Pt. 1. Basic elements of fiction -- Most dangerous game / Richard Connell ; And the rock cried out / Ray Bradbury ; The Manhunt / Daniel Curley ; The last day in the field / Caroline Gordon ; A Tree, a rock, a cloud / Carson McCullers -- pt. 2. Point of view -- The Horse Dealer's Daughter / D.H. Lawrence ; What we don't know hurts us / Mark Schorer ; Rain / W. Somerset Maugham ; The girls in their summer dresses / Irwin Shaw -- pt. 3. Honesty and dishonesty in fiction --De Mortuis / John Collier ; The Lottery / Shirley Jackson ; Necklace / Guy de Maupassant -- pt. 4. Symbol -- Girl / Meridel Le Sueur ; Portable phonograph / Walter Van Tilburg Clark ; Good country people / Flannery O'Connor ; Flowering Judas / Katherine Anne Porter -- Pt. 5. Humor, satire, and fantasy -- Catbird seat / James Thurber ; First Confession / Frank O'Connor ; Forks / J.F. Powers ; Other side of the hedge / E.M. Forster ; Adam and Eve and Pinch me ; A.E. Coppard -- pt. 6. Theme and variation -- Leader of the people / John Steinbeck ; That evening sun / William Faulkner ; Absolution / F. Scott Fitzgerald ; Short happy life of Francis Macomber / Ernest Hemingway -- pt. 7. More stories for study -- Tell-tale heart / Edgar Allen Poe ; My Kinsman, Major Molineux / Nathaniel Hawthorne ; Bartleby / Herman Melville ; Lament / Anton Chekhov ; Real Thing / Henry James; Herart of Darkness/ Joseph Conrad ; Open Boat / Stephen Crane; Gentleman from San Francisco / Ivan Bunin ; Little Cloud / James Joyce ; Petrified man / Eudora Welty ; Goodbye, my brother / John Cheever; Unspoiled reaction / Mary McCarthy ; Patented gate and the mean hamburger / Robert Penn Warren ; Who made yellow roses yellow? / John Updike ; Defender of the faith / Philip Roth.

"Perhaps the most significant and influential figure in this century's wave of American realism, Raymond Carver (1938-1988) is credited not only with reviving the short story as an artistically legitimate form, but also with perfecting minimalist fiction. His 1981 collection, What We Talk about When We Talk about Love, remains the standard against which minimalist literature is measured, and his numerous prize-winning and frequently anthologized stories have established him as the extender of a modernist tradition stretching from Chekhov through Joyce and Hemingway. In his later collections, such as Cathedral (1983) and Where I'm Calling From (1988), Carver surpasses even his own great achievement, setting a bold new path for his short fiction and intensifying the scholarly attention he'd first inspired with "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" (anthologized in Best American Short Stories of 1967)." "Moving chronologically through Carver's complete short fiction canon and examining key stories in depth, Ewing Campbell traces the author's development through and beyond literary minimalism, into the tradition of tragic allegory. He explores Carvers persistent use of myth and archetype; motifs of the grotesque; religious iconography; and oppressed, spiritually paralyzed characters. From the earliest stories through the latest, Campbell illuminates Carvers constant fascination with the way individuals connect or fail to connect with one another."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A brief biographical profile accompanies a detailed analysis of Capote's novels and short stories, and an assessment of his influence on modern literature.

This is a full-length study of Crane's short stories, tracing their formal development and relating Crane's work to the aesthetic principles of American modernism. As mirrors of his time, Crane's stories reflected the major forces that transformed American life between 1850 and 1900: the Civil War, industrialism and the rise of cities and slums, and the disappearance of the American frontier. Consequently, the predominant theme of much of Crane's work is the conflict between chaos and order, emphasizing what Crane saw as man's fragmented perception of reality. In his search for meaning in human existence, Crane turned to ritual in his late fiction. ISBN 0-8057-8315-6: $18.95.

"Joyce Carol Oates is often called America's most prolific living writer, but it is perhaps her versatility that is most astounding. Just as she is a revered novelist, playwright, poet, and critic, the short stories gathered in her 21 published collections - from By the North Gate (1963) to Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque (1994) - vary in theme and style, although all evoke the bedrock natural and social reality that has consistently informed her fiction." "In this comprehensive survey of Oates's stories, Greg Johnson selects eight of her collections that he considers most representative of her work and among her most successful books. He analyzes stories in which Oates experiments with form, genre, allusion, and Gothicism and presents postmodern allegories of American life. Separate chapters are devoted to Oates's early Eden County stories in By the North Gate and Upon the Sweeping Flood (1966), her stories focused on female experience in The Wheel of Love (1970) and The Goddess and Other Women (1974), her experimentation with fictional form and genre in Marriages and Infidelities (1972) and Night-Side (1977), and her recent work in Raven's Wing (1986) and Heat (1991), dealing with the psychology and culture of contemporary life." "The volume's second part presents a 1981 interview with Oates (conducted by Sanford Pinsker), as well as a copious selection of Oates's writing about her stories and the form generally - a discussion of her early stories; separate appraisals of "Funland," "Heat," "The Swimmers," and "Why Don't You Come Live with Me It's Time"; her response to the question "Is there a female voice?"; and her comments on the translation of short story into film. Part 3 consists of four critical essays - by scholars Marilyn C. Wesley, Daniel L. Zins, Robert McPhillips, and Gretchen Schulz - commissioned specifically for this volume, as well as previously published essays by William Abrahams, Elaine Showalter, and Elizabeth Pochoda." "Johnson's exploration of the stories he considers key to an understanding of Oates's mastery of the genre is essential reading for students of Oates's work and of the contemporary American short story."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Examines both periods of the Argentine writer's works--his early baroque style with elaborate plot construction, and his later more traditional narratives

Talma Gordon (1900) is a short story by Pauline E. Hopkins. Recognized as the first African American mystery story, Talma Gordon was originally published in the October 1900 edition of The Colored American Magazine, America’s first monthly periodical covering African American arts and culture. Combining themes of racial identity and passing with a locked room mystery plot, Hopkins weaves a masterful tale of conspiracy, suspicion, and murder. “When the trial was called Jeannette sat beside Talma in the prisoner’s dock; both were arrayed in deepest mourning, Talma was pale and careworn, but seemed uplifted, spiritualized, as it were. [...] She had changed much too: hollow cheeks, tottering steps, eyes blazing with fever, all suggestive of rapid and premature decay.” When Puritan descendant Jonathan Gordon is discovered murdered under suspicious circumstances, the ensuing trial implicates his own daughter Talma. Despite being declared innocent, the townsfolk are determined to believe that Talma conspired to have her father killed after he discovered her mixed racial heritage. Freed from the prospect of imprisonment, Talma is left with only her sister’s protection against the anger and violence of her neighbors. With this thrilling tale of murder and racial tension, Hopkins proves herself as a true pioneer of American literature, a woman whose talent and principles afforded her the vision necessary for illuminating the injustices of life in a nation founded on slavery and genocide. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Pauline E. Hopkins’ Talma Gordon is a classic work of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.

The turn to fiction as a social research practice is a natural extension of what many researchers and writers have long been doing. Patricia Leavy, a widely published qualitative researcher and a novelist, explores the overlaps and intersections between these two ways of understanding and describing human experience. She demonstrates the validity of literary experimentation to the qualitative researcher and how to incorporate these practices into research projects. Five short stories and excerpts from novellas and novels show these methods in action. This book is an essential methodological introduction for those interested in studying or practicing arts-based research.

An essential introduction to a rapidly growing field of study, The Fan Fiction Studies Reader gathers in one place the key foundational texts of the fan studies corpus, with a focus on fan fiction. Collected here are important texts by scholars whose groundbreaking work established the field and outlined some of its enduring questions. Editors Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse provide cogent introductions that place each piece in its historical and intellectual context, mapping the historical development of fan studies and suggesting its future trajectories. Organized into four thematic sections, the essays address fan-created works as literary artifacts; the relationship between fandom, identity, and feminism; fandom and affect; and the role of creativity and performance in fan activities. Considered as literary artifacts, fan works pose important questions about the nature of authorship, the meaning of “originality,” and modes of transmission. Sociologically, fan fiction is and long has been a mostly female enterprise, from the fanzines of the 1960s to online forums today, and this fact has shaped its themes and its standing among fans. The questions of how and why people become fans, and what the difference is between liking something and being a fan of it, have also drawn considerable scholarly attention, as has the question of how fans perform their fannish identities for diverse audiences. Thanks to the overlap between fan studies and other disciplines related to popular and cultural studies—including social, digital, and transmedia studies—an increasing number of scholars are turning to fan studies to engage their students. Fan fiction is the most extensively explored aspect of fan works and fan engagement, and so studies of it can often serve as a basis for addressing other aspects of fandom. These classic essays introduce the field’s key questions and some of its major figures. Those new to the field or in search of context for their own research will find this reader an invaluable resource.

The twelve Gothic tales of this collection span the nineteenth-century South and are from some of the most famous writers of the age, such as Edgar Allan Poe, to more recently rediscovered and now celebrated writers such as Kate Chopin and Charles Chesnutt, to the completely and unfairly obscure E. Levi Brown. Companion readings—some themselves quite chilling—are by celebrated writers and well-known historical figures, such as Thomas Jefferson, Charles Brockden Brown, Jacques Dessalines, and W. E. B DuBois. These readings place the fiction in the context of the South and the Caribbean: the revolution in Haiti, Nat Turner’s rebellion, the realities of slavery and the myths spun by its apologists, the aftermath of the Civil War, and the brutalities of Jim Crow laws.