delight Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants Zora Neale Hurston, Sweat Shirley Jackson, The Lottery
*Gish Jen, Whose Irish?
Sarah Orne Jewett, A White Heron
*Ha Jin, Saboteur James Joyce, Araby James Joyce, The Dead
*Franz Kafka, A Hunger Artist Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis Jamaica Kincaid, Girl
*Jhumpa Lahiri, When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine D. H. Lawrence, The Rocking-Horse Winner
*Katherine Mansfield, The Fly Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh Guy de Maupassant, The Necklace Herman Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener
*Nicholasa Mohr, Tell the Truth Bharati Mukherjee, The Management of Grief
*Alice Munro, Miles City, Montana Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried Flannery O'Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge
*Flannery O'Connor, Good Country People Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find
*Frank O'Connor, Guests of the Nation Tillie Olsen, I Stand Here Ironing
*ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere Grace Paley, A Conversation with My Father Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart
*Katherine Anne Porter, He
*Alifa Rifaat, Distant View of a Minaret
*Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman Amy Tan, Two Kinds Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych John Updike, A & P Alice Walker, Everyday Use
*David Foster Wallace, Incarnations of Burned Children Eudora Welty, A Worn Path
*Tobias Wolff, Say Yes Richard Wright, The Man Who Was Almost a Man

PART TWO: COMMENTARIES

Chinua Achebe, An Image of Africa: Conrad's Heart of Darkness
*Sherman Alexie, Superman and Me Sherwood Anderson, Form, Not Plot, in the Short Story Margaret Atwood, Reading Blind James Baldwin, Autobiographical Notes Russell Banks, Author's Note Willa Cather, The Stories of Katherine Mansfield
*Ann Charters, Translating Kafka Anton Chekov, Technique in Writing the Short Story John Cheever, Why I Write Short Stories Kate Chopin, How I Stumbled upon Maupassant
*Julio Cortazar, On the Short Story and Its Environs Stephen Crane, The Sinking of the Commodore Ralph Ellison, The Influence of Folklore on Battle Royal William Faulkner, The Meaning of "A Rose for Emily"
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, A Feminist Reading of Gilman's" The Yellow Wallpaper"
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Undergoing the Cure for Nervous Prostration Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Why I Wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper"
Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to Be Colored Me Shirley Jackson, The Morning of June 28, 1948, and "The Lottery"
Sarah Orne Jewett, Looking Back on Girlhood Jamaica Kincaid, On "Girl"
D. H. Lawrence, The Lust of Hate in Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado"
Bobbie Ann Mason, On Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried"
Guy de Maupassant, The Writer's Goal Herman Melville, Blackness in Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown Alice Munro, How I Write Short Stories
*Joyce Carol Oates, from "Stories that Define Me: The Making of a Writer"
Joyce Carol Oates, Smooth Talk: Short Story into Film
*Frank O'Connor, The Nearest Thing to Lyric Poetry Is the Short Story Frank O'Connor, Style and Form in Joyce's The Dead Grace Paley, A Conversation with Ann Charters Edgar Allan Poe, The Importance of the Single Effect in a Prose Tale
*Leslie Marmon Silko, Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective
*Amy Tan, In the Canon, For All the Wrong Reasons Leo Tolstoy, Chekov's Intent in "The Darling"
*Cheryl B. Torsney, "Everyday Use": My Sojourn at Parchman Farm John Updike, Kafka and The Metamorphosis Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and a Partisan View Eudora Welty, Is Phoenix Jackson's Grandson Really Dead?
Richard Wright, Reading Fiction

PART THREE: CASEBOOKS

CASEBOOK 1: RAYMOND CARVER Raymond Carver, On Writing Raymond Carver, Creative Writing 101
Raymond Carver, The Ashtray
*Raymond Carver, On Errand
*Olga Knipper, Remembering Chekhov
*Henry Troyat, Chekhov's Last Days
*Tom Jenks, The Origin of "Cathedral"
Arthur M. Saltzman, A Reading of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love A.O. Scott, Looking for Raymond Carver

CASEBOOK 2: FLANNERY O'CONNOR Flannery O'Connor, From Letters 1954-1955
Flannery O'Connor, Writing Short Stories Flannery O'Connor, A Reasonable Use of the Unreasonable
*Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr., Flannery O'Connor and Her Readers
*Dorothy Tuck McFarland, On Good Country People
*Wayne C. Booth, A Rhetorical Reading of O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge
*Sally Fitzgerald, Southern Sources of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"

*CASEBOOK 3: GRAPHIC NARRATIVES
*Scott McCloud, from Understanding Comics
*Will Eisner, from "Hamlet on a Rooftop"
*R. Crumb and David Zane Mairowitz, "A Hunger Artist"
*Art Spiegelman, from Maus
*Marjane Satrapi, from Persepolis
*Gilbert Hernandez, "The Mystery Wen"
*Jiro Taniguchi, "A Blanket of Cherry Blossoms"
*Lynda Barry, "Two Questions"

PART FOUR: APPENDICES

*1. READING SHORT STORIES [includes Grace Paley, "Samuel"]
2. THE ELEMENTS OF FICTION
3. BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SHORT STORY
4. WRITING ABOUT SHORT STORIES
*5. LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
6. GLOSSARY OF LITERARY TERMS
7. CHRONOLOGICAL LISTING OF AUTHORS AND STORIES