“Manischevitz, a tailor, in his fifty-first year suffered many reverses and indignities. Previously a man of comfortable means, he overnight lost all he had” (43). So begins Bernard Malamud’s Angel Levine, the fourth story in The Magic Barrel (1958), his… Read More ›
Despite the debt the African-American short story owes to the “national art form,” as Frank O’Connor called the American short story, it, like the other genres of the African-American literary tradition, must be traced back to the site that in… Read More ›
Garcıa Márquez’s (1927-2014) first novella, Leaf Storm, was translated into English in 1972, eighteen years after it was published in Spanish and two years after the English-speaking public first read his acclaimed masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude. As might… Read More ›
“Fire and Cloud” in Uncle Tom’s Children is perhaps the best representative of Richard Wright’s early short fiction. It won first prize in the 1938 Story magazine contest which had more than four hundred entries, marking Wright’s first triumph with… Read More ›
Perhaps related to her mental condition is Virginia Woolf’s (25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) interest in perception and perspective, as well as their relationship to imagination, in many stories. In two short avant-garde pieces—“Monday or Tuesday” (six paragraphs)… Read More ›
Tobias Wolff (born June 19, 1945) is an outstanding contemporary craftsman of the American short story. Working slowly, sometimes taking months and countless drafts, he polishes each story into an entertaining, gemlike work that reads with deceptive ease. He has… Read More ›
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) is one of the major figures of literary modernism whose peers included Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens. Highly influenced by the visual arts and the imagist movement, Williams’s work was… Read More ›
Although during his lifetime Tennessee Williams (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983) was commonly held to be without peer among America’s—many would say the world’s—playwrights, he began his career writing short fiction, with a story entitled “The Vengeance of… Read More ›
Joy Williams is a short-story writer with a dark vision encased in a clean prose style. Although a few of her stories have an experimental, almost surrealistic form, and often a wry, ironic tone, the bulk fall into what can… Read More ›
Because many of Edith Wharton’s (January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) characters and themes resemble those of Henry James, her work has sometimes been regarded as derivative of his. Each of these authors wrote a number of stories regarding… Read More ›
Although some dominant themes and characteristics appear regularly in Eudora Welty’s (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) fiction, her work resists categorization. The majority of her stories are set in her beloved Mississippi Delta country, of which she paints… Read More ›
Many of Robert Penn Warren’s (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) stories feature an adult protagonist’s introspective, guilty recollections of imperishable childhood events, of things done or left undone or simply witnessed with childish innocence. Blackberry Winter “Blackberry Winter”… Read More ›
The heroism of black women in the face of turmoil of all kinds rings from both volumes of Alice Walker’s (born February 9, 1944) short stories like the refrain of a protest song. In Love and Trouble reveals the extremes… Read More ›
In her short stories Helena María Viramontes (born February 26, 1954) provides a vision of Hispanic women in American society, presenting female characters whose lives are limited by the patriarchy of Hispanic society and the imposition of religious values. She… Read More ›
Classified by critics as a southern writer, Anne Tyler (born October 25, 1941) focuses on modern families and their unique relationships. Her underlying theme is that time inexorably changes the direction of people’s lives. The past determines the present and… Read More ›
Many readers find Mark Twain (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910) most successful in briefer works, including his narratives, because they were not padded to fit some extraneous standard of length. His best stories are narrated by first-person speakers… Read More ›
The reputation of Ivan Turgenev (October 28, 1818 – September 3, 1883) as a short-story writer is based in equal measure on his stories about Russian peasant life and on stories about other segments of society. Although differing greatly in… Read More ›
James Thurber (December 8, 1894 – November 2, 1961) is best known as the author of humorous sketches, stories, and reminiscences dealing with urban bourgeois American life. To discuss Thurber as an artist in the short-story form is difficult, however,… Read More ›
The art of Peter Taylor (January 8, 1917 – November 2, 1994) is ironic and subtle. In a typical story, the narrator or point-of-view character is an observer, perhaps a member of a community who remembers someone or something in… Read More ›
Amy Tan’s (born February 19, 1952) voice is an important one among a group of “hyphenated Americans” (such as African Americans and Asian Americans) who describe the experiences of members of ethnic minority groups. Her short fiction is grounded in… Read More ›
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