The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction: Compact Eighth Edition

by Ann Charters (Editor)

Story and its writer --
Civil peace / Chinua Achebe --
Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in heaven / Sherman Alexie --
Act of vengeance / Isabel Allende --
Hands / Sherwood Anderson --
Happy endings / Margaret Atwood --
Sonny's blues / James Baldwin --
Lesson / Toni Cade Bambara --
Black man and white woman in dark green boat / Russell Banks --
Snow / Ann Beattie --
From Fun Old father, old artificer / Alison Bechdel --
The rememberer / Aimee Bender --
Occurrence at Owl Creek bridge / Ambrose Bierce --
Circular ruins / Jorge Luis Borges --
August 2026: There will come soft rains / Ray Bradbury --
Cathedral; A small, good thing ; What we talk about when we talk about love / Raymond Carver --
Paul's case / Willa Carter --
Water names / Lan Samantha Chang --
Swimmer / John Cheever --
Darling / Anton Chekhov --
Désiré́e's baby; Story of an hour / Kate Chopin --
Barbie-Q / Sandra Cisneros --
Heart of darkness / Joseph Conrad --
Open boat / Stephen Crane --
How to date a browngirl, blackgirl, whitegirl, or halfie / Junot Diaz --
Battle royal / Ralph Ellison --
The red convertible / Louise Erdrich --
Rose for Emily; That evening sun / William Faulkner --
Very old man with enormous wings / Gabriel Garcia Marquez --
Yellow wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins Gilman --
Homage / Nadine Gordimer --
Young Goodman Brown / Nathaniel Hawthorne --
Hills like white elephants / Ernest Hemingway --
Church cancels cow / Amy Hempel --
Things you should know / A. M. Homes --
Sweat / Zora Neale Hurston --
Lottery / Shirley Jackson --
Who's Irish? / Gish Jen --
White heron / Sarah Orne Jewett --
Bad neighbors / Edward P. Jones --
Araby; Dead / James Joyce --
Hunger Artist; Metamorphosis / Franz Kafka --
Girl / Jamaica Kincaid --
Interpreter of maladies / Jhumpa Lahiri --
Rocking-horse winner / D.H. Lawrence --
Miss Brill / Katherine Mansfield --
Shiloh / Bobbie Ann Mason --
Necklace / Guy de Maupassant --
Bartleby, the scrivener / Herman Melville --
Nawabdin electrician / Daniyal Mueenuddin --
Management of grief / Bharati Mukherjee --
Dance of the happy shades / Alice Munro --
Where are you going, where you have been? / Joyce Carol Oates --
Things they carried / Tim O'Brien --
Everything that rises must converge; Good country people; Good man is hard to find / Flannery O'Connor --
I stand here ironing / Tillie Olsen --
The shawl / Cynthia Ozick --
Brownies / ZZ Packer --
Conversation with my father / Grace Paley --
Cask of Amontillado; Tell-tale heart / Edgar Allan Poe --
The jilting of Granny Weatherall / Katherine Anne Porter --
Job history / Annie Proulx --
From Refugeeland / Joe Sacco --
From Persepolis : The veil / Marjane Satrapi --
Yellow woman / Leslie Marmon Silko --
Homework / Helen Simpson --
Prisoner on the hell a case history / Art Spiegelman --
Two kinds / Amy Tan --
Death of Ivan Ilych / Leo Tolstoy --
A&P / John Updike --
The moths / Helena Maria Viramontes --
Harrison Bergeron / Kurt Vonnegut Jr. --
Everyday use / Alice Walker --
Good people / David Foster Wallace --
Worn path / Eudora Welty --
Say yes / Tobias Wolf --
Man who was almost a man / Richard Wright --
Image of Conrad's ''Heart of darkness'' / Chinua Achebe --
Superman and me / Sherman Alexie --
Form, not plot, in the short story / Sherwood Anderson --
Reading blind / Margaret Atwood --
Autobiographical notes / James Baldwin --
Writing "Poes" / Russell Banks --
Borges and I / Jorge Luis Borges --
Translating Kafka / Ann Charters --
Why I write short stories / John Cheever --
Technique in writing the short story / Anton Chekhov --
How I stumbled upon Maupassant / Kate Chopin --
Sinking of the commodore / Stephen Crane --
A huger artist / R. Crumb; David Zane Mairowitz --
Influence of folklore on ''Battle royal'' / Ralph Ellison --
Meaning of ''Rose for Emily'' / William Faulkner --
Feminist reading of Gilman's ''Yellow wallpaper'' / Sandra M. Gilbert; Susan Gubar --
Why I wrote ''Yellow wallpaper''; Undergoing the cure for nervous prostration / Charlotte Perkins Gilman --
How it feels to be colored me / Zora Neale Hurston --
Morning of June 28,1948 and ''Lottery'' / Shirley Jackson --
On ''Girl'' / Jamaica Kincaid --
Finding your voice / Anne Lamott --
On Tim O'Brien's ''Things they carried'' / Bobbie Ann Mason --
Writer's goal / Guy de Maupassant --
Blackness in Hawthorne's ''Young Goodman Brown'' / Herman Melville --
How I write short stories / Alice Munro --
Stories that define Making of a writer; Smooth Short story into film / Joyce Carol Oates --
Alpha company / Tim O'Brien --
Conversation with Ann Charters / Grace Paley --
Importance of the single effect in a prose tale / Edgar Allan Poe --
Language and literature from a Pueblo Indian perspective / Leslie Marmon Silko --
In the canon, for all the wrong reasons / Amy Tan --
Chekhov's intent in ''Darling'' / Leo Tolstoy ...

Genres: Writing, Short Stories, Textbooks, Nonfiction, College, Anthologies

1163 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Emorgan05 · Rating 4 out of 5]

So this is the new textbook that I am using in my Introduction to Fiction class. I generally don't count short stories (except those that are featured on my list of books I haven't read), but I've read this entire book now (in the past two weeks) and I want credit for that!

To the actual review part, this is a great anthology. There is an amazingly wide variety of stories pulled together here and great choices were made about which to include. My one disappointment is that Chambers has focused so much on recent short stories that some of the older classics were just ignored. But sometimes that is how it has to be.

In addition to the stories themselves, the information about the authors, additional critical essays, and other information is all really well done and well chosen.

This isn't the type of book that you take on a trip when you want to read short stories on a plane, but it's a good anthology and wouldn't be a bad choice to have around the house to pick up at random free moments.

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously I didn't read the whole thing. This class just about changed my mind about short stories.



“The Story of an Hour” (Chopin)
“The Cask of Amontillado” (Poe)
“The Necklace” (de Maupassant)
“The Darling “ (Chekhov)
“The Dead” (Joyce)
“Hills Like White Elephants” (Hemingway)
“Black Man and White Woman in Dark Green Rowboat" (Banks)
“Beg, sl tog, inc, cont, rep“ (Hempel)
“Interpreter of Maladies” (Lahiri)
“Nawabdin Electrician” (Mueenuddin)
“The Management of Grief” (Mukherjee)
“Brownies” (Packard)
“Bad Neighbors” (Jones)
“Who’s Irish?” (Jen)
“Yellow Woman” (Silko)
“Vengeance” (Allende)
“Circular Ruins” (Borges)
“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” (Marquez)
“Everyday Use” (Walker)
“The Things They Carried” (O’Brien)
“August 2026” (Bradbury)
“Shiloh” (Mason)
Raymond Carver casebook
“Prisoner on the Hell Planet“ (Speigelman)
"Fun Home" (Bechtel)
“Persepolis” (Satrapi)
“The Rememberer” (Bender)
“Snow” (Beattie)
“Things You Should Know” (Homes)
“Water Names” (Chang)

[Jonathan Brammer · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some earth-shattering works of fiction here - Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych", Ellison's "Battle Royale", Joyce Carol Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been". The anthology is arranged alphabetically, so there is a thematic randomness if you read it straight through. The variety of modern and contemporary stories reveal one common trait of genius writers - the ability to observe the human scene.

[Jared]

One of the books I had to get during a college course that I'm glad I did. Someday I'll hunt down another copy to keep around.

This is a great resource for short fiction, this type of book is something I'd like to see more of. With collected short stories, you don't often get the appendices of discussing the parts of a story. And that makes sense: you're not looking for a course on reading with every anthology you pick up.

Even so, Charters includes a list of questions to ask yourself when writing a short story, covering all her elements: POV, style, character, plot, setting, all that good stuff. They're good questions to keep in mind, even if many of them are obvious as you're writing.

[Nicole D'Souza · Rating 4 out of 5]

This anthology is a huge collection of ~85 short stories and more than 30 essays on the writing craft. It's great as a creative writing textbook or as a primer on the craft of writing short stories. Most of the stories are contemporary literary fiction, with only a small subset of classic short stories - I would have preferred a more equal mix. Also, the book only focuses on American and British authors, with very little attention spent on other nationalities / cultures / regions.

My 5-star reads:
- "August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury
- "Paul's Case" by Willa Cather
- "Desiree's Baby" by Kate Chopin
- "Axolotl" by Julio Cortazar
- "The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane
- "Battle Royal" by Ralph Ellison
- "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- "Young Goodman Browne" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- "Sweat" by Zora Neale Hurston
- "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant
- "Where Are You Going" by Joyce Carol Oates
- "The Shawl" by Cynthia Ozick
- "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" by Katherine Anne Porter
- "Persepolis: The Veil" by Marjane Satrapi
- "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker

My favorite essays:
- "Technique in Writing the Short Story" by Anton Chekhov
- "Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- "Undergoing the Cure for Nervous Prostration" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- "How It Feels To Be Colored Me" by Zora Neale Hurston
- "A Cautionary Tale" by Alice Walker
- "Writing Short Stories" by Flannery O'Connor

Overall, this book is a great choice for anyone wanting to learn about contemporary short fiction.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love using this anthology for an intro creative writing class. It contains great stories (including graphic novel excerpts) with writing about writing by the same authors. My students liked it too.