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Fever
By turns subtle and intense, disturbing and elusive, the stories in this collection are ultimately connected by themes of memory and loss, reality and fabrication, and by a richless of language that rests lightly on its carefully foundation.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
6 people are currently reading
168 people want to read
About the author
John Edgar Wideman
93 books404 followersA widely-celebrated writer and the winner of many literary awards, he is the first to win the International PEN/Faulkner Award twice: in 1984 for Sent for You Yesterday and in 1990 for Philadelphia Fire. In 2000 he won the O. Henry Award for his short story "Weight", published in The Callaloo Journal.
In March, 2010, he self-published "Briefs," a new collection of microstories, on Lulu.com. Stories from the book have already been selected for the O Henry Prize for 2010 and the Best African-American Fiction 2010 award.
His nonfiction book Brothers and Keepers received a National Book Award. He grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and much of his writing is set there, especially in the Homewood neighborhood of the East End. He graduated from Pittsburgh's Peabody High School, then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he became an All-Ivy League forward on the basketball team. He was the second African-American to win a Rhodes Scholarship (New College, Oxford University, England), graduating in 1966. He also graduated from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Critics Circle nomination, and his memoir Fatheralong was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant. Wideman was chosen as winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1998, for outstanding achievement in that genre. In 1997, his novel The Cattle Killing won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction.
He has taught at the University of Wyoming, University of Pennsylvania, where he founded and chaired the African American Studies Department, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers. He currently teaches at Brown University, and he sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.
In March, 2010, he self-published "Briefs," a new collection of microstories, on Lulu.com. Stories from the book have already been selected for the O Henry Prize for 2010 and the Best African-American Fiction 2010 award.
His nonfiction book Brothers and Keepers received a National Book Award. He grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and much of his writing is set there, especially in the Homewood neighborhood of the East End. He graduated from Pittsburgh's Peabody High School, then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he became an All-Ivy League forward on the basketball team. He was the second African-American to win a Rhodes Scholarship (New College, Oxford University, England), graduating in 1966. He also graduated from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Critics Circle nomination, and his memoir Fatheralong was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant. Wideman was chosen as winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1998, for outstanding achievement in that genre. In 1997, his novel The Cattle Killing won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction.
He has taught at the University of Wyoming, University of Pennsylvania, where he founded and chaired the African American Studies Department, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers. He currently teaches at Brown University, and he sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
June 16, 2025
In most of these twelve short stories Wideman employs unnamed narrators/characters, along with shifting POVs, so rereading paragraphs to get my bearings was sometimes essential. Complex interracial relationships are portrayed in techniques ranging from the rambling speech of a storyteller to a more structured “meditation” (his description for the title story). Blind musicians are another feature, such as in “Concert,” which I liked for an Escher-like description and its surreal way of describing the receiving of bad news. Even with the few stories that seemed slight, I always enjoyed his prose.
Before getting into the story “Surfiction,” named after a postmodern literary movement, I found online and read the story it references: “Deep Sleeper” by Charles W. Chestnutt, a 19th-c writer who identified as black, though he could've chosen to identify as white (according to Wikipedia). Chestnutt uses a white voice as a framing device for his story, and I understand why all of this likely intrigued and influenced Wideman.
The title story reminded me of Andrea Barrett's novella “Ship Fever.” The two stories cover the same kind of narrative territory, though their prose styles are very different. Barrett has a more “traditional” style, while Wideman uses "stream-of-consciousness" (for lack of better words). Like with the Barrett, “Fever” was interesting to read with our recent past (and present) in mind.
Before getting into the story “Surfiction,” named after a postmodern literary movement, I found online and read the story it references: “Deep Sleeper” by Charles W. Chestnutt, a 19th-c writer who identified as black, though he could've chosen to identify as white (according to Wikipedia). Chestnutt uses a white voice as a framing device for his story, and I understand why all of this likely intrigued and influenced Wideman.
The title story reminded me of Andrea Barrett's novella “Ship Fever.” The two stories cover the same kind of narrative territory, though their prose styles are very different. Barrett has a more “traditional” style, while Wideman uses "stream-of-consciousness" (for lack of better words). Like with the Barrett, “Fever” was interesting to read with our recent past (and present) in mind.
July 24, 2019
Five stars is for the titular story in this collection. Everything else is... interesting.
October 3, 2025
4.5 I got a little lost in the shifting perspectives more than once although it was a great adventure. The kind of writing that makes you love writing. ‘Hostages’ made me recheck the release date, and the style and tone of ‘Surfiction’ and ‘Rock River’ reminded me of some of my favorite short story authors. But the last four stories made this the book of the year for me.
September 4, 2022
the individual stories are generally fine, focusing on the issues for which the author is normally associated. the titular story is strong, a concordance of plague and slavery.
December 6, 2012
The most distinctive feature of the title story is its structure. The story is broken up into a number of passages. A few are as short as one sentence long while the longest is six pages long. The passages vary considerably in their tone and point of view. The first few pages establish this variability through short passages of one- or two-paragraphs in length.
The first passage is told from the third-person-limited perspective of a man staring out the window of a ship, comparing the November trees to “barren women starved for love and they’d stripped off all of their clothes.” This man’s identity is not made clear, but he seems primarily to function as an observer of the natural world to highlight that the story takes place in autumn, the season in which trees die. This sets the tone for the season of death caused by the yellow fever epidemic.
The next passage shifts to a first-person-plural narrator who addresses the reader directly. The transition from one perspective to another is made immediately clear by the use of italics in all but the first word of the passage. In contrast to the first passage with its focus on visual impression from out a window, this passage takes a broader look at the impact of the disease by summarizing the symptoms. This perspective appears again in the fourth passage (which similarly uses italics, but not necessarily the “we”), which discusses how the disease progresses differently in different people.
In the third passage, the story is told from a third-person-omniscient perspective. This narrator knows where and when the outbreak began, when and why it stopped, where different classes of people went to avoid it, and “the terrible progress of the disease.” Unlike the previous passages that glimpse into the minds of those close to these events, this passage is told in the all-knowing voice of the historian looking back.
In a similar vein, the fifth and seventh passages are told as dictionary entries, complete with etymology. Devoid of emotion or even characters, these passages present a clinical description of the horrors presented more colorfully in other parts of the story. As with the italics in the second and fourth passages, the dictionary format jumps off the page and signals a changing perspective. The entries for “Yellow fever” and “Dengue” in passage five are presented in separate paragraphs, which makes this the first passage to exceed one paragraph in length.
The sixth passage returns to the third-person-limited perspective of the first passage, but uses present tense instead of past, and grants access to the thoughts of a different character here. This passage belongs to Esu, a slave in the hold of the ship. In contract to the clinical language of the fifth passage, we get opinion and description in this passage, when Esu thinks of “this last pitiful refuge where he skids in foul puddles of waste.” This shift in perspective is signaled by the words “he wonders” in the first sentence.
Wideman’s frequent shifts in tone and perspective work together to create a rich understanding of the world of his story. Yet there is also a danger that these shifts could confuse the reader. Wideman effectively avoids this danger by signaling clearly when a shift is taking place. Without even concentrating on the words, I could see the shifts on the page because the passages look different from one another. This prepared me for the different viewpoints which made the story so unique.
The first passage is told from the third-person-limited perspective of a man staring out the window of a ship, comparing the November trees to “barren women starved for love and they’d stripped off all of their clothes.” This man’s identity is not made clear, but he seems primarily to function as an observer of the natural world to highlight that the story takes place in autumn, the season in which trees die. This sets the tone for the season of death caused by the yellow fever epidemic.
The next passage shifts to a first-person-plural narrator who addresses the reader directly. The transition from one perspective to another is made immediately clear by the use of italics in all but the first word of the passage. In contrast to the first passage with its focus on visual impression from out a window, this passage takes a broader look at the impact of the disease by summarizing the symptoms. This perspective appears again in the fourth passage (which similarly uses italics, but not necessarily the “we”), which discusses how the disease progresses differently in different people.
In the third passage, the story is told from a third-person-omniscient perspective. This narrator knows where and when the outbreak began, when and why it stopped, where different classes of people went to avoid it, and “the terrible progress of the disease.” Unlike the previous passages that glimpse into the minds of those close to these events, this passage is told in the all-knowing voice of the historian looking back.
In a similar vein, the fifth and seventh passages are told as dictionary entries, complete with etymology. Devoid of emotion or even characters, these passages present a clinical description of the horrors presented more colorfully in other parts of the story. As with the italics in the second and fourth passages, the dictionary format jumps off the page and signals a changing perspective. The entries for “Yellow fever” and “Dengue” in passage five are presented in separate paragraphs, which makes this the first passage to exceed one paragraph in length.
The sixth passage returns to the third-person-limited perspective of the first passage, but uses present tense instead of past, and grants access to the thoughts of a different character here. This passage belongs to Esu, a slave in the hold of the ship. In contract to the clinical language of the fifth passage, we get opinion and description in this passage, when Esu thinks of “this last pitiful refuge where he skids in foul puddles of waste.” This shift in perspective is signaled by the words “he wonders” in the first sentence.
Wideman’s frequent shifts in tone and perspective work together to create a rich understanding of the world of his story. Yet there is also a danger that these shifts could confuse the reader. Wideman effectively avoids this danger by signaling clearly when a shift is taking place. Without even concentrating on the words, I could see the shifts on the page because the passages look different from one another. This prepared me for the different viewpoints which made the story so unique.
February 20, 2008
Worth it for the title story alone, which is a masterpiece.
November 16, 2017
Exceptional talent. Learned much from these stories. Surprising since they're so old (30+ years?)--but they really hold up. This a good collection to read if you're looking to study stories that are deftly oblique and dole out clues without being too obvious.
May 2, 2023
I wanted to like these stories, but found that I enjoyed only a couple of them. The Goodreads rating was very good, so I am of the opinion that I was not part of the target audience.
Please don't decide not to read this book based on my review.
Please don't decide not to read this book based on my review.
May 20, 2023
I'm not capable of writing a review of this collection of short stories, but then I don't have to since my friend Teresa has done it for me.
You can read her excellent review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
You can read her excellent review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
March 14, 2017
Wideman's talent for description and breadth of reference is on display here, but in a dozen stories over 160 pages there's little chance for character to development, and next to no dialogue. The peripatetic result is only intermittently engaging.
April 16, 2024
3.5? idk. This is a slender and sinewy collection of stories. Fever is incredible, fervent and dreamlike throughout. John Edgar Wideman is obviously a genius but at points it felt too cerebral - I was lost reading Surfiction. The lack of quotation marks makes things interesting… Lots of positives though, a totally unique experience. The opener is a cool breeze on a sunny day - sweet, heartfelt and whimsical. Statue of Liberty is weird and creepy in the best ways. Valaida and Concert are honorable mentions for me. I think Hostages was my favorite along with the title story Fever, both really well done. I’m looking forward to reading more from this unorthodox, enthralling author.
January 24, 2008
Wideman may be the finest American writer no one's ever heard of. Much of his early work has been allowed to run out of print and fade into obscurity; he remains a critical darling, popping up in _The Best American Short Stories_ and editing black-literature anthologies, yet he's never found a popular audience. Which is too bad, because Wideman's got a lot to say.
Wideman covers much the same ground as Graham Swift-- the relationships between two human beings, whoever those two human beings may be. Wideman tends a little more towards the family side of things than does Swift, leading to a bit more variation on the theme, but the theme usually stays the same, how relationships end. They do not all end badly, by any means, as they do in Swift and so many other authors. They do not all end within the scope of the stories presented. But hanging over Wideman's work is always the feeling that relationships between people _will_ end, somewhere along the line.
As in Swift, though, the similarity of tone and mood to be found in the various stories in this collection don't make it monotonous. Wideman gives us an interesting array of characters to examine, puts them into everyday situations, then throws something into the mix to jazz it up a little-- a blind man who never misses a shot from the free-throw line, a pianist who won't stop describing a dream long enough for his brother to tell him of the death of their mother (because, we can tell, he is already aware), etc. Wideman has a keen ear for the natural flow of language, and it both heightens his dialogue and keeps the descriptive parts of the stories flowing.
The one place Wideman does falter is in letting the message override the storytelling in places. The title story in this collection works when Wideman is painting a scene, just as all his other stories work, but every once in a while the agenda gets in the way and the story flattens into polemic. Wideman never, though, allows the polemic to take over completely, and he's always able to successfully pull himself back from the brink. (In his defense, the ending of "Fever" is fantastic, a truly strong piece of writing, that more than makes up for the story's faults.)
As with most of the books Wideman published before 1991, this is out of print at present. However, it's worth hunting down. A wonderful introduction to a wonderful author. *** 1/2
Wideman covers much the same ground as Graham Swift-- the relationships between two human beings, whoever those two human beings may be. Wideman tends a little more towards the family side of things than does Swift, leading to a bit more variation on the theme, but the theme usually stays the same, how relationships end. They do not all end badly, by any means, as they do in Swift and so many other authors. They do not all end within the scope of the stories presented. But hanging over Wideman's work is always the feeling that relationships between people _will_ end, somewhere along the line.
As in Swift, though, the similarity of tone and mood to be found in the various stories in this collection don't make it monotonous. Wideman gives us an interesting array of characters to examine, puts them into everyday situations, then throws something into the mix to jazz it up a little-- a blind man who never misses a shot from the free-throw line, a pianist who won't stop describing a dream long enough for his brother to tell him of the death of their mother (because, we can tell, he is already aware), etc. Wideman has a keen ear for the natural flow of language, and it both heightens his dialogue and keeps the descriptive parts of the stories flowing.
The one place Wideman does falter is in letting the message override the storytelling in places. The title story in this collection works when Wideman is painting a scene, just as all his other stories work, but every once in a while the agenda gets in the way and the story flattens into polemic. Wideman never, though, allows the polemic to take over completely, and he's always able to successfully pull himself back from the brink. (In his defense, the ending of "Fever" is fantastic, a truly strong piece of writing, that more than makes up for the story's faults.)
As with most of the books Wideman published before 1991, this is out of print at present. However, it's worth hunting down. A wonderful introduction to a wonderful author. *** 1/2
December 7, 2019
What a vicious little book. I picked this up to be a lighter read between longer books I'm in the middle of, little did I know the impacted, nearly hallucinatory style of this book would be even harder to unpack than the other things I was reading. I don't know where the critics have been hiding John Edgar Wideman—the stories in this collection vary in style from more or less straightforward lyrical realism to high modernism to post-modernism to some truly avant garde experimentation the likes of which I haven't really encountered elsewhere. Race, family and history are major topics of discussion throughout, but the probing of intra- and interracial conflicts goes beyond black and white into much muddier racial waters that I'll let others discover for themselves.
The writing is terse and beautiful, often disturbing and often nearly indecipherable. The majority of these stories seem to move backwards from a clue the way improvisers do, spiraling or telescoping gradually outward until one sentence at the very ending makes all the clues before it snap into place. Other times, this doesn't happen—instead, Wideman's detached eye will pop into one character's head, pop out, turn around and look at that character's face, pop into another character's head, jump back 1000s of years to pop into another character's head who faced a similar predicament, jump into God's mind and pop back into the first character within the span of 2-3 pages. Somehow it often doesn't feel forced.
It's not the easiest or most pleasant read, but reading this book felt like cracking part of the American literary genome that scientists had been trying for years to understand. Many of the stories are great—"The State of Liberty," "Surfiction," and "Rock River" are all standouts but the titular "Fever" deserves a place among the best American short stories, period.
The writing is terse and beautiful, often disturbing and often nearly indecipherable. The majority of these stories seem to move backwards from a clue the way improvisers do, spiraling or telescoping gradually outward until one sentence at the very ending makes all the clues before it snap into place. Other times, this doesn't happen—instead, Wideman's detached eye will pop into one character's head, pop out, turn around and look at that character's face, pop into another character's head, jump back 1000s of years to pop into another character's head who faced a similar predicament, jump into God's mind and pop back into the first character within the span of 2-3 pages. Somehow it often doesn't feel forced.
It's not the easiest or most pleasant read, but reading this book felt like cracking part of the American literary genome that scientists had been trying for years to understand. Many of the stories are great—"The State of Liberty," "Surfiction," and "Rock River" are all standouts but the titular "Fever" deserves a place among the best American short stories, period.
December 14, 2011
Fever by John Edgar Wideman is a collection of twelve short stories written in an extremely experimental style. The plots of the stories tend to be about a moment of depression or struggle in the life of the main character. Wideman focuses on themes of human depravity and desperation, and the collection ends with the story “Fever” which focuses on the outbreak of Yellow Fever in 1779. Other stories focus on the holocaust or rape or the ending of a marriage. The collection’s themes are pretty depressing.
This book was really hard to read. Without analyzing this book in class, I would have had a hard time understanding many of the stories. It was very interesting to look closely at these stories. It takes a lot of brain power to examine these stories, and it’s definitely worth it. Wideman’s writing is complex and interwoven and it is necessary to look closely at the text. After a while, we discovered Wideman’s emphasis on storytelling. Each plot involves an aspect of storytelling. It’s important to think about the narrator and their point of view, and many characters in the stories are storytellers themselves. With this collection, Wideman is asking if stories can change a person. Wideman uses complex themes and plots to make the reader think about how the story itself is affecting theme. The collection is extremely interesting to talk about, and I would recommend it to any literature enthusiast.
This book was really hard to read. Without analyzing this book in class, I would have had a hard time understanding many of the stories. It was very interesting to look closely at these stories. It takes a lot of brain power to examine these stories, and it’s definitely worth it. Wideman’s writing is complex and interwoven and it is necessary to look closely at the text. After a while, we discovered Wideman’s emphasis on storytelling. Each plot involves an aspect of storytelling. It’s important to think about the narrator and their point of view, and many characters in the stories are storytellers themselves. With this collection, Wideman is asking if stories can change a person. Wideman uses complex themes and plots to make the reader think about how the story itself is affecting theme. The collection is extremely interesting to talk about, and I would recommend it to any literature enthusiast.
January 2, 2008
This was a book I picked up at one of those public library book sales, mainly just because I'd heard that Wideman teaches at Brown. It turned out to be not a bad read, though a little headier and more experimental than what I was in the mood for (especially when reading in 10 minute spurts on the MRT and during lunch breaks). The comparisons to Faulkner and Woolf on the book jacket should have clued me in. My favorite stories (like the opening piece, "Doc's Story") were just stories, plain and simple, with an impeccable sense of place and voice.
February 22, 2016
I just love Wideman's writing. This early collection of stories features some authorial showing off, but ranges widely in mood and character. There's an emotional payoff to just about each story here, and none outstay their welcome. That all said, a better place to start with Wideman is probably one of the Homewood novels, e.g., SENT FOR YOU YESTERDAY.
April 11, 2016
I know Wideman is quite the big-name in the literary world, but I could not get into these 12 stories. The style is too experimentalist for my liking - I'm all for trying storytelling in a new way, but not in such a way that I have no idea who is talking or what is happening or where or when or how. Prose was really lovely, though, when I followed it. Intense and lyrical and rich.
June 3, 2008
lots of nice stuff, and as an early book, lots of playing/experimenting, which is worth it to see on its own. The title story is fantastic, as is the story Valaida.
October 19, 2010
This collection is so very, very good that I have left the final story unread because I don't want to have finished this book!
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