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Great Tales of City Dwellers
Cities are the jungles of the human animal. Here - in flophouses and swank hotels, on streetcorners and in penthouses - the city's bizarre and savage drama is acted out by men and women seeking each other in a wasteland of passion and illusion in much the same way the tiger seeks his prey in another wilderness. Here are America's foremost writers telling the stories of America's greatest cities.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1955
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 12, 2012
One-word reviews of each story, added as I read them, followed by my inevitable elaboration.
Nelson Algren, "How the Devil Came Down Division Street": Classic. The only time I can recall Algren dabbling in the supernatural (though the ghost was likely a figment of the characters' imaginations).
Conrad Aiken, "The Night Before Prohibition": Slow-starting. Too much exposition early on, but a strong finish set against the backdrop of the chaos of the last night of legal drinking, which is also the last night for the two erstwhile lovers.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "A Millionaire's Girl": Overstuffed. Too much narrative in too few pages - this seems more like the framework for a novel than a short story.
Budd Schulberg, "A Foxhole in Washington": Limbo. Two military officers meet meet in a D.C. hotel bar again and again, pretending they're about to be shipped overseas and are on the cusp of greatness.
Carson McCullers, "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud": Vivid. The setting of the cafe, and the tension between the characters, is impeccably described.
William Saroyan, "Ever Fall In Love With a Midget?": Meandering. Two guys talking in a bar, or more accurately one guy blathering on and on while the other inexplicably fails to slap the other into coherence.
Joseph Heller, "World Full of Great Cities": Pulp. A rich but unhappy married couple tries to hire a teenaged boy for nefarious purposes.
Delmore Schwartz, "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities": Surreal. The narrator dreams of watching his parents' courtship unfold on a movie screen in a crowded theater, finds himself powerless to stop the trainwreck he knows will ensue between them, but can't look away.
Dorothy Parker, "From the Diary of a New York Lady": Caustic. Parker relentlessly lampoons the monotonously pointless life of a big-city socialite.
Vincent Patrick Malahan, "The Duchess": Sly. Delightful and subtly funny domestic piece. Familiar but ultimately surprising.
William Carlos Williams, "The Girl With a Pimply Face": Flat. Terse, almost hardboiled prose. Not at all what I expected from a poet like Williams. And not a pleasant story either.
Alice Denham, "The Deal": Conflicted. A Vegas casino caricaturist weighs selling her body for the good of her artistic soul. The story grabbed me from the first paragraph and didn't let go.
Thomas Wolfe, "The Hollow Men": Sprawling. Wolfe uses all of America as the backdrop to examine the life of one man - a suicide victim in Brooklyn - who defies the faceless anonymity of bustling American life with his desperate final act.
Pietro di Donato, "Christ in Concrete": Graphic. On Good Friday, the storied day of self-sacrifice, a team of immigrant cement masons make their own unwitting sacrifice.
James T. Farrell, "Meet the Girls": Bleak. Harrowing, hopeless portrait of alcoholism and delusion. Not artfully written, though maybe lyricism would have softened the narrative too much.
Nelson Algren, "How the Devil Came Down Division Street": Classic. The only time I can recall Algren dabbling in the supernatural (though the ghost was likely a figment of the characters' imaginations).
Conrad Aiken, "The Night Before Prohibition": Slow-starting. Too much exposition early on, but a strong finish set against the backdrop of the chaos of the last night of legal drinking, which is also the last night for the two erstwhile lovers.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "A Millionaire's Girl": Overstuffed. Too much narrative in too few pages - this seems more like the framework for a novel than a short story.
Budd Schulberg, "A Foxhole in Washington": Limbo. Two military officers meet meet in a D.C. hotel bar again and again, pretending they're about to be shipped overseas and are on the cusp of greatness.
Carson McCullers, "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud": Vivid. The setting of the cafe, and the tension between the characters, is impeccably described.
William Saroyan, "Ever Fall In Love With a Midget?": Meandering. Two guys talking in a bar, or more accurately one guy blathering on and on while the other inexplicably fails to slap the other into coherence.
Joseph Heller, "World Full of Great Cities": Pulp. A rich but unhappy married couple tries to hire a teenaged boy for nefarious purposes.
Delmore Schwartz, "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities": Surreal. The narrator dreams of watching his parents' courtship unfold on a movie screen in a crowded theater, finds himself powerless to stop the trainwreck he knows will ensue between them, but can't look away.
Dorothy Parker, "From the Diary of a New York Lady": Caustic. Parker relentlessly lampoons the monotonously pointless life of a big-city socialite.
Vincent Patrick Malahan, "The Duchess": Sly. Delightful and subtly funny domestic piece. Familiar but ultimately surprising.
William Carlos Williams, "The Girl With a Pimply Face": Flat. Terse, almost hardboiled prose. Not at all what I expected from a poet like Williams. And not a pleasant story either.
Alice Denham, "The Deal": Conflicted. A Vegas casino caricaturist weighs selling her body for the good of her artistic soul. The story grabbed me from the first paragraph and didn't let go.
Thomas Wolfe, "The Hollow Men": Sprawling. Wolfe uses all of America as the backdrop to examine the life of one man - a suicide victim in Brooklyn - who defies the faceless anonymity of bustling American life with his desperate final act.
Pietro di Donato, "Christ in Concrete": Graphic. On Good Friday, the storied day of self-sacrifice, a team of immigrant cement masons make their own unwitting sacrifice.
James T. Farrell, "Meet the Girls": Bleak. Harrowing, hopeless portrait of alcoholism and delusion. Not artfully written, though maybe lyricism would have softened the narrative too much.
May 25, 2025
A very mixed bag, but a good introduction to some of the writers from the period.
The stories are so loosely connected they pretty well aren't.
My favourite was the first story by James T Farrell and the book never got that good again. Going to read a book of his now.
The stories are so loosely connected they pretty well aren't.
My favourite was the first story by James T Farrell and the book never got that good again. Going to read a book of his now.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews