Randall Jarrell's Book of Stories

by Randall Jarrell (Introduction)

Storytelling as a fundamental human impulse, one that announces itself at the moment, hidden in infancy, that dreams begin—this is what the poet and critic Randall Jarrell set out to illuminate in this extraordinary book. Here Jarrell presents ballads, parables, anecdotes, and legends along with some of the finest work of Chekhov, Babel, Elizabeth Bowen, Isak Dinesen, Kafka, Peter Taylor, and Katherine Anne Porter. This wonderful anthology, with its celebrated introductory essay, enlarges and deepens our perception of the storyteller's art and its central place in the world of our feelings.

1 • A Country Doctor • (1948) • short story by Franz Kafka (trans. of Ein Landarzt 1918)
36 • The Witch of Coös • (1923) • poem by Robert Frost
47 • The Nose • (1957) • novelette by Николай Гоголь? (trans. of Нос? 1836) [as by Nicolai Gogol]
85 • Fair Eckbert • (1913) • novelette by Ludwig Tieck (trans. of Der blonde Eckbert 1797)
105 • The Three Hermits • (1907) • short story by Лев Толстой? (trans. of Три старца? 1886) [as by Lev Tolstoy]
131 • The Fir Tree • juvenile • (1912) • short story by Hans Christian Andersen (trans. of Grantræet 1844)
151 • The Red King and the Witch: A Gypsy Folk-Tale • (1889) • short story by Anonymous
167 • Cat and Mouse in Partnership • [KHM (Kinder- und Hausmärchen)? • 2] • (1897) • short story by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm (trans. of Katze und Maus in Gesellschaft 1812) [as by The Brothers Grimm]
170 • The Story of the Siren • (1920) • short story by E. M. Forster
179 • The Book of Jonah • (1611) • short story by uncredited (trans. of ספר יונה? unknown)
183 • The Bucket-Rider • [Der Kübelreiter] • (1933) • short story by Franz Kafka (trans. of Der Kübelreiter 1921)
213 • On Letting Alone • (1889) • short story by 莊子? (trans. of 在宥? unknown) [as by Chuang T'zu]
216 • A Tale of the Cavalry • (1952) • short story by Hugo von Hofmannsthal (trans. of Reitergeschichte 1899)
226 • The Mental Traveller • (1863) • poem by William Blake
247 • The Porcelain Doll • (1920) • short story by Лев Толстой? (trans. of Фарфоровая Кукла? 1863) [as by Lev Tolstoy]
252 • Byezhin Prairie • (1897) • short story by Иван Тургенев? (trans. of Бежин луг? 1851) [as by Ivan Turgenev]

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Poetry, Short Story Collection, Literary Fiction

370 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Poems, published in collections such as Little Friend, Little Friend (1945), of American poet and critic Randall Jarrell concern war, loneliness, and art.

He wrote eight books of poetry, five anthologies, a novel, Pictures from an Institution . Maurice Sendak illustrated his four books for children, and he translated Faust: Part I and The Three Sisters , which the studio of actors performed on Broadway; he also translated two other works. He received the National Book Award for poetry in 1960, served as poet laureate at the Library of Congress in 1957 and 1958, and taught for many years at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He joined as a member of the American institute of arts and letters.

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The enlisted men at Fort Benning buried their dog Calculus under a marker that read, He made better dogs of us all," is an example Jarrell uses in his introduction of a story contained in a sentence. In curating this anthology of stories, he enlarges the term to include poems, fairy tales, parables, a letter, and excerpts from novels, the Bible, and a memoir.

Having dipped my toe in their waters I now realize I need to read more by Isaac Babel, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Isak Dinesen. As usual, Peter Taylor leaves me cold and I suspect I will not develop an affection for Katherine Anne Porter.

[Declan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really good collection of stories, chosen with great care and imagination. Among those included are Chekov, Tolstoy, Bowen and, with a remarkable story which I read twice, Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It also has a very interesting introduction by Jarrell in which he muses on the many meanings of a story, and which he ends with a terrific quote from Proust "In reality, each reader reads only what is within himself. The book is no more than a sort of optical instrument which the writer offers the reader to enable the latter to discover in himself what he would not have found but for the aid of the book".

[Johnnie]

A nice little anthology of short stories, fables, and poems.
Highlights include: "The Nose" by Nikolai Gogol,
"The Three Hermits" by Leo Tolstoy,
"What You Hear from 'Em?" by Peter Taylor,
"The Fir Tree" by Hans Christian Andersen,
"He" by Katherine Anne Porter,
"Cat and Mouse in Partnership" by The Brothers Grimm,
"Samson and Delilah" by D.H. Lawrence,
"Byezhin Praire" by Ivan Turgenev,
"The Ruined Cottage" by William Wordsworth, and
"Sorrow-Acre" by Isak Dinesen.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Story, the dictionary tells one, is a short form of the word history, and stands for a narrative, recital, or description of what has occurred; just as it stands for a fictitious narrative, imaginative tale; [Colloq.] a lie, a falsehood.

That's the first sentence of Randall Jarrell's Introduction to The Anchor Book of Stories, worth reading even if you don't read the stories, or all of them.

I discovered Randall Jarrell when I was a kid checking giant stacks of books out of the library; The Animal Family was a favorite back then. The Anchor Book of Stories, all chosen by Jarrell (whose last name is pronounced Jar'rell, or so I'm told) is not a children's book. Nope. Not even a little. An interesting fact about Jarrell: "he wrote eight books of poetry, five anthologies, four children’s books illustrated by Maurice Sendak, four translations, including Faust: Part I and The Three Sisters (performed on Broadway by the Actor’s Studio), and a novel." [From the Goodreads author description.] He also taught and wrote literary criticism and introductions to numerous books by other people. He lived only to the age of 51, and apparently had the tragic artistic temperament that has led many artists to an early demise.

Jarrell had a very fluid definition of stories. Included in this eclectic bunch of writings: the entire book of Jonah (from the Bible); Bertolt Brecht's "Concerning the Infanticide, Marie Farrar" (which, according to the NYT, "tells the true story of a teenage domestic who had tried to abort her pregnancy"); Wordsworth's poem "The Ruined Cottage" (which, oddly, doesn't match poems of that name by Wordsworth that I could find online); fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm; and Saint-Simon's The Death of Monseigneur, which is a short excerpt from "the oceanic memoires of of Saint-Simon" (per the Kenyon Review). I spent a great deal of time reviewing French history of the royalty during the time of Louis XIV; the "Monseigneur" referred to was the elder son of the Sun King. If I hadn't reviewed the history, the "story" would have made very little sense.

There are sentences in some of the stories that I read, re-read, tried to figure out by reading what came before and what came after, and I still didn't understand. Mostly, it was, I suspect, a different and somewhat antiquated use of language, especially syntax. Or there would be two people and the word "he" is used multiple times. This would be a spoiler, so don't keep reading if you don't want to know the end of one of the 30 stories, Frank O'Connor's "Peasants" -- but if someone reading this review can figure it out, please, do tell! --

As for Father Crowley, till he was shifted twelve months later, he never did a day's good in the parish. [People quit giving $$ and started attending church elsewhere.] They said it broke his heart.

He has left unpleasant memories behind him. Only for him, people say, Michael John would be in America now. Only for him he would never have married a girl with money, or had it to lend to poor people in the hard times, or ever sucked the blood of Christians. For, as an old man said to me, 'A robber he is and was, and a grabber like his grandfather before him, and an enemy of the people like his uncle, the policeman; and though some say he'll dip his hand where he dipped it before, for myself I have no hope unless the mercy of God would send us another Moses or Brian Boru to cast him down and hammer him in the dust.'"

OK, so "He" in the second paragraph is clearly Father Crowley; but 'A robber he is and was' refers to Michael John. And it seems to be saying that (1) Michael John did very well after his misspent youth; and (2) once a robber always a robber. I just kept reading it over and could not grasp it. (Not to mention the final sentence, about Moses and Brian Boru--inscrutable.)

There were other such cases, where I felt that the use of the English language was so different, the terminology and the conversations of other eras, that without some annotations I was somewhat in the dark.

Other than the oddities -- the pieces that would not be considered short stories by, possibly, anybody but Jarrell -- there are a lot of traditional short stories, including Gogol's "The Nose," which I'd always wanted to read. The introduction by Jarrell is definitely worth reading, both before and after reading the stories.

My favorite story was "Lev" Tolstoy's "The Three Hermits." [If you look up Leo Tolstoy in wikipedia, you'll see that his actual name was "Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, but we're Americans, darn it, and if we say his name is "Leo," his name is Leo.] But I'm always interested in mystics, genuine practitioners of any religion (actually, stories about bogus practitioners could be just as, or even more, interesting), matters of faith in general, so it's not too surprising. (I even used "The Three Hermits" in yesterday's sermon, and I think people really enjoyed being told the story, which actually fit in quite well for the lectionary for Epiphany 5C.)

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is stupendous collection of short stories. Possibly the finest anthology I've read.

Its impressiveness lies in the fact that they are wildly diverse in tone, content and rhetoric but they are all unified in a single purpose - narrative. Whether the selections are straightforward, merely elliptical, a touch fantastic, or entirely surreal (and they range widely), all the stories here are focused on telling a story.

As a lover of non-linear, fever dream, stream of consciousness writing, this is a welcome reminder that story-telling can be just as transporting and rewarding.

All the stories are superb, but some of my favorites were:

The Witch of Coos, Robert Frost
La Lupa, Giovanni Verga
The Nose, Gogol
Concerning the Infanticide, Marie Farrar, Bertholt Brecht
A Tale of the Cavalry, Hugo Von Hofmannsthal
The Mental Traveller, William Blake

[Andrew Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This could be the north star among collections of short narrative. It realigned my biases and sympathies toward authors I already thought I knew.

Absolutely dazzling introduction by Randall Jarrell frames a focused selection with appreciable peripheral vision and a mind toward the pivots between stories. I read it end to end; all thirty stories were worth the effort. Now I'm going to have to finally sit down and read A Sportsman's Notebook and Old World Landowners, both of which seem to line the mantle of this anthology.

[Rambling Raconteur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection of stories with an insightful introductory essay from Jarrell.

Some favorite stories (in their order within this anthology):
La Lupa by Giovanni Verga
The Nose by Nikolai Gogol
The Three Hermits by Leo Tolstoy
He by Katherine Anne Porter
The Red King and the Witch
The Story of the Siren by EM Forster
The Mental Traveller by William Blake
The Porcelain Doll by Leo Tolstoy (a super weird letter)
Byezhin Prairie by Ivan Turgenev
Sorrow-Acre by Isak Dinesen

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

Contains the stories

A Country Doctor by Franz Kafka -
The Witch of Coos by Robert Frost -
The Nose by Nikolai Gogol -
Fair Eckbert by Ludwig Tieck -
The Three Hermits by Leo Tolstoy -
The Fir Tree by Hans Christian Andersen -
The Red King and the Witch: A Gypsy Folk-Tale by Anonymous -
Cat and Mouse in Partnership by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm -
The Story of the Siren •by E.M. Forster -
The Book of Jonah by Uncredited -
The Bucket-Rider by Franz Kafka -
On Letting Alone by Chuang Tzu -
A Tale of the Cavalry by Hugo von Hofmannsthal -
The Mental Traveller by William Blake -
The Porcelain Doll by Leo Tolstoy -
Byezhin Prairie by Ivan Turgenev -

[Dan White · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like a haunting and beautiful tape mix, this selection of stories (and their fabulous sequencing) will haunt your days and nights. A great mixture of familiar and unfamiliar names. The goods are odd, but odd in an evocative way. And I love the misdirection of the title. Randall Jarrell's Book of Stories means that Randall Jarrell is the curator, not the writer (though he re-named one of the selections.)

[David Garza · Rating 5 out of 5]

There sure were a lot of Russian stories in this collection. But that's OK; I don't think it hurt anything.

Randall Jarrell made some good selections for this collection. There are a few narrative poems included as well. All of these short stories were solid and quite good. Most of them are not the same old stories that are assigned for school reading, so that kept this collection fresh for me.

[Bob Peru · Rating 3 out of 5]

too many clunkers.

[Seamus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't a huge fan of the essay by Jarrell that everyone seems to like, but the stories in the book are great. I especially liked O'Connor, Kafka, and Dineson.

[Gideonleek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the stories he picked are too purple for me

[Barbara T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful selection of very different short stories. Some are poems, a book of the Bible, humorous, tragic. First published in 1958; still fantastic

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

i'm so confused with this anthology but mainly with myself because it was such a massive SLOG for me, and i think this was my fault and not the book's fault, because this is my first college winter break and i've been feeling weird and stagnant. usually when i'm having trouble with a book i can read more than one at the same time, but i couldn't even do that here, it was like the act of reading a book was some sort of perfectly smooth sphere i couldn't get a grip on, and i kept slipping off. terrible. ruined a good two weeks of my break, being unable to read. what even happened in these stories, who knows. they were strange in a good way, probably. very individual and ~quirky~. Needs More Women, though, naturally. i bought this mostly because i'd heard good things about randall jarrell's introductory essay. my mind was elsewhere when reading most of this.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

an amazing anthology of stories, poems, fables and more collected by poet/novelist randall jarrell to illuminate the notion of "storytelling as a fundamental human impulse, one that announces itself at the moment, hidden in infancy, that dreams begin..." authors include kafka, chekhov, rilke, robert frost, gogol, elizabeth bowen, brecht, peter taylor, hans christian anderson, the book of jonah, anonymous, the brothers grimm, isaac babel, chuang t'zu, blake, tolstoy, turgenev, dinesen, among others. reading this reaffirms why i love to read, and puts in to relief that narrative timelessness so often missing in contemporary fiction. i've read this twice and will return again.

[John W. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A first rate collection an idea of its variety can be shown by the fact that it includes works such as the Book of Jonah, Gogol's The Nose, Wordsworth's The Ruined Cottage, Isak Dinesen's Sorrow Acre and many others well known and others at least to me unknown. Collections of stories are usually uneven but this is first rate and by including poems and other literary form has variety and a book that can be read from cover to cover with enjoyment. Randall Jarrell's introduction is first rate.

[Matt Jaeger · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the oddest and most brilliant anthologies I've come across.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love the idea behind this anthology. Probably more chicks should be in it though.

[Dustin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The introductory essay should be required reading for all writers of fiction.