The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher

by Hortense Calisher

The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher gathers short pieces that chart the author’s best-loved themes of mindful consciousness and social worlds. This collection includes one of her well-known New Yorker stories, “In Greenwich There Are Many Gravelled Walks,” in which a young man drops his mother off at a sanitarium and acquires a new friend who finally awakens him to the world. Also included are “The Sound of Waiting,” one of the chapters in the Elkin family saga; the chilling, Jamesian “The Scream on Fifty-seventh Street,” in which a New York widow hears a scream late one night but cannot decide how to investigate without appearing to her neighbors to have gone mad; and the nearly novella-length “The Summer Rebellion.”

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

502 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Hortense Calisher was an American writer of fiction.

Calisher involved her closely investigated, penetrating characters in complicated plotlines that unfold with shocks and surprises in allusive, nuanced language with a distinctively elegiac voice, sometimes compared with Eudora Welty, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Henry James. Critics generally considered Calisher a type of neo-realist and often both condemned and praised for her extensive explorations of characters and their social worlds. She was definitely at odds with the prevailing writing style of minimalism that characterized fiction writing in the 1970s and 1980s and that emphasized a sparse, non-romantic style with no room for expressionism or romanticism. As an anti-minimalist, Calisher was admired for her elliptical style in which more is hinted at than stated, and she was also praised as a social realist and critic in the vein of Honore Balzac and Edith Wharton.

Reviews

[Adina ( back from Vacay…slowly recovering) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5* rounded up
The rating is for the story Heartburn from the collection.

Read in Black Water 2 anthology together with The Short Story Group.

Unfortunately, this probably is going to be the last story I read from this anthology. I need a break from short stories. I lost interest in following the group some time ago, but I struggled to keep up at least for a bit. I guess I am moving in a different direction with my reading for now. However, I expect to return to short stories in the future.

What about this story? Someone tells another person that they have a small animal logged inside their chest and is moving. Then continues to share the incredible fantastic story of how he came to have this "affliction" It was one of the better stories, I believe.

[Cecily · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story, Heartburn, has a fairytale familiarity. A man goes to a neurologist and says:
“I have some kind of small animal lodged in my chest… Probably a form of newt or toad.”

I was reminded of when my little brother put a frog down the front of my swimming costume (and of the first Alien film). We were all in a shallow, outdoor pool, and the frog was slippery, wriggling, and scared. I certainly wasn’t enjoying it either... Ugh. All was well in the end.

The patient explains how he thinks his situation occurred and is anxious to know the doctor’s opinion.

There are some excellent turns of phrase (“Swollen with irritation, he was only half conscious of an uneasy, vestigial twitching of his ear muscles, which contracted now as they sometimes did when he listened to atonal music.”), but the story itself was predictable, albeit it was more about disbelief than belief.

Short story club

I read this in Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic, by Alberto Manguel, from which I’m reading one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 24 March 2025.

You can read this story in the group.

You can join the group here.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

He leído la historia Heartburn o El parásito con The Short Story Club y la verdad es que la he disfrutado bastante, es un poco predecible pero me ha mantenido intrigada e interesada todo el tiempo. No me importaría leer más cuentos de la autora.

[Sean Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite short story collections. Bits of these still come back to me from time to time.

[Petergiaquinta · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only "Heartburn," read with my GR short story group...a Twilight Zone-esque weird tale here that hearkens back to Hawthorne's "Bosom Serpent," perhaps...?

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an advanced electronic reading copy of this from the publisher via Net Galley.

This was an introduction to Calisher's writings for me, and while I appreciated her skills, I didn't particularly enjoy reading most of these stories, particularly not in one continuous span, making it somewhat difficult to review. I could envision this being a book I'd like having a copy on hand to read from in small doses, or when wanting to study some masterful (albeit convoluted) portrayal of character.

Calisher's stories are dense, and as it says in one of the introductions to this collection, you have to enjoy thinking in order to appreciate this. It can't simply be browses, or read lightly. The stories almost all feature family and social dynamics in well-to-do New York city families, told in wandering, elliptical and often dispassionately reminiscing voice. This style creates a certain disconnect between the inherent, detailed humanity of her characters and the obtuse, cold fashion those emotions are related. Not unlike reading an academic discourse on the history of some tragedy, the style makes things distant, whereas the events and people described beg for close proximity.

Verbose and full of flowery latinate vocabulary, with foreign phrases of the upper class flung about to convey sentiments and mots justes not easily translated into English, Callisher even comes across as pretentious, populated with pretentious characters. Yet, that is the kind of world she is writing about, and using the styles of that world to communicate some basic emotions and conditions.

Despite all the challenges of her style, Callisher still manages to write with an easily noticeable beauty and rhythm. Her paragraphs have a cadence, some extending long, but then followed by one short. Her phrasing and choice of specific words gives the Academic, dispassionate text a certain poetry that makes it a little more empathetic and relatable, most particularly in her use of alliteration.

The opening story to this collection was easily my favorite, it contained a 'plot' and character explorations beyond the mundane family interactions and social atmospheres of upper crust NYC. Speckled throughout were others that I found fantastic, but most began to feel tedious. If you have a fond regard for literary prowess or the subject of Callisher's writings (NYC) then this is just for you. If you simply enjoy a wide range of short stories and artistic writing then this may be something good to dip into on occasion without trying to barrel through.

[Jeff Hobbs]

(The stories are not listed in chronological order. They are notated according to the collections in which they originally appeared:
In the Absence of Angels (1951)--IAA
Tale of the Mirror (1962)--TM
Extreme Magic (1964)--EM)

Read so far:

In Greenwich there are many gravelled walks (IAA)--3
*Heartburn (IAA)--
*The night club in the woods (TM)--
Two colonials (EM)--
The hollow boy (TM)--
*The rehabilitation of Ginevra Leake (TM)--
The woman who was everybody (IAA)--
*A Christmas carillon (EM)--
Il plœ:r dã mõ kœ:r (EM)--3
*If you don't want to live I can't help you (EM)--
*A wreath for Miss Totten (IAA)--
Time, gentlemen! (TM)--
May-ry (TM)--
The coreopsis kid (TM)--
A box of ginger (IAA)--
The pool of Narcissus (IAA)--
The watchers (IAA)--
The gulf between (EM)--
The sound of waiting (IAA)--
Old stock (IAA)--
The rabbi's daughter (EM)--
*The middle drawer (IAA)--
The summer rebellion (uncollected)--
*What a thing, to keep a wolf in a cage! (TM)--
Songs my mother taught me (EM)--
So many rings to the show (TM)--
One of the chosen (IAA)--
Point of departure (IAA)--
Letitia, emeritus (IAA)--
The seacoast of Bohemia (TM)--
Mrs. Fay Dines on zebra (TM)--
Saturday night (TM)--
Little did I know (EM)--
Night riders of Northville (IAA)--
In the absence of angels (IAA)--3
The scream of Fifty-seventh Street (TM)--2

[Tinquerbelle]

1) In Greenwich There Are Many Gravelled Walks
2) Heartburn
3) The Night Club in the Woods
4) Two Colonials
5) The Hollow Boy
6) The Rehabilitation of Ginevra Leake
7) The Woman Who Was Everybody
8) A Christmas Carillon
9) Il Plae:r De Mo Koe:r
10) If You Don't Want to Live I Can't Help You
11) A Wreath for Miss Totten
12) Time, Gentlemen!
13) May-ry
14) The Coreopsis Kid
15) A Box of Ginger
16) The Pool of Narcissus
17) The Watchers
18) The Gulf Between
19) The Sound of Waiting
20) Old Stock
21) The Rabbi's Daughter
22) The Middle Drawer
23) The Summer Rebellion
24) What a Thing, to Keep a Wolf in a Cage!
25) Songs My Mother Taught Me
26) So Many Rings to the Show
27) One of the Chosen
28) Point of Departure
29) Letitia, Emeritus
30) The Seacoast of Bohemia
31) Mrs. Fay Dines on Zebra
32) Saturday Night
33) Little Did I Know
34) Night Riders of Northville
35) In the Absence of Angels
36) The Scream on Fifty-Seventh Street

[Tad Richards · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes you can get a lot from going under the radar of the major writers...I think it depends to some extent on the era. George Washington Cable is no Mark Twain or Bret Harte, but as a 19th Century regionalist he yields insights and delights all his own, even if some of it is tough going.

The 50s and 60s were such a golden age for the short story -- Cheever, Malamud, Updike, Salinger, Roth -- and reading Calisher, I'm just too much aware that she doesn't stack up. She's not filling in a niche that Cheever missed -- at least not from my perspective. That might change in 25 years, or be different now for a reader of a different age.

She taught at Iowa a few years before I got there, and by all accounts was an inspiring teacher.

[Martin Bihl · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first story in the collection - In Greenwich there are many gravelled walks - is amazing. there are other good stories in the collection as well, but that one stands head and shoulders above the rest.