Short Fiction: Classic and Contemporary

by Charles H. Bohner, Lyman Grant

This book is an exceptionally wide-ranging alphabetically arranged collection of stories spanning all genres of short fiction. It includes myth, fairy tale, humor, western, detective, Magic Realism, gothic, fantasy, folktale, and film. This edition presents a wide variety of selections by writers from diverse backgrounds that represent a true cross-section of the population and represent a broader, more current selection of contemporary fiction. Features a variety of relatively new writers and some older writers whose work is gaining new audiences : T. C. Boyle, Alice Carey, Oscar Cesares, Charles Chetnutt, E. M Forster, Nikolai Leskov, Mary McCarthy, Jonathan Nolan, Dorothy Parker, Banana Yoshimoto, and Anzia Yezierska. Includes new works to the context readings essays or excerpts from non-fiction section : by Walter Benjamin, Raymond Carver, E.M. Forester, and Joyce Carol Oates, all great critics and theorists of narrative. Stresses women writers, writers of color, and gay and lesbian writers :includes works by Isabel Allande, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, Leslie Dick, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Mary Gaitskill, Susan Glaspell, Gish Jen, Mary Shelley, Leslie Marmon Silko, Susan Sontag, Jeanette Winterson, Sherman Alexie, Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Ernest J. Gaines, Dagoberto Gilb, Hanif Kureishi, Tomás Rivera, Salman Rushdie and more. For literature and film enthusiasts.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Textbooks

1440 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[CHAVANIN PISANKUNAKIT · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is filled with so many great stories from various genres and periods. I only finished over 800 pages and although some of the stories are not that easy to read or interesting, it's overall delightful. This is the first time I have read something this long since I finished Harry Potter. My favorite story is "The Outstation", a short story by Somerset Maugham. The Outstation is set in the British colonial era, about Cooper, a young British man who's assigned to work at a remote outpost in Malaysia. Reading this book is like reading 100 books at the same time.

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great resource for short story enthusiasts or Creative Writers. Overall, a good read.

[Jobie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book of short story. I appreciate how it has authors from multiple backgrounds, time periods, and countries. Two of my favorite stories are "the use of force" by Williams and "A good man is hard to find" by O'Connor, but I've read both of of those before. I had several that I loved from authors I never read stories that I had never read. "We can remember it for you wholesale" by Dick and "Johnny mnemonic" by Gibson both great science fiction short stories that were amazing to read. I have not seen either of the movies the stores were made into so that made the stories and even more pleasant find. I am a big fan of existentialist writing and had never read the "metamorphosis" by Kafka until this book. I really can't believe that I had not read it before now. Another Japanese writer I'll have to investigate is Mishima. "Patriotism" was a tale of love and duty. Also wanted to mention Isabel Allende, Julio Cortazar, Ralph Ellison - all new writers to me who I want to read more of. One of the last stories I read was "Newton" by Jeanette Winterson. It was an imaginative and compelling story about facade and neighborliness that I felt was really timely seeing as I've spent Christmas in a small Southern town. If you have a love short story and want to find some new diverse authors this is a jewel of a book. It's like a boxful of treasure and there's so many fine but maybe small precious and semi precious stones.

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an anthology of nineteenth and twentieth century authors, and features short fiction of many different genres. One of my favorite works included in this collection is the tale of "Rip Van Winkle", by Washington Irving. This classic tale of a man who falls asleep for twenty years and awakens to a very different world, was an enjoyable and thought-provoking read. Another story which I appreciated was entitled "The Lady with the Dog", by Anton Chekhov. This tale involved an adulterous affair between a Russian banker and a young woman he meets while on vacation in Yalta.
I enjoyed this interesting collection of stories. It included a nice variety of tales from an eclectic mix of authors.

[Rebekah]

All the stories in this book were very interesting and thought provoking. My favorite story I read from this book was "Sonny's Blues". James Baldwin did an excellent job of describing the hardships that Sonny experienced in Urban Harlem. I am very grateful that Charles H. Bohner wrote this book.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short Fiction is a collection of classic and modern short stories. My favorite short story was My Mother's Memiors, Father's lies, and Other True Stories.

[Mari · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I read of it was good.