Columbia Companion To The 20th Century American Short Story

Description:
Esteemed critic Blanche Gelfant's brilliant companion gathers together lucid essays on major writers and themes by some of the best literary critics in the United States. Part 1 is comprised of articles on stories that share a particular theme, such as 'Working Class Stories' or 'Gay and Lesbian Stories.' The heart of the book, however, lies in Part 2, which contains more than one hundred pieces on individual writers and their work, including Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Richard Ford, Raymond Carver, Eudora Welty, Andre Debus, Zora Neal Hurston, Anne Beattie, Bharati Mukherjee, J. D. Salinger, and Jamaica Kincaid, as well as engaging pieces on the promising new writers to come on the scene.

Review:
'An eminently useful work. While there are other books on short stories and on the authors included here, this new resource is unusually well done... The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story is essential for academic libraries and is highly recommended for public and school libraries.' -- Library Journal ' The Columbia Companion offers deeper coverage of American short stories... [this] would be an asset to library collections at the high-school and college levels.' -- Booklist 'Particularly useful because it includes contemporary authors who are difficult to find... The writing is uniformly excellent, and the efficient index includes authors, story titles, book titles, and subjects.' -- Choice 'Here are the categories of a postcanonical era with a vengeance: not just stories with a thematic cycle but also those written by African Americans, Asian Americans, Chicano-Latinos, lesbians and gays, Native Americans, non-English speakers, members of the working class, people concerned with the Holocaust, and even those with ecological interests.' -- American Literary Scholarship 'Each entry presents a critique of at least two of an author's stories, a biliography of the story collections, and recommendations for more sustained critiques of the author's work.' -- American Literature 'This reference will be well-used by high school students seeking resources for the ubiquitous literary 'term paper.' And in so doing, they may begin to develop a 'sense of what makes a writer unique.'' -- Virginia Wallace, ALA Bibliography

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part I. Thematic Essays The American Short Story Cycle The American Short Story, 1807-1900 The African American Short Story The Asian American Short Story The Chicano-Latino Short Story The Ecological Short Story Lesbian and Gay Short Stories The Native American Short Story Non-English American Short Stories The American Working-Class Short Story American Short Stories of the Holocaust Part II. Individual Writers and Their Work Alice Adams (1926-1999) Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) James Baldwin (1924-1987) John Barth (1930- ) Donald Barthelme (1931-1989) Rick Bass (1959- ) Richard Bausch (1945- ) Charles Baxter (1947- ) Ann Beattie (1947- ) Saul Bellow (1915- ) Gina Berriault (1926- ) Doris Betts (1932- ) Paul Bowles (1910-1999) Kay Boyle (1902-1992) Ray Bradbury (1920- ) Kate Braverman (1950- ) Larry Brown (1951- ) Erskine Caldwell (1903-1987) Hortense Calisher (1911- ) Truman Capote (1924-1984) Raymond Carver (1938-1988) Willa Cather (1873-1947) John Cheever (1912-1982) Sandra Cisneros (1954- ) Walter Van Tilburg Clark (1909-1971) Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (1930- ) Robert Coover (1932- ) Lydia Davis (1947- ) Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (1953- ) Andre Dubus (1936-1999) Deborah Eisenberg (1946- ) Stanley Elkin (1930-1995) George P. Elliott (1918-1980) John Fante (1909-1983) James T. Farrell (1904-1979) William Faulkner (1897-1962) F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) Richard Ford (1944- ) Mary Gaitskill (1954- ) William H. Gass (1924- ) Ellen Gilchrist (1935- ) Herbert Gold (1924- ) Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) Amy Hempel (1951- ) Mary Hood (1946- ) Langston Hughes (1902-1967) Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) Jamaica Kincaid (1949- ) Ring Lardner (1885-1933) David Leavitt (1961- ) Ursula K. Le Guin (1929- ) Meridel Le Sueur (1900-1996) Shirley Geok-lin Lim (1944- ) Jack London (1876-1916) David Wong Louie (1954- ) Norman Mailer (1923- ) Bernard Malamud (1914-1986) Bobbie Anne Mason (1940- ) Mary McCarthy (1912-1989) Elizabeth McCracken (1966- ) Carson McCullers (1917-1967) Thomas McGuane (1939- ) James Alan McPherson (1943- ) Nicholasa Mohr (1938- ) Lorrie Moore (1957- ) Toshio Mori (1910-1980) Bharati Mukherjee (1940- ) Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) Joyce Carol Oates (1938- ) Tim O'Brien (1946- ) Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) John O'Hara (1905-1970) Tillie Olsen (1913?- ) Simon Ortiz (1941- ) Cynthia Ozick (1928- ) Grace Paley (1922- ) Americo Paredes (1915-1999) Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) Jayne Anne Phillips (1952- ) Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980) William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) (1862-1910) E. Annie Proulx (1935- ) Thomas Pynchon (1937- ) Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896-1953) Alberto Alvaro Rios (1952- ) Philip Roth (1933- ) Damon Runyon (1880-1946) J. D. Salinger (1919- ) Bienvenido N. Santos (1911-1996) William Saroyan (1908-1981) Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966) Leslie Marmon Silko (1948- ) Jean Stafford (1915-1979) Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) John Steinbeck (1902-1968) Elizabeth Tallent (1954- ) Peter Taylor (1917-1994) James Thurber (1894-1961) John Updike (1932- ) Helena Maria Viramontes (1954- ) Anna Lee Walters (1946- ) Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) Sylvia A. Watanabe (1953- ) Eudora Welty (1909- ) Edith Wharton (1862-1937) Joy Williams (1944- ) Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) Tobias Wolff (1945- ) Richard Wright (1908-1960) Hisaye Yamamoto (1921- ) Anzia Yezierska (1881-1970) Index

Author Biography:
Blanche H. Gelfant is the author of The American City Novel, Women Writing in America: Voices in Collage, and Cross-Cultural Reckonings: A Triptych of Russian, American and Canadian Texts. For many years she was the Robert E. Maxwell Professor in the Arts and Sciences at Dartmouth. In recognition of her contributions as critic and scholar, the American Literature Division of the Modern Language Association has honored professor Gelfant with the Jay B. Hubbell Award for Lifetime Achievement in American Literary Studies.