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

by Ann Charters (editor)

Ann Charters has an acute sense of which stories work most effectively in the classroom, and she knows that writers, not editors, have the most interesting and useful things to say about the making and the meaning of fiction. Her anthology, The Story and Its Writer, is the most comprehensive, diverse -- and the best-selling -- introduction to fiction available, notable for its student appeal as well as its quality and range. To complement the stories, Charters includes her lasting innovation: an array of the
writers' own commentaries on the craft and traditions of fiction. For in-depth, illustrated studies of particular writers, her "Casebooks" provide unparalleled opportunities for discussion and writing. For a shorter, more affordable option, the compact edition offers all the editorial features of the full edition with about half the stories and commentaries.

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

1184 pages, Paperback

Published July 23, 2010

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.

[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.