55 Short Stories from The New Yorker 1940 to 1950

by New Yorker Editors

short stories

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies

Paperback

Published January 1, 1967

Reviews

[Rosalie]

This book is on my nightstand. It's a first edition and it doesn't travel well so reading and commuting is out of the question. 5/15/09. I'll finish it eventually!

[Helene · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want one for every century!

[Oldkeywestie · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was young, many years ago, back at the beginning of the 1970’s, an English teacher requested everyone in the class bring in a sample article from either a newspaper or periodical. There were certain newspapers that were not allowed, i.e., the tabloids. No Martian abductions please. The suggested reading literature was along the lines of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The New Yorker. I chose The New Yorker not because of some linguistic prowess on my part, but only because I had already spent years perusing the cartoons in the issues in the Orthodontist’s office in New York. It was a fortuitous decision. From that point on, I indulged my literary appetite in the pages of The New Yorker, especially during the long commutes into and back from Manhattan.

This latest completed read of “55 Short Stories from The New Yorker 1940 to 1950” is an entertaining, but also illuminating look into the 40’s. Yes, these are the war years, but the European and Pacific conflicts do not make up the contents of this collection. The stories are instead built around the lives of “ordinary” people, or what can be fictionally construed as ordinary. They are wonderful not only to read, but to contemplate the time in which they were written, illuminate and illustrate the prevailing culture and just provide a brief respite from what must have been a very trying time for all who pondered the fate of democracy and the free world. Even after the war.

I thoroughly recommend indulging in this collection, not from a literary criticism perspective, I am hardly qualified for that, but just for the entertainment and glimpse into the 1940s that the contributors to this book inhabited.