- Mass Market Paperback: 672 pages
- Publisher: Penguin UK; Reprint edition (Jan 27 1993)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0140140328
- ISBN-13: 978-0140140323
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 458 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #901,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Academic anthologies, no matter how massive, tend to paint literature with a broad and representative brush. "Best-of" collections may dabble exclusively and exhaustively in a particular decade or school. Happily, Granta 's compendium of recent stories by American writers is neither. Culled from work published since 1944--the year Ford ( Rock Springs ) was born--the more than 40 stories in this 700-plus-page volume are an idiosyncratic array with few common threads connecting them. Apart from the 1944 cutoff date, Ford's only criteria, stated in his quirky, thoughtful introduction, are that the entries be "ones I like--stories that have altered my appreciation of what a short story might surprisingly contain or be about; stories that by their brilliance have seemed to sanction the entire endeavor of being a writer." A story can be almost anything in his book, and his notion of an American "allows an American to be anyone who persuasively claims to be one." Ford's liberal aesthetic sweeps us from (to name a very few) the Bowleses, Wallace Stegner and Grace Paley through the pivotal work of Donald Barthelme, William Gass and Robert Coover, to that of Jamaica Kincaid, Raymond Carver and Richard Bausch. This is hardly another case of rounding up the usual suspects; there are many surprises in the lineup--delightful ones.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
This extraordinary anthology represents Ford's personal vision of the best works of short fiction published in the U.S. in his lifetime and features authors ranging from Paul Bowles, Flannery O'Connor, and James Baldwin to contemporary writers such as Amy Tan, T. Coraghessan Boyle, and David Leavitt.
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First Sentence
In the outskirts of the capital there was a low white house, very much like the other houses around it. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
In the outskirts of the capital there was a low white house, very much like the other houses around it. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A tasty American Buffet,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Granta Book of the American Short Story (Paperback)
A collection that clearly defines America's lasting contribution to the form. Richard Ford carefully canvasses the past fifty or so years of great, and often overlooked, writers. Missing, but not missed, are the staple short story writers like Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald. But, the brilliance of this collection is that it traces the trajectory of what these pillars of the form initiated. From Baldwin's jazzy, layered "Sonny's Blues" to the raw and devestating "What They Carried" by Tim O'Brien this is a must have for writers and lovers of great writing.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews) 9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A tasty American Buffet,
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Granta Book of the American Short Story (Paperback)
A collection that clearly defines America's lasting contribution to the form. Richard Ford carefully canvasses the past fifty or so years of great, and often overlooked, writers. Missing, but not missed, are the staple short story writers like Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald. But, the brilliance of this collection is that it traces the trajectory of what these pillars of the form initiated. From Baldwin's jazzy, layered "Sonny's Blues" to the raw and devestating "What They Carried" by Tim O'Brien this is a must have for writers and lovers of great writing.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great fiction, great price!,
By Marilyn Carder "Mara" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Granta Book of the American Short Story (Paperback)
The short stories are wonderfully written, and, because they are from the last fifty years, no archaic words or phrases get in the way of good story-telling. As most of these stories aren't included in the "typical" anthology (though many of the authors are), the reading experience is like spring rain, encouraging a fresh joy in the written word. The price is excellent, really inexpensive for an anthology.
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