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Prize Stories 2000: The O. Henry Awards
An Anchor Original
The 80th anniversary edition of "the nation's most prestigious awards for the short story."--The Atlantic Monthly
Established early in the last century as a memorial to O. Henry, throughout its history this annual collection has consistently offered a remarkable sampling of contemporary short stories. Each year stories are chosen from large and small literary magazines and a panel of distinguished writers is enlisted to award the top prizes. The result is a superb collection of twenty inventive, full-bodied stories representing the very best in American and Canadian fiction.
The 80th anniversary edition of "the nation's most prestigious awards for the short story."--The Atlantic Monthly
Established early in the last century as a memorial to O. Henry, throughout its history this annual collection has consistently offered a remarkable sampling of contemporary short stories. Each year stories are chosen from large and small literary magazines and a panel of distinguished writers is enlisted to award the top prizes. The result is a superb collection of twenty inventive, full-bodied stories representing the very best in American and Canadian fiction.
411 pages, Paperback
First published September 12, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 18, 2020
کار فوق العادهی انتشارات نیستان برای جمع اوری داستان های کوتاه برنده جایزه اُ هنری من و طرفدار این مجموعه کتاب ها کرد .
این اولین کتابی بود که از این مجموعه خوندم.
داستان هایی با موضوعات متفاوت مثل موضوعات ضد جنگ، خانواده، توجه به حیوانات و ...
نکتهی قابل توجه که باید بگم اینکه اگر به دنبال داستان های دو الی سه صفحه ای میگردین تو این کتاب پیدا نمی کنید، داستانها عموما نزدیک سی صفحه اند.
بهترین داستانها:
باغستانهای کیوتو
به نمایندگی از یک احمق
تناسخ در خیابان پارک
زمین های ابراهام
مراقب حیوانات باشید
وزنه
و مطلبی که در کتاب ازار دهنده است تعداد بالای غلط های تایپیه که نوعی توهین به خواننده کتابه.
این اولین کتابی بود که از این مجموعه خوندم.
داستان هایی با موضوعات متفاوت مثل موضوعات ضد جنگ، خانواده، توجه به حیوانات و ...
نکتهی قابل توجه که باید بگم اینکه اگر به دنبال داستان های دو الی سه صفحه ای میگردین تو این کتاب پیدا نمی کنید، داستانها عموما نزدیک سی صفحه اند.
بهترین داستانها:
باغستانهای کیوتو
به نمایندگی از یک احمق
تناسخ در خیابان پارک
زمین های ابراهام
مراقب حیوانات باشید
وزنه
و مطلبی که در کتاب ازار دهنده است تعداد بالای غلط های تایپیه که نوعی توهین به خواننده کتابه.
March 16, 2009
Some of these stories are absolutely brilliant. Others are merely exceptional. Two or three are forgettable. I read it one story at a time over a long period, a method I would recommend for the purpose of savoring each story independently.
July 31, 2011
***Spoiler Alert***
I enjoy reading the annual O. Henry Prize Stories collections for several reasons. First, most of the stories are paradigms of the short-story form, and they are innovative in characterization, narrative, and structure. These stories are, after all, supposed to be the “best” ones of the year, hand-picked by series editor Larry Dark from literary journals and magazines and then voted on by a prize-jury panel. Second, at the back of each edition there is a list, complete with contact information, of the literary journals Dark consulted. As a fiction writer this is a helpful list to consult when I search for homes for my own stories. Finally, reading the O. Henry series is a helpful gateway into new writers, authors whom I have always wanted to read.
The 2000 O. Henry Prize Stories is no exception. Michael Cunningham, Pam Houston, and George Saunders are the prize jurors for this edition, and I experienced many amazing writers for the first time. I especially recommend Keith Banner’s “The Smallest People Alive” and Kiana Davenport’s “Bones of the Inner Ear.”
When I write about story collections like this (or, for that matter, collections by a single author) I usually focus on one specific story and explore that piece in detail. The choice for this collection---Russell Banks’s “Plains of Abraham”---was immediately obvious. I could write pages about the story’s intelligent structure, specifically Banks’s masterful use of point of view (POV) and how he manipulates the POV from a close third-person narrator to an omniscient narrator at calculated moments. I could provide examples of how this POV shift helps achieve a devastating emotional impact. Or perhaps I could write about Vann, Irene, and Frances, the story’s three central characters and the way Banks portrays them so vividly that I still remember them four years after first reading the story. (I have read it several times since and have taught it to high school students.) Or perhaps I could explore the importance of art to Vann, the story’s flawed protagonist? What about the subtle ways Banks explores marriage as a battleground: “Vann remembered his ten years with Irene the way men remember their war years…”
Of course these are all factors that contributed to my enjoyment. However, what I want to focus on is nothing so scholarly. I want to write, quite simply, about my experience first reading “Plains of Abraham.”
I spent mid January through mid February of 2007 in St. Petersburg researching After the Departures, my first novel. Quentin, my protagonist, a young, confident, angry character---someone extremely different from Vann---moved to St. Petersburg in January. I wanted to see the city through Quentin’s eyes, so I flew there at what was, obviously, not a peak travel time. I had been told by both travel books and friends that St. Petersburg in dark twenty-four hours a day in January. This wasn’t true; the sun radiated for at least six hour before the winds increased and night descended.
Every day I rose, ate a continental breakfast at my hotel (For the record: Soft-boiled eggs, salami, and dill do get old quickly.), bundled my skinny California ass in multiple layers of brumal protection, and explored the city. In early February, one of the coldest mornings (-15 F), the sunlight on Palace Embankment could only be described as painful, similar to the piercing headaches you receive when you drink ice-cold beverages too quickly. The light was both malicious and beautiful that morning, so I decided to wander around outside St. Isaac’s Cathedral and Decembrists’ Square and take photographs. I did so until my fingers were literally frozen, and then I wandered into the nearest Coffee Shop (Yes, this is the café’s proper name.), St. Petersburg’s version of Starbucks. I ordered chicken soup, cocoa so scalding it could melt flesh, and climbed to the café’s second floor. My table overlooked Nevisky Prospekt, and by this point I wanted someplace warm where I could unthaw. I sipped the weak soup and cocoa, the latter of which may have been spiked with vodka, ogled Russian military cadets at a nearby table, opened the 2000 O. Henry Prize Stories, and began reading “Plains of Abraham,” my first exposure to Russell Banks’s work.
A few times in our lives as readers we are blessed with complete immersion in a work of fiction. We are transported into the world the author has created; all outside distractions vanish, and we experience a pure emotional connection with the narrative. As Vann states in “Plains of Abraham,” when he has an intense emotional reaction to a painting by the same name, “It was like a window that opened onto a world larger and more inviting than any he had ever seen.”
Earlier I partially listed the story’s literary merits, but my reaction to “Plains of Abraham,” a story that takes place in New England, a story I read in a foreign country where the only Russian I knew were the words, “Tea,” “Peanuts,” and “Sinners,” was entirely emotional. The last thing I wanted was to start weeping in front of the Russian military boys I desired, so at one point I actually locked myself in the café’s bathroom. I needed a moment. Later, I blamed an excess of dill and zakuski for my barely concealed outburst, but this is a lame excuse. I suspect my feelings would have been the same had I read “Plains of Abraham” in my living room in San Francisco. The 2000 O. Henry Prize Stories contains many strong entries, but when I remember the collection I will always see the café in St. Petersburg and the fact that for an hour, I was able to be an exemplary reader.
I enjoy reading the annual O. Henry Prize Stories collections for several reasons. First, most of the stories are paradigms of the short-story form, and they are innovative in characterization, narrative, and structure. These stories are, after all, supposed to be the “best” ones of the year, hand-picked by series editor Larry Dark from literary journals and magazines and then voted on by a prize-jury panel. Second, at the back of each edition there is a list, complete with contact information, of the literary journals Dark consulted. As a fiction writer this is a helpful list to consult when I search for homes for my own stories. Finally, reading the O. Henry series is a helpful gateway into new writers, authors whom I have always wanted to read.
The 2000 O. Henry Prize Stories is no exception. Michael Cunningham, Pam Houston, and George Saunders are the prize jurors for this edition, and I experienced many amazing writers for the first time. I especially recommend Keith Banner’s “The Smallest People Alive” and Kiana Davenport’s “Bones of the Inner Ear.”
When I write about story collections like this (or, for that matter, collections by a single author) I usually focus on one specific story and explore that piece in detail. The choice for this collection---Russell Banks’s “Plains of Abraham”---was immediately obvious. I could write pages about the story’s intelligent structure, specifically Banks’s masterful use of point of view (POV) and how he manipulates the POV from a close third-person narrator to an omniscient narrator at calculated moments. I could provide examples of how this POV shift helps achieve a devastating emotional impact. Or perhaps I could write about Vann, Irene, and Frances, the story’s three central characters and the way Banks portrays them so vividly that I still remember them four years after first reading the story. (I have read it several times since and have taught it to high school students.) Or perhaps I could explore the importance of art to Vann, the story’s flawed protagonist? What about the subtle ways Banks explores marriage as a battleground: “Vann remembered his ten years with Irene the way men remember their war years…”
Of course these are all factors that contributed to my enjoyment. However, what I want to focus on is nothing so scholarly. I want to write, quite simply, about my experience first reading “Plains of Abraham.”
I spent mid January through mid February of 2007 in St. Petersburg researching After the Departures, my first novel. Quentin, my protagonist, a young, confident, angry character---someone extremely different from Vann---moved to St. Petersburg in January. I wanted to see the city through Quentin’s eyes, so I flew there at what was, obviously, not a peak travel time. I had been told by both travel books and friends that St. Petersburg in dark twenty-four hours a day in January. This wasn’t true; the sun radiated for at least six hour before the winds increased and night descended.
Every day I rose, ate a continental breakfast at my hotel (For the record: Soft-boiled eggs, salami, and dill do get old quickly.), bundled my skinny California ass in multiple layers of brumal protection, and explored the city. In early February, one of the coldest mornings (-15 F), the sunlight on Palace Embankment could only be described as painful, similar to the piercing headaches you receive when you drink ice-cold beverages too quickly. The light was both malicious and beautiful that morning, so I decided to wander around outside St. Isaac’s Cathedral and Decembrists’ Square and take photographs. I did so until my fingers were literally frozen, and then I wandered into the nearest Coffee Shop (Yes, this is the café’s proper name.), St. Petersburg’s version of Starbucks. I ordered chicken soup, cocoa so scalding it could melt flesh, and climbed to the café’s second floor. My table overlooked Nevisky Prospekt, and by this point I wanted someplace warm where I could unthaw. I sipped the weak soup and cocoa, the latter of which may have been spiked with vodka, ogled Russian military cadets at a nearby table, opened the 2000 O. Henry Prize Stories, and began reading “Plains of Abraham,” my first exposure to Russell Banks’s work.
A few times in our lives as readers we are blessed with complete immersion in a work of fiction. We are transported into the world the author has created; all outside distractions vanish, and we experience a pure emotional connection with the narrative. As Vann states in “Plains of Abraham,” when he has an intense emotional reaction to a painting by the same name, “It was like a window that opened onto a world larger and more inviting than any he had ever seen.”
Earlier I partially listed the story’s literary merits, but my reaction to “Plains of Abraham,” a story that takes place in New England, a story I read in a foreign country where the only Russian I knew were the words, “Tea,” “Peanuts,” and “Sinners,” was entirely emotional. The last thing I wanted was to start weeping in front of the Russian military boys I desired, so at one point I actually locked myself in the café’s bathroom. I needed a moment. Later, I blamed an excess of dill and zakuski for my barely concealed outburst, but this is a lame excuse. I suspect my feelings would have been the same had I read “Plains of Abraham” in my living room in San Francisco. The 2000 O. Henry Prize Stories contains many strong entries, but when I remember the collection I will always see the café in St. Petersburg and the fact that for an hour, I was able to be an exemplary reader.
December 13, 2020
My favorites in this anthology were: “The Man with the Lapdog” by Beth Lordan; “The Deacon” by Mary Gordon; “These Hands” by Kevin Brockmeier; “The Smallest People Alive” by Keith Banner; “Bones of the Inner Ear” by Kiana Davenport; “He’s at the Office” by Allan Gurganus; “The Gardens of Kyoto” by Kate Walbert; and “Watch the Animals” by Alice Elliott Dark.
June 15, 2022
Please write more Jeannette bertles
July 29, 2016
Not my favorite O. Henry Prize collection. Maybe it's that the first story I read in this collection was about a pedophile ('These Hands') and I found it revolting. Not well-written, not 'incisive,' not 'psychologically riveting'--repugnant. It was also rambling, with excessive detail and an unbelievable plot. A lot of the pieces in this collection have those qualities, and so this installment is a low point in the series for me, although I did find myself temporarily moved by John Biguenet's clever and sad 'Rose,' and Kiana Davenport's 'Bones of the Inner Ear.' At least those stories had heart.
October 17, 2007
I've read this collection of short stories probably 12 times in the last seven years. I don't know if that counts as "a lot", but I'd like to think it's quite a lot. I love EACH and EVERY story featured in this book. And I know you would be too. Recommended firsts: The Weight by John Edgar Wideman; The Man with the Lapdog by Beth Lordan; Salve Regina by Melissa Pritchard; Bones of the Inner Ear by Kiana Davenport; The Beautiful Days by Michael Byers; The Gilgul of Park Avenua by Nathan Englander.
April 1, 2023
اسم کتاب در واقع «به نمایندگی از یک احمق نیست» نمیدونم چرا برای ترجمه از این اسم انتخاب کردن. مجموعه داستان کوتاهایی که برنده جایزه اهنری شدن. بعضیاشون بسیار جذاب بودن برام بعضیاشون بسیار معمولی یا حتی کسل کننده. شاید هم من نتونستم درست با برخی ارتباط بگیرم.
«به نمایندگی از یک احمق» را از طاقچه دریافت کنید
https://taaghche.com/audiobook/57288
«به نمایندگی از یک احمق» را از طاقچه دریافت کنید
https://taaghche.com/audiobook/57288
August 12, 2008
I love anthologies. They are the perfect little sips of literature to get you through a break, waiting period, or after you've finished a novel and aren't quite ready with the next!
May 10, 2010
(Six Word Review) This book is in tatters now.
November 8, 2014
20 short stories and only 3 or 4 that I really liked.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews