Esteemed critic Blanche Gelfant's brilliant companion gathers together lucid essays on major writers and themes by some of the best literary critics in the United States. Part 1 is comprised of articles on stories that share a particular theme, such as "Working Class Stories" or "Gay and Lesbian Stories," and part 2 contains more than one hundred essays on the lives and work of individual writers, including engaging pieces on promising new writers. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Particularly useful because it includes contemporary authors who are difficult to find, this new companion, edited by literary scholar Gelfant (formerly arts and sciences, Dartmouth), contains 11 thematic and 113 biographical essays. The thematic essays introduce the short story, focusing on broad categories such as Native American, Asian American, the American story of the Holocaust, and the American working-class story. Some author entries treat well-known writers (e.g., Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, London); others cover "promising new writers" (e.g., Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Larry Brown, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, David Leavitt). Articles about authors include brief biographies, a sense of the author's style and major motifs, and analyses of several short stories. Concise bibliographies conclude every entry. The writing is uniformly excellent, and the efficient index includes authors, story titles, book titles, and subjects. Gelfant includes 62 authors not found in Reference Guide to Short Fiction, ed. by Noelle Watson (CH, Jul'94), and the volumes of Dictionary of Literary Biography that cover short stories provide longer, illustrated articles with more biographical information but fewer authors. Undergraduate and graduate students and researchers. From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Blanche H. Gelfant: For many years she was the Robert E. Maxwell Professor in the Arts and Sciences at Dartmouth. In recognition of her contributions as critic and scholar, the American Literature Division of the Modern Language Association has honored professor Gelfant with the Jay B. Hubbell Award for Lifetime Achievement in American Literary Studies Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Introduction	1
Part I. Thematic Essays
The American Short Story Cycle	9
The American Short Story, 1807-1900	15
The African American Short Story	25
The Asian American Short Story	34
The Chicano-Latino Short Story	42
The Ecological Short Story	50
Lesbian and Gay Short Stories	56
The Native American Short Story	64
Non-English American Short Stories	72
The American Working-Class Short Story	81
American Short Stories of the Holocaust	94
Part II. Individual Writers and Their Work
Alice Adams (1926-1999)	105
Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)	109
James Baldwin (1924-1987)	114
John Barth (1930- )	117
Donald Barthelme (1931-1989)	121
Rick Bass (1959- )	127
Richard Bausch (1945- )	130
Charles Baxter (1947- )	135
Ann Beattie (1947- )	138
Saul Bellow (1915- )	144
Gina Berriault (1926- )	149
Doris Betts (1932- )	152
Paul Bowles (1910-1999)	154
Kay Boyle (1902-1992)	158
Ray Bradbury (1920- )	162
Kate Braverman (1950- )	166
Larry Brown (1951- )	172
Erskine Caldwell (1903-1987)	175
Hortense Calisher (1911- )	180
Truman Capote (1924-1984)	184
Raymond Carver (1938-1988)	188
Willa Cather (1873-1947)	193
John Cheever (1912-1982)	199
Sandra Cisneros (1954- )	205
Walter Van Tilburg Clark (1909-1971)	209
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (1930- )	211
Robert Coover (1932- )	215
Lydia Davis (1947- )	219
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (1953- )	223
Andre Dubus (1936-1999)	226
Deborah Eisenberg (1946- )	234
Stanley Elkin (1930-1995)	239
George P. Elliott (1918-1980)	242
John Fante (1909-1983)	245
James T. Farrell (1904-1979)	248
William Faulkner (1897-1962)	251
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)	258
Richard Ford (1944- )	264
Mary Gaitskill (1954- )	268
William H. Gass (1924- )	272
Ellen Gilchrist (1935- )	276
Herbert Gold (1924- )	282
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)	286
Amy Hempel (1951- )	293
Mary Hood (1946- )	297
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)	300
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)	305
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965)	310
Jamaica Kincaid (1949- )	314
Ring Lardner (1885-1933)	319
David Leavitt (1961- )	325
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929- )	329
Meridel Le Sueur (1900-1996)	333
Shirley Geok-lin Lim (1944- )	337
Jack London (1876-1916)	341
David Wong Louie (1954- )	345
Norman Mailer (1923- )	349
Bernard Malamud (1914-1986)	353
Bobbie Anne Mason (1940- )	358
Mary McCarthy (1912-1989)	361
Elizabeth McCracken (1966- )	366
Carson McCullers (1917-1967)	369
Thomas McGuane (1939- )	373
James Alan McPherson (1943- )	377
Nicholasa Mohr (1938- )	380
Lorrie Moore (1957- )	384
Toshio Mori (1910-1980)	390
Bharati Mukherjee (1940- )	394
Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977)	399
Joyce Carol Oates (1938- )	403
Tim O'Brien (1946- )	409
Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)	413
John O'Hara (1905-1970)	420
Tillie Olsen (1913?- )	423
Simon Ortiz (1941- )	430
Cynthia Ozick (1928- )	433
Grace Paley (1922- )	439
Americo Paredes (1915-1999)	444
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)	447
Jayne Anne Phillips (1952- )	452
Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980)	456
William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) (1862-1910)	462
Annie Proulx (1935- )	468
Thomas Pynchon (1937- )	476
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896-1953)	480
Alberto Alvaro Rios (1952- )	483
Philip Roth (1933- )	487
Damon Runyon (1880-1946)	490
J. D. Salinger (1919- )	494
Bienvenido N. Santos (1911-1996)	501
William Saroyan (1908-1981)	504
Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966)	508
Leslie Marmon Silko (1948- )	512
Jean Stafford (1915-1979)	515
Wallace Stegner (1909-1993)	519
John Steinbeck (1902-1968)	523
Elizabeth Tallent (1954- )	526
Peter Taylor (1917-1994)	530
James Thurber (1894-1961)	536
John Updike (1932- )	540
Helena Maria Viramontes (1954- )	547
Anna Lee Walters (1946- )	549
Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989)	554
Sylvia A. Watanabe (1953- )	556
Eudora Welty (1909- )	560
Edith Wharton (1862-1937)	569
Joy Williams (1944- )	573
Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)	579
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)	582
Tobias Wolff (1945- )	586
Richard Wright (1908-1960)	591
Hisaye Yamamoto (1921- )	596
Anzia Yezierska (1881-1970)	600
Index	605

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