Esquire's Big Book of Fiction

by Adrienne Miller (Editor)

A definitive anthology of outstanding short fiction from the pages of Esquire magazine from the early 1930s to the late 1990s showcases contributions by Ernest Hemingway, Albert Camus, Jack Kerouac, Flannery O'Connor, Saul Bellow, Ken Kesey, Louise Erdrich, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and other distinguished authors. Original.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies, Collections

816 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[L.S. Popovich · Rating 5 out of 5]

This 775-page short story collection is uncommonly good. It has a well-rounded and well-crafted spread of exuberant and surprising stories. I really hate collections that reprint the same twenty stories we've all read before. How many reprints of "Hills Like White Elephants" do we need? It does have its flaws, in my opinion - 3 stories by David Foster Wallace seems like a bit indulgent - but I can think of no other American collection I liked as much as this one. These are nearly all American short stories of course, since they come from a famous American publication. But there is the strange inclusion of Jorge Luis Borges. I took this as a sign that Esquire was just showing off the huge range of classic authors they managed to work into their publication. I would think that this and Esquire's other mammoth compendiums are really marketing tools to continue selling their journal, but that's just speculation.

There's a really stellar story by Antonya Nelson - whom I'd never heard of before - which reminded me of Deliverance. It also brings together masterpieces from Robert Stone, Norman Mailer, Stanley Elkin, Barry Hannah, Joy Williams, Richard Ford, Don Delillo, Philip Roth, Truman Capote, and others in a fairly portable package. It is certainly addictive to encounter so many heart-stopping tales in a row. I would have liked to spend more time with this collection but I couldn't put it down. I pick it up from time to time to sample my favorites. Just about every one of them is a winner. I would recommend this as a gift and for your personal library. Forget those unwieldy Norton Anthologies, this is all you need to get started for some of America's best stories.

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I kind of expected, a lot of these stories were kind of pretentious in the way that you need an advanced degree in literary analysis to get. Just because something is seeped in metaphor or layered 2 miles thick does not make it good literature. And why was it necessary to have THREE pieces by David Foster Wallace here- perhaps more pieces by people of color or women could have helped this collection. However, there were several stories I quite enjoyed:

The Jeweler, Pete Dexter
The B.A.R. Man, Richard Yates
The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (surprisingly worth much of the hype)
Marry the One Who Gets There First, Heidi Julavits
Soldier's Joy, Tobias Wolff
Fleur, Louise Erdrich
Lightning Man, David Means
The Visit to the Museum, Vladimir Nabokov
Morning in America, Tony Earley
The Beggar Said So, Isaac Bashevis Singer
A Man in the Way, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Plains of Abraham, Russell Banks
The Language of Men, Norman Mailer
The Death of Justina, John Cheever (this one amused me immensely)

[Jade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, a very good collection of short stories, especially one that draws from as many authors as this does. I treated it as a sort of tasting menu of some of the best American writers of the last century. It could’ve used more stories from women and people of color but I think that’s more on the fault of the magazine than the editor.
Some of my favorites include David Foster Wallace’s “Adult World”, Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” and Aleksander Hemon’s “The Deep Sleep”. Some of my least favorites include John Gardner’s “The Song of Grendel” and Harold Brodkey’s “His Son, In His Arms, in Light, Aloft”.
I recommend to anyone wanting to get into short fiction and learn about its evolution.

[Roz · Rating 4 out of 5]

While it's only a collection of stuff published in Esquire, this is surprisingly deep. It's kind of surprising to read all these stories, many of them by some giants of American 20th Century lit, and realize they all were published in a magazine best known now for "the sexiest woman alive."

There's some really good ones here, too. Hemingway's "The snows of Kilimanjaro", Norman Mailers "The Language of Men" and Richard Ford's "Rock Springs" stand out especially, but there's other good ones by John Updike, William Faulkner, David Foster Wallace, Joanna Scott, plus lengthy excerpts from novels by Philip Roth and Cormac McCarthy.

But there's a couple stinkers, too. F. Scott Fitzgerald's story is pretty pedestrian and I didn't especially care for Don DeLillo's story, either. The order of the stories seems a bit haphazard, too - it's not sorted by date and while editor Adrienne Miller saved a couple of the better stories for last, a book of this size and girth probably isn't going to benefit from that arrangement; this book is one you'll likely leave off to the side and pluck from here and there.

On the whole, this is a good collection and a fitting reminder that Esquire has (or at least had, anyway) some real literary merit. If you're looking for a strong collection of short fiction, it's hard to go wrong with this.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent testament to a vanished era in literary America: when magazines you could find at the grocery store mattered enough to coax people into reading short stories (a wonderful narrative form that is routinely, and unfairly, disparaged).

[Brett Wallach · Rating 2 out of 5]

One word pervades almost all of these stories. Pretentious. A few nice exceptions.

[Rand · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book for a dollar from a thrift shop and after reading it sold it for three. That value aside, there's also some really great stories in here by authors you have either not gotten around to or maybe never even heard of. Most of the stories in here are really good.

In fact, I kind of wish I had hung on to my copy as I failed to make a list of which authors were worth investigating further. Oh well.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

So depressing. No character ever triumphs. More than one dies. I thought I would find some new writers to follow up with to try, but I just couldn't get past all of the depressing stories to follow anything up.

[michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

some really, really great stuff in here.

[Jose Skinner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like most other compilations, the stories are hit or miss. But you're sure to find a few stories you'll enjoy. I got the impression of a lot of non-Western-centered stories.

[Patsy Gordon]

I had to return this book to the library :( But there were some great short stories in here!

[Jeremiah Wood · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really great collection of short fiction.