The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories

by Daniel Halpern (Editor), Various

Eighty-one masterpieces by the world's best writers—a surprising, irresistible collection of short stories from around the world.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Literature, Literary Fiction, Reference, Collections

832 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

just realised I reviewed this as the Penguin Book of Internatinal Short stories 1945-85. Here's waht I said:

.. covers a lot of ground and all the usual suspects are there: Marquez, Borges, Singer, Pritchet, Achebe, Boll etc etc, but also some interesting selections I hadn't heard of - Leon Rooke was new to me, as was Leonard Michaels, Juan Rulfo, Luisa Valenzuela (my ignorance), and many stories were new (to me). A quirky selection too I think, going for the less anthologised ones, and obviously dated (introducing a new generation of writers such as Ian McEwan & Tobias Wolf!) but consistently interesting. Maybe has an American bias - 30 (of 85) of the stories are from the USA, but that's probably right given the pre-eminence of US story writers. Eudora Welty's story was one of her finest I think, and James Baldwin's burnt a hole in my brain.
If your wrists can take it - it's a very heavy paperback - this is 1000 plus pages of joy for fans of the short story.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finally finished this anthology after reading it on-and-off for about a year. It’s an excellent collection and I’ve enjoyed discovering many new writers through it. As with any anthology, there were a handful of stories that I didn’t enjoy, and a handful that I skipped entirely (Do I need to read a story about a guy who’s in love with his fifteen-year-old babysitter? No in fact, I do not.). I’ll optimistically interpret the sexism that pervades many of these stories as documentary evidence of social progress since this was published in 1986.

The stories are quite varied, though at least three-quarters involve characters who are having an affairs. I’m still not sure if this is because having an affair is a more common experience than I think it is, or if having an affair is a more common experience among the sub-population of writers who are published in this anthology, or if affairs are simply good ready-to-use dramatic material for short stories.

It’s also pretty Anglo-centric for an international anthology, and things gets shaky when the editor ventures beyond Western Europe. That said, I haven’t come across any other short story anthologies that come close to the breadth and quality of this one.

Out of the 81 stories, almost all were worth reading. These were my favourites:

The Bound Man – Isle Aichinger
Jacklighting – Ann Beattie
The Aleph – Jorge Luis Borges
A Distant Episode – Paul Bowles
The Adulterous Woman – Albert Camus
Bestiary – Julio Cortozar
The Doll Queen – Carlos Fuetnes
The Chosen Husband – Mavis Gallant
Order of Insects – William Gass
Let the Old Dead Make Room for the Young Dead – Milan Kundera
The Habit of Loving – Doris Lessing
The Artificial Nigger – Flannery O’Connor
Eventide – James Purdy
Talpa – Jean Rulfo
Henne Fire – Isaac Bashevis Singer
I’m Your Horse in the Night – Luisa Valenzuela
No Place for You, My Love – Eudora Welty
Five-Twenty – Patrick White

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good thing I got through this relatively quickly (I still have Penguin's "The Art of the Story" to trudge through - a more current companion piece of international short stories).

So, out of eighty-one stories, I was almost always approving, somewhat floored, and rarely disappointed. I already know I plan on using this for many future references. Sometimes a flailing read, though rarely, most of the best compilation short story books always eventually pick up their pace. Obviously, this one is no exception.

But the biggest thing I probably learned here is that I've been missing out on some Mishima, which I immediately remedied by putting all of his books on my "to read" list.

Top Ten:
01. Hair Jewellery - Atwood
02. Spring in Fialta - Nabokov
03. Pariotism - Mishima
04. A Set of Variations on a Borrowed Theme - O'Conner
05. The Country Husband - Cheever
06. Children of Their Birthdays - Capote
07. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen - Borowski
08. First Love, Last Rites - McEwan
09. The Tryst - Oates
10. Little Whale, Varnisher of Reality - Aksenov

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has taken me a year and two weeks to read! It is a bit of a doorstop, but the main reason is that I was trying to ration it out to read one or two stories at a time. Sometimes too many short stories back to back can run into each other. This was a well-chosen and varied collection, with very few stories I didn't like. The collection runs to 1985 so some stories seemed of their time but overall a great introduction to a wide range of interesting writers.

[Blumenthal Molfsee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. It travels with me, I travel with it, and it's just marvelous. Most of the stories are wonderful views into worlds I couldn't have imagined before. However, there is also the occasional story that conveys something that feels so personal and intrinsic to who I am, but which I could never articulate myself. I move a lot, and most of my books live in storage, but this one tends to travel with me.

[Raluca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this is a good book. I also think that reading it on and off, on my Kindle, over more than half a year, was the wrong way to go, since I remember close to nothing about which stories I liked or not. Very, very close to nothing. I'd like to buy a hard copy and try again, properly.

[Gunner · Rating 3 out of 5]

end of an era

[Jeff Hobbs]

Read so far:

The sacrificial egg / Chinua Achebe --2
The bound man / Ilse Aichinger --1
*Little whale, varnisher of reality / Vasily Aksenov --
Hair jewellery / Margaret Atwood --2
Everything / Ingeborg Bachman --
Going to meet the man / James Baldwin --3
The child screams and looks back at you / Russell Banks --3
Cortés and Montezuma / Donald Barthelme --1
*Jacklighting / Ann Beattie --
First love / Samuel Beckett --
*Action will be taken / Heinrich Böll --
Do stay, giraffe / Wolfgang Borchert --
*The aleph / Jorge Luis Borges --
This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen / Tadeusz Borowski --3
Cowardice / Abdeslam Boulaich --
A distant episode / Paul Bowles --2
*Greasy Lake / T. Coraghessan Boyle --
*Ceil / Harold Brodkey --
Seven floors / Dino Buzzati --3
The adventure of a traveler / Italo Calvino --
The adulterous woman / Albert Camus --2
Children on their birthdays / Truman Capote --3
*Fat / Raymond Carver --
The country husband / John Cheever --3
Quenby and Ola, Swede and Carl / Robert Coover --
*Bestiary / Julio Cortázar --
The Heile Selassie funeral train / Guy Davenport --
The cloak / Isak Dinesen --2
The hunter / E.L. Doctorow --
I look out for Ed Wolfe / Stanley Elkin --1
Communist / Richard Ford --2
*The doll queen / Carlos Fuentes --
*The chosen husband / Mavis Gallant --
Order of insects / William Gass --2
The mother / Natalia Ginzberg --4
*The life of the imagination / Nadine Gordimer --
*Two gentle people / Graham Greene --
Why I transformed myself into a nightingale / Wolfgang Hildescheimer --
One arm / Yasunari Kawabata --1
*Let the old dead make room for the young dead / Milan Kundera --
*Gogol's wife / Tommaso Landolfi --
*The habit of loving / Doris Lessing --
*The challenge / Mario Vargas Llosa --
*The conjurer made off with the dish / Naguib Mahfouz --
*The last Mohican / Bernard Malamud --
Eye of a blue dog / Gabriel Garcia Marquez --1
*The pilgrimage / William Maxwell --
*First love, last rites / Ian McEwan --
*The deal / Leonard Michaels --
Patriotism / Yukio Mishima --3
Jewellery / Alberto Moravia --
Doctor Safi / Mohammed Mrabet --
*Spring in Fialta / Vladimir Nabokov --
*Naga / R.K. Narayan --
*The tryst / Joyce Carol Oates --
Sister Imelda / Edna O'Brien --3
The artificial nigger / Flannery O'Connor --3
*A set of variations on a borrowed theme / Frank O'Connor --
*Nomad and viper / Amos Oz --
*The suitcase / Cynthia Ozick --
*The contest / Grace Paley --
*Suicides / Cesare Pavese --
The saint / V.S. Pritchett --2
*Eventide / James Purdy --
*The replacement / Alain Robbe-Grillet --
Rain / Mercé Rodoreda --
In the garden / Leon Rooke --
Talpa / Juan Rulfo --3
XXII / Nathalie Sarraute --
*Henne fire / Isaac Bashevis Singer --
Unguided tour / Susan Sontag --
Children are bored on Sunday / Jean Stafford --2
*A friend and protector / Peter Taylor --
Death and the maiden / Michel Tournier --
*Beyond the pale / William Trevor --
*Separating / John Updike --
*I'm your horse in the night / Luisa Valenzuela --
No place for you, my love / Eudora Welty --1
Five-twenty / Patrick White --2
Hunters in the snow / Tobias Wolff --3
*Big black good man / Richard Wright --
*The best of everything / Richard Yates--

[Reet · Rating 3 out of 5]

As any anthology, there're some really good stories, and then we big flops. Some were so bad, I turned down the pages of the whole story, to show my disdain. I owned this book, so I could get away with it. Here are the stories that rated 4 Stars:
"Going to Meet the Man," James Baldwin
"Greasy Lake," T. Coraghessan Boyle
"The Adulterous Woman," Albert Camus
"Order of Insects," William Gass
"The Mother," Natalia Ginsburg
"The Habit of Loving," Doris Lessing
"The Last Mohican," Bernard Malamud
"Patriotism," Yukio Mishima
"Talpa," Juan Rulfo

AND here's some meaningful quotes I liked:

From "Everything," Ingeborg Bachmann:
"I once read in a book the sentence: 'it is not heaven's way to raise its head.' It would be a good thing if everyone knew of this sentence that speaks of the hardness of heaven. Oh no, it really isn't heaven's way to look down, to give signs to the bewildered people below it. At least not where such a somber drama takes place in which it too, this fabricated 'above,' plays a part."

From "Why I Transformed Myself Into a Nightingale," by Wolfgang Hildesheimer:
"I might mention here that I did not arrive at the decision I made during the next year because I wanted to appear eccentric or unique in the eyes of others. It was more my growing awareness that I couldn't select a conventional, bourgeois profession without in some way interfering with other people's lives. The career of a bureaucrat seemed particularly immoral to me, but I rejected other, more accepted humanitarian careers as well. To me, the work of a doctor who could save human life through his interference was highly suspect, because it might be that the person he saved was an out-and-out scoundrel whose life hundreds of oppressed people fervently wished would end."

From "A Friend and Protector," by Peter Taylor:
"That was the end of it for Jesse. And this is where I would like to leave off. It is the next part that is hardest for me to tell. But the whole truth is that my aunt did more than just show herself to Jesse through the glass door. While she remained there her behavior was such that it made me understand for the first time that this was not merely the story of that purplish black, kinky headed Jesse's ruined life. It is the story of my aunt's pathetically Unruined life, and my uncle's too, and even my own. I mean to say that at this moment I understood that Jesse's outside activities had been not only his, but ours too. My Uncle Andrew, with his double standard or triple standard - whichever it was - had most certainly forced Jesse's destruction upon him, and Aunt Margaret had made the complete destruction possible and desirable to him with her censorious words and looks. But they did it because they had to, because they were so dissatisfied with the pale unruin of their own lives. They did it because something would not let them ruin their own lives as they wanted and felt a need to do – as I have often felt a need to do, myself. As who does not sometimes feel a need to do? Without knowing it, I think, Aunt Margaret wanted to see Jesse as he was that morning. And it occurs to me now that dr. Morley understood this at the time."

[M. Pierce Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sampling short prose from the global titans of post-WWII fiction.

Here are my 25 faves (in order of appearance). Some of this list just feels like me confirming my own tastes but there's quite a few voices I've been missing out on (Ilse Aichinger, Heinrich Boll, Dino Buzzati, William Gass, RK Narayan, Luisa Valuenzela)

· The Sacrificial Egg · Chinua Achebe
· The Bound Man · Ilse Aichinger
· Little Whale, Varnisher of Reality · Vasily Aksenov
· Going to Meet the Man · James Baldwin
· Action Will Be Taken · Heinrich Böll
· The Aleph · Jorge Luis Borges
· This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen · Tadeusz Borowski
· Greasy Lake · T. Coraghessan Boyle
· Seven Floors · Dino Buzzati
· The Adventure of a Traveler · Italo Calvino
· Children on Their Birthdays · Truman Capote
· The Hunter · E. L. Doctorow
· Order of Insects · William Gass
· Why I Transformed Myself into a Nightingale · Wolfgang Hildesheimer
· One Arm · Yasunari Kawabata
· Let the Old Dead Make Room for the Young Dead · Milan Kundera
· First Love, Last Rites · Ian McEwan
· Patriotism · Yukio Mishima
· Spring in Fialta · Vladimir Nabokov
· Naga · R. K. Narayan
· The Tryst · Joyce Carol Oates
· Unguided Tour · Susan Sontag
· I’m Your Horse in the Night · Luisa Valenzuela
· Hunters in the Snow · Tobias Wolff
· Big, Black, Good Man · Richard Wright

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

covers a lot of ground and all the usual suspects are there: Marquez, Borges, Singer, Pritchet, Achebe, Boll etc etc, but also some interesting selections I hadn't heard of - Leon Rooke was new to me, as was Leonard Michaels, Juan Rulfo, Luisa Valenzuela (my ignorance), and many stories were new (to me). A quirky selection too I think, going for the Less anthologised ones, and obviously dated (introdusing a new generation of writers such as Ian McEwan & Tobias Wolf!) but consistently interesting. Maybe has an American bias - 30 (of 85) of the stories are from the USA, but that's probably right given the pre-eminence of US story writers. Eudora Welty's story was one of her finest I think, and James Baldwin's burnt a hole in my brain.
If your wrists can take it - it's a very heavy paperback - this is 1000 plus pages of joy for fans of the short story.

[Pam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Normally, I hate short stories. They always seemed like a waste of time to me, and it takes an exceptional writer to create a good story with so few words. But this was for a class. So I decided to approach it with an open mind. I read the whole book. Every. Single. Story. Even though many of them were subpar. Some authors, in whom I had faith, turned out to be horribly disappointing in this genre. To add the icing smack on top of the cake, my professor never uttered a word about any of them. Not one. Zero.

[Linda DiMeo Lowman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five Stars! A satisfying collection of international short stories. It took me a long time to read this because for most of the stories I stopped reading to savor the feelings the story engendered with me as the reader. Also, because the stories are international, it's a dive into worlds unknown that are exotic, tragic, and painful in ways that American stories are not.

[Kossiwa]

Reading for class, but I really like these stories I'm reading; Tobias Wolff's Hunters in the Snow, Margaret Atwood's Hair Jewellery, James Baldwin's Going to the Meet the Man. Going to Meet the Man was an emotional story and I want my stories to be emotional.

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Single best anthology of short fiction I've run across. Mixes things up with lesser known masterpieces from literary giants and includes many worthy writers often ignored elsewhere.

[Ebenmaessiger · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Life of the Imagination,” by Nadine Gordimer (1967): 6.75
- I’d be tempted to downplay the Apartheid angles here — to look past the petty, constant liberal racialism — if it wasn’t so cheaply invoked it as a bridge towards the story’s central emotional revelation. In many ways, we otherwise have a quintessential little piece of mid century bourgeois ennui here — replete with unexamined opulence and ambiguous infidelity and transposed only to South Africa and the female psyche. It’s a tightrope tone and theme to take up — you either succeed or die. Here, by the end, I think we’ve fallen off.

"I Look Out for Ed Wolfe," by Stanley Elkin (1962): 7.25
- well, genres might be elastic, but you do know when you've stepped in one from another, for sure, esp. when it's from a certain type of sci-fi to a certain type of mid century literary posturing, replete with a Bellow-esque mordant humor interspersing an otherwise straight wrenching narrative of personal delusion, degradation, and self-destruction. What is more, there's the very NY-liberal racialism (which might actually verge on racism here), in which "negros" are not only gawked at, but also introduced as sort of Big Point dei-ex-machinae in and of themselves, their very presence a crucible through which the Point of the story is thrown into sharpest relief, or, as the Most Apotheositically Other possible, the greatest possible mirror to reflect the truth of the decisions our protagonist is making - here, for convoluted, psychological, experiential reasons, the Orphan casting all away with no (visible) care for world or health or future. In that downward spiral, there's good stuff--most notably, the line about his confusion at having been given severance pay -- "he imagined a headline: Orphan Receives Check from Local Businessman".

"The Communist," by Richard Ford (1987): 8.25
- A quiet story, this one--of a taciturn 16 yr. old kid, his 31 yr. old mother, and her “communist” boyfriend, going to see and hunt some geese in Montana in 1961--the kind that say more, quite consciously, in their spaces and silences, than in their words. The prose was deep restraint and blunt pronouncement, which worked well here and didn't hide the characters so much as gesture at something ineffable in the scene, in them, and in their reactions to each other. About those silences, they're pregnant, and we can largely only guess, sometimes more confidently and sometimes less, about what they held. For example, that the boy will end up fighting in Vietnam--Glenn's allusions to it and his cryptic note that he has, since, seen grown men scared. And the small touches, given almost as an aside, but important to the whole thing: the death of the father, being from California, and how kind of dumb Glenn is too. Nonetheless, does this really add up to so much more than the sum of its duller points? Hard to tell how much is actually behind the curtain and how much is empty hand-waving.

"The Chosen Husband," by Mavis Gallant (1985): 8.75
- Again, maybe it’s the story or maybe it’s the sheer diversion of coming back to lit fic after so much short sff, but there’s something especially life-affirming in these small literary fictions. Something that reiterates the vitality and beauty of literature itself, rather than the vitality and beauty of imagination and expansion that the best sff fic can do. They’re different creatures as much as they’re the same. The piece: small-means widower in Montreal works to marry off her youngest to a bore, as her wiser, worldlier older daughter looks upon knowingly. That’s it. Yet, it’s filled with such precise analysis of place and the limits of social comprehension — but those enforced by others and ourselves — that so much is there. Grazia Merler observes in her book, Mavis Gallant: Narrative Patterns and Devices, that "Psychological character development is not the heart of Mavis Gallant’s stories, nor is plot. Specific situation development and reconstruction of the state of mind or of heart is, however, the main objective." There it is.

"The Mother," by Natalia Ginzburg (1961): 9.5
- A deep, smooth look at a sad life—told, I’d say, not dispassionately, not without judgment, but with acute awareness of the ways we do and do not love those we’re otherwise meant to. A “What Maisie Knew” but for a disintegrating life, rather than marriage. And, like MAISIE, it’s sensitivity works in the way it leaves us to fill in specific details. A great final line—one sentence, in which, after this close observation of a few months in these young boys lives, we move suddenly through the rest of their lives and see, in flash, how this Maternal Nothing works itself out.

"Order of Insects," by William Gass (1968): 9
- “The picture didn’t need to show me there were two, adult and nymph, for by that time I’d seen the bodies of both kind. Nymph. My god the words we use.” Gass is doing all but trying to hide his Point, and thank god for that, thank god for that in-obtuseness, that strange push to direct the story certainly and push towards that as best he can. And how it can. The story: a housewife finds, and becomes increasingly obsessed with (unconsciously [?] in tune with — see that wonderful drop that she lies in bed “shell-like”) some small dead insects she finds daily during her cleaning runs, and we gradually understand the ways in which her domestic boredom and confinement are driving her to instability. She yells at the kids and chafes at her husband and the only thing eventually real, eventually “ordered”are those dead bugs themselves (see the nice gaspy moment when we realize she's actually been picking them up now). “And then I want to cry, O husband, I am ill, for I have seen what I have seen.”

[Ronald Wise]

This collection of 82 short stories was intended to reproduce works by the greatest practitioners of the art of short fiction. All of them had been printed in English and in book-form collections since World War II, though many had been written before the war. Editor Halpern tried to included stories from as many countries as possible, and to avoid those which are frequently anthologized. He seems to have done well regarding both these parameters.

As a reader of many short-story anthologies, I was very pleasantly surprised by the number of quality, non-American authors to which I was introduced. I was also pleased to be newly exposed to excellent stories by authors with whom I was already familiar.

[Alan Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent collection, enjoyed all the stories (but one). Cheap edition, however, newsprint, a few typos. Otherwise it would be five star.

[Sidik Fofana · Rating 4 out of 5]

SIX WORD REVIEW: Read "Seven Floors" by Dino Buzzati

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of stories - some I enjoyed

[Sunniva · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I really liked about this collection of short stories is, as it says in the title, it's international. The short stories are translated from all kinds of languages, which makes the most of stories very different from what you are used to from your own culture, regardless of where you are from.

I did find the stories very obscure, usually, and it was sometimes difficult for me to reach an interpretation that I thought made sense after looking at all aspects of the stories. This is a personal preference for me, but I usually like stories that are a bit more forth-coming about their ideas.

[Nik · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an anthology book of Short Stories iv only read a couple,the ones i read where (Fat by Raymond Carver,Communist by Richard Ford and a couple more that i cant find.)I will give a breaf rewive of the short store called Fat, its a short store about a man who is fat and enters a restaraunt and how everyone is staring at him and giving him the odd look but the waitres takes his order and eventualy understand that he is a very nice gentalman and its not his fault he is fat i will stop here becasue im avoiding spolilers.I rated this book 5/5 becuse the stories are reasonably short and are very appiling to diffrent age groupes.

[Xilks · Rating 3 out of 5]

No I did not read the whole book. This was a book required for class. The stories that I did read varied from really good to really boring. I have no strong opinion about this book or recommendations.

[Hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What do I think?"
I think I need to delve into the world of international writers! Of course, I've read books of this nature...I JUST NEED TO READ MORE OF THEM!!!! And this book presents a great catelog in which to start.

[Neil]

A-Z Project #20
I won't rate this since I didn't finish it, but the first 100 pages were awfully uninspired for an anthology that given its nature should be highly selective. Find a different collection to spend your time on.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best anthology of contemporary short stories. The translations are beautiful, and the selection of material is diverse and engaging. Covers such a wonderful list of authors, and is a great introduction to anyone wanting to read short fiction.

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

some good short stories, some bad ones. but that's to be expected in just about any collection.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Advanced Fiction Workshop Goodness

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice collection of stories.

[Susan Merrell]

Everyone should read the story Gogol's Wife and then look up the Russian folk tales about the rusalki to see a brilliant use of folk legend...