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Short Stories: A Study in Pleasure.
496 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1961
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 28, 2012
Going to a book sale by the San Francisco Public Library on a foggy Thursday evening in 2011, I picked up three books for 50 cents each, including "Short Stories: A Study in Pleasure," edited by Sean O’Faolain, himself an Irish short story writer and novelist. The 1961 volume contains 28 short stories, mostly from English-language authors, plus a few French and Russian writers. The names range from the familiar (Ernest Hemingway, Eudora Welty, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Joyce, Anton Chekhov) to the less familiar (J.F. Powers, Caroline Gordon) to a few writers I wasn’t familiar with (Dan Jacobson, Elizabeth Bowen, A.E. Coppard).
Appended to each of the short stories are comments and/or questions by O’Faolain, suggesting the book may have been intended as a college textbook.
O’Faolain’s observations about one of the world’s most famous short stories, Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” were, I thought, especially interesting. He writes, “Here is a story, if there ever was one, with what are called ‘unsuspected depths.’ A reader might, in a tired moment, go through it casually, unaffected, or at any rate not much affected, and if asked afterward what it was all about have some trouble in giving a meaningful answer. ...”
“Age, death, despair, love, the boredom of life, two elderly men seeking sleep and forgetfulness, and one still young enough to feel passion,” O’Faolain writes, “cast into an hour and a place whose silence and emptiness, soon to become more silent and more empty still – it creates in us, at first, a sad mood in which patience and futility feebly strive with one another, involve us, mesmerize us. Grimness is in the offing. Hemingway’s kindness and tenderness save us from that. For Hemingway, deep down, is one of the kindest and most tender of writers.”
In all of the literary criticism that I have read about Hemingway over the decades, I had never read anyone call his writing kind or tender. But the statement is true when one thinks about it – even if Hemingway the person was often not kind or tender – and a genuine insight.
The one story that surprised me with its excellence of writing and sympathetic characters was by a writer I had never heard of, A.E. Coppard. “The Higgler” of 1948, with its undertones of Thomas Hardy in its look at about rural England, shows a psychological acuity that draws the reader into this tale of “what might have been."
This book will indeed be a pleasure for those readers who appreciate good short stories from a variety of writers.
Appended to each of the short stories are comments and/or questions by O’Faolain, suggesting the book may have been intended as a college textbook.
O’Faolain’s observations about one of the world’s most famous short stories, Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” were, I thought, especially interesting. He writes, “Here is a story, if there ever was one, with what are called ‘unsuspected depths.’ A reader might, in a tired moment, go through it casually, unaffected, or at any rate not much affected, and if asked afterward what it was all about have some trouble in giving a meaningful answer. ...”
“Age, death, despair, love, the boredom of life, two elderly men seeking sleep and forgetfulness, and one still young enough to feel passion,” O’Faolain writes, “cast into an hour and a place whose silence and emptiness, soon to become more silent and more empty still – it creates in us, at first, a sad mood in which patience and futility feebly strive with one another, involve us, mesmerize us. Grimness is in the offing. Hemingway’s kindness and tenderness save us from that. For Hemingway, deep down, is one of the kindest and most tender of writers.”
In all of the literary criticism that I have read about Hemingway over the decades, I had never read anyone call his writing kind or tender. But the statement is true when one thinks about it – even if Hemingway the person was often not kind or tender – and a genuine insight.
The one story that surprised me with its excellence of writing and sympathetic characters was by a writer I had never heard of, A.E. Coppard. “The Higgler” of 1948, with its undertones of Thomas Hardy in its look at about rural England, shows a psychological acuity that draws the reader into this tale of “what might have been."
This book will indeed be a pleasure for those readers who appreciate good short stories from a variety of writers.
September 13, 2023
“I have tried to suggest that one of the most intelligent ways to read short stories is to try to assess the quality of a story by assessing, or at least being aware of, the quality of the pleasure it gives,” says writer/critic Sean O’Faolain. He categorizes these pleasures to include: the recognition of the familiar, the good yarn, moral shock, identification, humor, the imaginative flight, fine effects, and the extension of sympathies.
O’Faolain gathers 28 stories, most by authors you’ve probably at least heard of, following each with comments and questions. It all feels kind of like a college lit class, but that’s expected. I’m grateful I’m not being tested.
I was familiar with about half a dozen stories here. Those sixish pieces are probably the most anthologized, so it’s not a coincidence I most enjoyed them. Put together in 1961, this collection could have stood with a little more diversity, not just in terms of the authors represented but also all that entails. Eudora Welty’s “Why I Live at the P.O.”, for instance, jumps out as being not like the others, in an energizing way. Short Stories: A Study in Pleasure could have used more of these. Surely O’Faolain could’ve presented stories that were both more of a variety and that served as examples of his pleasure principles.
Ultimately I would’ve been better off digging up the stories individually and reading them in another context. Here they are:
The Outstation — W. Somerset Maugham
The Chorus Girl — Anton Chekov
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place — Ernest Hemingway
The Gentle Art — Nadine Gordimer
The District Doctor — Ivan S. Turgenev
The Sire de Malétroit’s Door — Robert Louis Stevenson
Hautot, Father and Son — Guy de Maupassant
The Guest — Albert Camus
The Box — Dan Jacobson
Sense of Humour — V.S. Pritchett
A Touch of Autumn in the Air — Sean O’Faolain
The Life You Save May Be Your Own — Flannery O’Connor
A Rose for Emily — William Faulkner
A Country Love Story — Jean Stafford
Her Quaint Honor — Caroline Gordon
He — Katherine Anne Porter
Why I Live at the P.O. — Eudora Welty
The Catbird Seat — James Thurber
Prince of Darkness — J. F. Powers
Her Table Spread — Elizabeth Bowen
The Chevigny Man — Robie Macauley
Grace — James Joyce
The Only Guy in Town — William Saroyan
My Oedipus Complex — Frank O’Connor
The Higgler — A.E. Coppard
The Story of the Siren — E.M. Forster
The Horse Dealer’s Daughter — D.H. Lawrence
The Cloak — Nikolay V. Gogol
O’Faolain gathers 28 stories, most by authors you’ve probably at least heard of, following each with comments and questions. It all feels kind of like a college lit class, but that’s expected. I’m grateful I’m not being tested.
I was familiar with about half a dozen stories here. Those sixish pieces are probably the most anthologized, so it’s not a coincidence I most enjoyed them. Put together in 1961, this collection could have stood with a little more diversity, not just in terms of the authors represented but also all that entails. Eudora Welty’s “Why I Live at the P.O.”, for instance, jumps out as being not like the others, in an energizing way. Short Stories: A Study in Pleasure could have used more of these. Surely O’Faolain could’ve presented stories that were both more of a variety and that served as examples of his pleasure principles.
Ultimately I would’ve been better off digging up the stories individually and reading them in another context. Here they are:
The Outstation — W. Somerset Maugham
The Chorus Girl — Anton Chekov
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place — Ernest Hemingway
The Gentle Art — Nadine Gordimer
The District Doctor — Ivan S. Turgenev
The Sire de Malétroit’s Door — Robert Louis Stevenson
Hautot, Father and Son — Guy de Maupassant
The Guest — Albert Camus
The Box — Dan Jacobson
Sense of Humour — V.S. Pritchett
A Touch of Autumn in the Air — Sean O’Faolain
The Life You Save May Be Your Own — Flannery O’Connor
A Rose for Emily — William Faulkner
A Country Love Story — Jean Stafford
Her Quaint Honor — Caroline Gordon
He — Katherine Anne Porter
Why I Live at the P.O. — Eudora Welty
The Catbird Seat — James Thurber
Prince of Darkness — J. F. Powers
Her Table Spread — Elizabeth Bowen
The Chevigny Man — Robie Macauley
Grace — James Joyce
The Only Guy in Town — William Saroyan
My Oedipus Complex — Frank O’Connor
The Higgler — A.E. Coppard
The Story of the Siren — E.M. Forster
The Horse Dealer’s Daughter — D.H. Lawrence
The Cloak — Nikolay V. Gogol
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews