The Oxford Book of American Short
Stories
Strangely Excellent
How ironic, Joyce Carol Oates writes in her introduction to this marvelous
collection, that in our age of rapid mass-production and the easy
proliferation of consumer products, the richness and diversity of the
American literary imagination should be so misrepresented in most
anthologies. Why, she asks, when writers such as Samuel Clemens, F.
Scott Fitzgerald, Eudora Welty, Flannery OConnor, Saul Bellow, and John
Updike have among them written hundreds of short stories, do anthologists
settle on the same two or three titles by each author again and again? Isnt
the implicit promise of an anthology that it will, or aspires to, present
something different, unexpected? In The Oxford Book of American Short
Stories, Joyce Carol Oates offers a sweeping survey of American short
fiction, in a collection of fifty-six tales that combines classic works with
many different, unexpected gems, and that invites readers to explore a
wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers. Some
selections simply cant be improved on, Oates admits, and she happily
includes such time-honored works as Irvings Rip Van Winkle, Poes The
Tell-Tale Heart, and Hemingways A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. But
alongside these classics, Oates introduces such little-known stories as
Mark Twains Cannibalism in the Cars, a story that reveals a darker side to
his humor (That morning we had Morgan of Alabama for breakfast. He was
one of the finest men I ever sat down to...a perfect gentleman, and
singularly juicy). From Melville come the juxtaposed tales The Paradise of
Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids, of which Oates says, Only Melville
could have fashioned out of real events...such harrowing and dreamlike
allegorical fiction. From Flannery OConnor we find A Late Encounter With
the Enemy, and from John Cheever, The Death of Justina, one of
Cheevers own favorites, though rarely anthologized. The reader will also
delight in the range of authors found here, from Charles W. Chesnutt, Jean
Toomer, and Sarah Orne Jewett, to William Carlos Williams, Kate Chopin,
and Zora Neale Hurston. Contemporary artists abound, including Bharati
Mukherjee and Amy Tan, Alice Adams and David Leavitt, Bobbie Ann

Mason and Tim OBrien, Louise Erdrich and John Edgar Wideman. Oates
provides fascinating introductions to each writer, blending biographical
information with her own trenchant observations about their work, plus a
long introductory essay, in which she offers the fruit of years of reflection
on a genre in which she herself is a master. This then is a book of
surprises, a fascinating portrait of American short fiction, as filtered through
the sensibility of a major modern writer.
Personal Review: The Oxford Book of American Short Stories
"The Oxford Book of American Short Stories," edited by Joyce Carol
Oates, is an impressive anthology. The editor herself is well-known as a
master writer of short stories, so you know that she has insights into the
genre.This is a truly sweeping anthology. The authors (56 altogether)
range chronologically from Washington Irving (1783-1859) to Pinckney
Benedict (b. 1964). Many of the "giants" of U.S. literature, among them a
number of Nobel and Pulitzer recipients, are included: Herman Melville
("The Paradise of Bachelors..."), Edgar Allan Poe ("The Tell-Tale Heart"),
Edith Wharton ("A Journey"), Saul Bellow (Something to Remember Me
By"), etc.In her introduction, Oates notes that one of her goals in this
anthology was to present "[f]amiliar names, unfamiliar titles." Thus, it is
rewarding to see stories like "Cannibalism in the Cars," by Samuel
Clemens (Mark Twain). But she does, in some cases, include an author's
best-known story (like Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper").
A good balance overall.Oates also includes many authors who represent
ethnic currents in U.S. literature: African-American, Jewish, Native
American, Latina, and Asian-American. There are also a number of
"regional" writers.There is a wide variety of themes and stylistic
approaches represented in this book. I was particularly interested in those
stories that represent various forms of American vernacular speech: Jean
Toomer's "Blood-Burning Moon," Eudora Welty's "Where Is That Voice
Coming From?", etc. I was also pleased at the inclusion of one of Ray
Bradbury's masterful science fiction tales (the haunting "There Will Come
Soft Rains").Obviously, an anthology of this nature will not please
everybody perfectly; I'm sure many readers will name favorite stories and
authors whom they would have liked to have seen included in this
collection. Personally, I would have added a story each by Alice Walker,
Hisaye Yamamoto, Samuel Delany, H.P. Lovecraft, and Octavia Butler.
But overall, this is a fine anthology, good both for classroom use and
individual recreational reading.
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