I‘m primarily a poet, and it seems natural to love prose that gets the most out of every word. I also deeply admire the great works of—say, Theodore Dreiser, who seems, to me, to splash words all over the page. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s precision I love and admire most. It’s what I’ve striven for. It’s what appeals to me in the books I’ve chosen. The phrase “the style is the man” simply iterates the notion that the writer who comes closest to his (or her, of course) innermost passions, deepest held convictions, and writes with clarity in expressing them, is, in fact, the author himself.
As the song goes: “It ain’t whacha say, it’s the way how’s ya say it.” And that’s what I love about all five of these books. It isn’t exactly the place, or the time, or a particular character; it’s the style.
Joyce’s early stories, though, do cast magic over a certain time and place and make them come alive as if they were written yesterday.
The Dead, probably the best known of them, and made into a touching movie (John Houston’s last), is a great example of the feeling Joyce could evoke in us, the readers, with the carefully chosen words of a poet.
A definitive edition of perhaps the greatest short story collection in the English language
James Joyce's Dubliners is a vivid and unflinching portrait of "dear dirty Dublin" at the turn of the twentieth century. These fifteen stories, including such unforgettable ones as "Araby," "Grace," and "The Dead," delve into the heart of the city of Joyce's birth, capturing the cadences of Dubliners' speech and portraying with an almost brute realism their outer and inner lives. Dubliners is Joyce at his most accessible and most profound, and this edition is the definitive text, authorized by the Joyce estate and collated from…
I am intrigued by these stories and have read a number of them a number of times.
There is universal acclaim for Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, and these stories display those same qualities that created Gatsby.
One of my favorites is “The Rich Boy,” and one that I would recommend to every reader. Such clarity of mind, soul, and taste expressed in this story in particular makes great, gripping writing. I am even impressed by the stories written expressly for the magazines (every story can’t be a masterpiece).
A collection of 43 short stories by the author of "The Great Gatsby" and "Tender is the Night". The text contains tales such as "May Day" and "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz".
To Do Justice is the first book in the White Winter Trilogy. The other books are To Love Kindness and To Walk Humbly. The Trilogy follows the same set of characters through eight tumultuous years in their lives and in the history of the world. To Do Justice starts…
I love this book because it forced me to take sharp notice of Hemingway.
No, it wasn’t the big novels, the ones that had become best-sellers; they were everywhere. But when this book fell into my lap, it made me want to dig right into him. It’s his earliest collection of stories, and though Hemingway said once that they were interconnected, critics then and now disagree.
I think they’re great because they show the early manifestations of what he coined “the iceberg theory” of good writing—writing that forced me, one day, standing in a bookstore, reading the last few pages of A Farewell to Arms, twenty years or so after reading the book for the first time, to fairly nearly weep.
A Vintage Classics edition of the early collection of short fiction that first established Ernest Hemingway's reputation, including several of his most loved stories
Ernest Hemingway, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, did more to change the style of fiction in English than any other writer of his time with his economical prose and terse, declarative sentences that conceal more than they reveal. In Our Time, published in 1925, was the collection that first drew the world's attention to Hemingway. Besides revealing his versatility as a writer and throwing fascinating light on the themes of his major…
These stories appeal to my appreciation of style in a perhaps peculiar way: I want to know.
How does a great poet sound when he’s writing prose? Especially a poet whose exalted work leaves many readers mystified. These are satisfying and memorable stories, and they gave me a look into what this poet saw, thought about, and prosaically wrote about in his youth.
Precise prose is, to my mind, the prime element of powerful writing, and these stories satisfied my search.
The "Young Dog" of the title is of course Thomas himself, and this volume of autobiographical stories by the great modern poet, who died at 39 while on his third lecture tour in the United States, shows his waggish humor at its best, his exuberance and verbal magic in spectacular display. It also shows him a spinner of tales and a creator of memorable characters. There is the grandfather who marches off in his best clothes to be buried in the next town, the sardonic "senior reporter" on a provincial newspaper, servant girls who know how to deal triumphantly with…
Winner of the Robert F. Lucid Award for Mailer Studies.
Celebrating Mailer's centenary and the seventy-fifth publication of The Naked and the Dead, the book illustrates how Mailer remains a provocative presence in American letters.
From the debates of the nation's founders, to the revolutionary traditions of western romanticism,…
O’Connor’s stories reveal good and evil as clearly as if viewed by a jeweler—through the loupe.
What she observed in the world around her, she expressed with clarity, and such reflections are not easily absorbed. They are deep and sometimes horrifying. Sometimes she actually made me uncomfortable by forcing me to feel slight touches of... perhaps not evil, but malicious or malevolent impulses residing in much of mankind.
Strange, too, is her ability to show irony and amusement in the great human comedy. I find her stories impossible to turn away from.
An essential collection of classic stories that established Flannery O’Connor’s reputation as an American master of fiction—now with a new introduction by New York Times bestselling author Lauren Groff In 1955, with the title story and others in this critical edition, Flannery O’Connor firmly laid claim to her place as one of the most original and provocative writers of her generation. Steeped in a Southern Gothic tradition that would become synonymous with her name, these stories show O’Connor’s unique view of life—infused with religious symbolism, haunted by apocalyptic possibility, sustained by the tragic comedy of human behavior, confronted by the…
Jimmy Whistler arrived on the tail-end of WWII, and that inured him to the constant conflicts of life. By the time he was a young man, the Sixties taught him not to worry, though constant conflict still prevailed. He maintained his way toward his goal of becoming a writer through jobs ranging from dishwasher to longshoreman; from book-seller to copywriter. His feckless parents added their two cents' worth regarding his future, and of course, there were women. Some were hot tamales; some hot potatoes. All provided conflict.
While Jimmy’s friend, Marsayas, encouraged him to stick to his guns and write, write, write, dumping all else that interfered, Jimmy soldiered on. The stories of Gravity Flow follow his lonesome pilgrimage, sometimes with dread, sometimes, levity.
How can a musically gifted man and deaf introverted woman find a compatible life together? And rise to the challenge of lighting a path to a better future for human society?
This powerful story of interconnected lives, ironic twists, and democratic challenges that move from the personal to the political…
“Creditable 1st novel” – Margaret Atwood (on Twitter/X )
“The product of an amazing new talent” – Quill & Quire
Italy, September, 1944.
As Allied armies close in on the retreating armies of the Third Reich, Captain Jim McFarlane, a Canadian infantry officer, is coming apart at the seams. He…
