Why I Like This Story - Jackson R. Bryer

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Résumé :
On the assumption that John Updike was correct when he asserted, in a 1978 letter to Joyce Carol Oates, that Nobody can read like a writer, Why I Like This Story presents brief essays by forty-eight leading American writers on their favorite short stories, explaining why they like them. The essays, which are personal, not scholarly, not only tell us much about the story selected, they also tell us a good deal about the author of the essay, about what elements of fiction he or she values. Among the writers whose stories are discussed are such American masters as James, Melville, Hemingway, O'Connor, Fitzgerald, Porter, Carver, Wright, Updike, Bellow, Salinger, Kincaid, Malamud, and Welty; but the book also includes pieces on stories by well-known practitioners such as Andre Dubus, Ellen Glasgow, Kay Boyle, Delmore Schwartz, George Garrett, Elizabeth Tallent, William Goyen, Jerome Weidman, Peter Matthiessen, Grace Paley, and William H. Gass, and relative newcomers such as Lorrie Moore, Kristin Valdez Quade, Phil Klay, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Edward P. Jones. Why I Like This Story will send readers to the library or bookstore to read or re-read the stories selected. Among the contributors to the book are Julia Alvarez, Andrea Barrett, Richard Bausch, Ann Beattie, Andre Dubus, George Garrett, William H. Gass, Julia Glass, Doris Grumbach, Jane Hamilton, Jill McCorkle, Alice McDermott, Clarence Major, Howard Norman, Annie Proulx, Joan Silber, Elizabeth Spencer, and Mako Yoshikawa. Editor Jackson R. Bryer is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Maryland.

Biographie:
Jackson R. Bryer

Sommaire:
Introduction - Jackson R. Bryer The Fourth Alarm by John Cheever - Lee K. Abbott A Father's Story by Andre Dubus - Elliot Ackerman Use of Force by William Carlos Williams - Julia Alvarez Leaving the Colonel by Molly Giles - Rilla Askew A Cautionary Tale by Deborah Eisenberg - Andrea Barrett The Wounded Soldier by George Garrett - Richard Bausch Consolation by Richard Bausch - Ann Beattie Where Is the Voice Coming From? by Eudora Welty - Doris Betts How Can I Tell You? by John O'Hara - Frederick Busch Triumph Over the Grave by Denis Johnson - Maud Casey No One's a Mystery by Elizabeth Tallent - Alan Cheuse Who Is It Can Tell Me Who I Am? by Gina Berriault - Kate Christensen Cathedral by Raymond Carver - Susan Coll The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud - Nicholas Delbanco Dare's Gift by Ellen Glasgow - R. H. W. Dillard The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien - Ellen Douglas In Another Country by Ernest Hemingway - Andre Dubus Like Life by Lorrie Moore - Pamela Erens Ghost and Flesh, Water and Dirt by William Goyen - George Garrett The Tree of Knowledge by Henry James - William H. Gass Sur by Ursula Le Guin - Molly Giles FRAGO by Phil Klay - Julia Glass My Father Sits in the Dark by Jerome Weidman - Herbert Gold The Jilting of Granny Weatherall by Katherine Anne Porter - Jack Greer The Bridegroom's Body by Kay Boyle - Doris Grumbach The Doorbell by Vladimir Nabokov - Olga Grushin Good Country People by Flannery O'Connor - A. R. Gurney Jubilee by Kirstin Valdez Quade - Jane Hamilton Winter Dreams by F. Scott Fitzgerald - Edmund Keeley In Dreams Begin Responsibilities by Delmore Schwartz - Joyce Kornblatt Goodbye and Good Luck by Grace Paley - Beverly Lowry Flight by John Updike - Jill McCorkle A Silver Dish by Saul Bellow - Alice McDermott Flying Home by Ralph Ellison - Clarence Major Blessed Assurance by Langston Hughes - Edward Kelsey Moore Big Black Good Man by Richard Wright - Sabina Murray Travelin Man by Peter Matthiessen - Howard Norman Pet Milk by Stuart Dybek - Leslie Pietrzyk The Pedersen Kid by William H. Gass - E. Annie Proulx Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville - Joanna Scott Old Boys, Old Girls by Edward P. Jones - Rion Amilcar Scott The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber - Mary Lee Settle Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin - Joan Silber The Laughing Man by J. D. Salinger - Elizabeth Spencer Girl by Jamaica Kincaid - Diana Wagman Fatherland: A Short Story by Viet Thanh Nguyen - Kao Kalia Yang The Pura Principle by Junot Diaz - Mako Yoshikawa Honeydew by Edith Pearlman - Mary Kay Zuravleff