Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A selection of fiction culled from the influential journal's archive with a twist: writers often featured in the journal's pages-Lorrie Moore, David Means, Ann Beattie, Wells Tower, Ali Smith, among others- offer brief critical analyses of their selections, elevating this book from a greatest hits anthology to a kind of mini-M.F.A. Sam Lipsyte's take on Mary Robison's "Likely Lake" is as much a demonstration of the economy of powerful writing as the story itself and Ben Marcus's tribute to Donald Barthelme's "magician... language" in "Several Garlic Tales" illustrates how learning can occur when one writer inhabits another writer's mind to geek out over what they both love. If the essays are uneven, the stories almost never are, ranging from the widely read (Ethan Canin's "The Palace Thief") to the unexpected (Mary-Beth Hughes's bleakly funny "Pelican Song"). The editors call this a guide for young writers and readers interested in literary technique, and the book achieves that purpose while also serving as a tribute to the role the Paris Review has played in maintaining the diversity of the short story form. The collection reminds us that good stories are always whispering into each other's ears. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The editors of this anthology asked 20 "masters of the genre" (among them Anne Beattie, Mary Gaitskill, David Bezmozgis, and Lorrie Moore) to select a favorite short story from the Paris Review archives from 1953 to the near present. In addition to being a treasure trove of great reading for short story lovers, the book showcases the richness of that historical source. Cross-generational selections include Alexandar Hemon's choice of Jorge Luis Borges's "Funes the Memorious," Wells Tower's choice of Evan S. Connell's "The Beau Monde of Mrs. Bridge," and Lydia Davis's choice of Jane Bowles's "Emmy Moore's Journal." The authors explain their choices in short introductions, themselves great reading, including David Means on Raymond Carver's well-known "Why Don't You Dance": "Carver opens in the kitchen, moves to action-pouring a drink-and then we follow as the narrator gazes out the window to see the bedroom suite in the front yard. In less than a beat, we're pulled into a deep, internal thought: his side, her side. All this in a little more than sixty words." Also included are several brilliant stories by lesser-known writers, like Guy Davenport (selected by Norman Rush) and Thomas Glynn (selected by Jonathan Lethem), that one hopes will lead to a resurgence of interest. VERDICT Like the Paris Review's revered author interview collections, this anthology of short stories selected by some of the great practitioners of our time is bound to be read and studied for years to come.-Sue Russell, Bryn Mawr, PA (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A compendium of The Paris Review's short story hits, curated with the ambitious, aspiring writer in mind. This collection showcases a handful of the literary innovations the journal has championed since its founding in 1953: There are gnomic, comic experiments by Donald Barthelme, Jorge Luis Borges and Lydia Davis, and minimalist works by Mary Robison and Raymond Carver. But the magazine's heart is in domestic realism about the upper-middle class, and a few of the stories collected here are classics of the form. In "Bangkok," James Salter pits an estranged couple against each other, calibrating the dialogue to show how eagerly one wants to wound the other. Evan S. Connell's "The Beau Monde of Mrs. Bridge" inhabits the mind of a WASP aristocrat who's both charming and blinkered to the wider world. And Ethan Canin's "The Palace Thief" is a stellar exploration of morality and noblesse oblige, told through a prep school headmaster's remembrance of a mendacious student. Each story is preceded with a brief appreciation by a well-known admirer--Sam Lipsyte introduces Robison, Dave Eggers introduces Salter, and so on. The introducers were clearly instructed to avoid high-flown encomiums and instead discuss the specifics of why each story is effective, so the book is rich with shoptalk. And though some intros ought to have spoiler alerts, most are engaging in their own right--Jeffrey Eugenides' discussion of Denis Johnson's "Car Crash While Hitchhiking" captures that story's heartbreak and serves as an essay on the virtues of the form itself. As if to comfort readers who came to the book striving for literary fame, the collection closes with Dallas Wiebe's "Night Flight to Stockholm," a comic riff on literally giving an arm and a leg to score a Nobel Prize in literature--or just publication in The Paris Review. A smart showcase of a half-century's worth of pathways in fiction.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
