     
|
||
RETURN TO THE
 HOME PAGE |
 |
|
|
|
||
| RETURN TO THE
HOME PAGE |
|
|
|
Links to web sites with information about some of the authors of the stories in Analyzing Short Stories. (Click on the author's name to go to the information.)
JOHN STEINBECK
To find out more about this author or read more of his works, go to these web sites!
JOHN UPDIKE
KATE CHOPIN
DOROTHY PARKER
For more Dorothy Parker information, check out these web sites:
WILLIAM MELVIN KELLEY
|
| You can order a book by Stephen Crane from the AMAZON.COM web site by clicking on the title you want from those below! |  |
SHIRLEY JACKSON
The Haunting of Hill House
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
RICHARD CONNELL
Shirley Jackson is the author of The Lottery, a popular story which appears in many high school readers and has been made into a film more than once. To find out more about this author or read more of her works, go to these web sites!
A term paper by a student at Kurtztown University of Pennsylvania
a review of her life and work, from Omni Magazine
You can order a book by Shirley Jackson from the AMAZON.COM web site by clicking on the title you want from those below!
This is a posthumous collection of 54 short stories (many of which have never been published), edited and introduced by two of Jackson's children. Jackson penned many of the stories in this volume for the popular press, for titles ranging from Fantasy and Science Fiction and The New Yorker to women's magazines such as Charm and Good Housekeeping.
"I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster... and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside." So reflects nervous Eleanor, the 32-year-old heroine of this most critically acclaimed haunted-house novel ever written. Eleanor is an oddball. She resents having lost so many years to nursing her dying mother. She jumps at the opportunity to escape the officious presence of her sister and brother-in-law. She escapes . . . to Hill House, which "not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within . . . whatever walked there, walked alone."
"While The Lottery is probably the darkest story in this collection, the twist, the dig, and the unrelenting insights into human prejudices and frailties are present throughout. Prime targets are self-satisfied matrons, whose racism and elitism are glaringly exposed. Other tales are gentler yet often eerie: a single woman waits expectantly for the man she is to marry that morning, only to find he has disappeared as completely as if he had never existed; mild Emily Johnson faces down her kleptomaniac neighbor; Margaret's dream vacation in New York City begins to feel like a nightmare. Sometimes the stories are downright funny...yet even in the humorous pieces, there is an unsettling feeling, like looking in a fun-house mirror where nothing is quite as you expected. This is a collection that will make you think while sending big and little chills down your spine. [From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister]
To find out more about this author or read more of his works, go to these web sites!
You can order a book by Sherwood Anderson from the AMAZON.COM web site by clicking on the title you want from those below!
The short story, not the novel or autobiography, was the form in which Sherwood Anderson excelled. This anthology of thirty stories from previously unpublished manuscripts and earlier collections features the uniquely American vision of loneliness by the author who elevated short fiction from the conventionality of popular magazines and shaped it into individual expression. No other writer has presented us with a vision of loneliness so recognizably American as Sherwood Anderson--the writer who wrested short fiction from the upbeat conventionality of the popular magazines of his day and molded it to express the isolation of individual people. Certain Things Last is the first one-volume edition of Anderson's stories. But what makes this book truly remarkable is that five of Anderson's very best stories appear in print here for the first time. They are: "Certain Things Last," "Fred," "The Red Dog," "Mrs. Wife," and "The Masterpiece." The discovery of these new stories makes Certain Things Last an unprecedented publishing event. Numerous stories have been meticulously restored to Anderson's original version by Professor Modlin.
First published in 1919, these stories became the forerunner of modern American fiction. In the perfectly imagined world of an archetypal small American town, Anderson reveals the hidden passions that turn ordinary lives into fonts of
unforgettable emotions. Played out against the deceptively placid backdrop of Winesburg, Anderson's loosely connected stories coalesce, like chapters, into a powerful novel of love and loss. This modern classic mixes Anderson's memories of his boyhood in Clyde, Ohio,with his observations in turn-of-the-century Chicago. As they go about their day-to-day lives of quiet desperation, the solitary inhabitants of Winesburg,Ohio, confide their disappointed dreams and dashed hopes to a young reporter.The result is a collection of 21 stories offering a deeply honest portrait oflife in small-town America.
A guide to to the Short Stories of Sherwood Anderson
...and Other Stories
...and Other Stories (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
Essays in Criticism
To find out more about this author or read more of his works, go to these web sites!
| You can order a book by Richard Connell from the AMAZON.COM web site by clicking on the title you want from those below! | |
| You can order a book by Nathanial Hawthorne from the AMAZON.COM web site by clicking on the title you want from those below! | |
| You can order a book by Ben Neihart from the AMAZON.COM web site by clicking on the title you want from those below! | |
JAMES THURBER
James Thurber created cartoons as well as stories for The New Yorker magazine. To find out more about him or read more of his works, go to these web sites:
A very very short story (a parable, really) by Thurber
Bibliography and links
Another Thurber short story.
| You can order a book by James Thurber from the AMAZON.COM web site by clicking on the title you want from those below! | |
| You can order a book by George Saunders from the AMAZON.COM web site by clicking on the title you want from those below! | |
George Saunders, a geophysicist, maps out magical realism with this short story collection. He puts an American spin on that sensibility in the sensationally good title tale, where things in a "Westworld"-like amusement park go extraordinarily wrong, but in ways in that make perfect sense to any denizen--or reader--in the modern world. CivilWarLand is hilarious, yet ultimately sad and moving--and isn't that life in a nutshell? And how can you resist any writer who cooks up titles as good as "Downtrodden Mary's Failed Campaign of Terror"?
Here's what the critics said about it:
"(Saunders) has created a surreal, weirdly persuasive picture of the devolved future now taking shape in our own worst and most potent tendencies."--Tobias Wolff.
"This book is a rare event: a brilliant new satirist bursting out of the gate in full stride." --Garrison Keillor
"An astoundingly tuned voice - graceful, dark, authentic, and funny." --Thomas Pynchon :
"Mr. Saunders writes like the illegitimate offspring of Nathaniel West and Kurt Vonnegut, perhaps a distant relative of Mark Leyner and Steven Wright. . . . Mr. Saunders' satiric vision of America is dark, and demented; it is also ferocious and very funny." --The New York Times.
ROBERT OLEN BUTLER
Robert Olen Butler is the author of seven novels. His most recent novel, The Deep Green Sea, was published in January, 1998. Butler's short story collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, was awarded the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He is also the winner of the 1993 Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction. He teaches creative writing at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. To find out more about this author or read more of his works, go to these web sites!
| You can order a book by Robert Olin Butler from the AMAZON.COM web site by clicking on the title you want from those below! | |
Thomas Mallon, writing in The New York Times Book Review, said "To call this volume ... a tour de force would be to reduce something deeply accomplished to a stunt."
| You can order a book by Willa Cather from the AMAZON.COM web site by clicking on the title you want from those below! | |
| You can order a book by Elmore Leonard from the AMAZON.COM web site by clicking on the title you want from those below! | |
Begining around the time that the Maine is sunk in Havana Harbor and ending when Teddy and others storm San Juan Hill, the story is at its best when its colorful characters are turned loose in one of the novel's colorful settings. If you like Leonard, you'll love Cuba Libre, and if--for some reason--you haven't yet discovered the author, prepare for a real treat.
JOHN WILLIAMS
You can find out a little bit more about this author by reading A review of "One for New York," Williams' first novel.
| You can order a book by John Williams from the AMAZON.COM web site by clicking on the title you want from those below! | |
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
| You can order a book by Arthur C. Clarke from the AMAZON.COM web site by clicking on the title you want from those below! | |
And if you read the first book, you'll want to read these sequels to 2001:
| You can order a book by Judy Troy from the AMAZON.COM web site by clicking on the title you want from those below! | |
Of Judy Troy's novel, Tom Drury, in The New York Times Book Review, wrote: "We know Holly not only from what she says and does but also from what she sees, and for this a reader will credit Ms. Troy's spare but lyrical evocation of the Midwestern prairie. From "harvested fields silvered by the moonlight" to Morgan's overdecorated grave, which appears as "a too bright boat on a green sea" ... West of Venus is graced by images of both loss and renewal."