Digital Options

E-book

Read online (or offline) with all the highlighting and notetaking tools you need to be successful in this course.

Learn About E-book

Table of Contents

[*Indicates a new section or selection compared to full 10e and compact 9e]
[**Indicates additional section or selection that is new compared to compact 9e]

Preface
Brief Contents
Contents
Chronological Listing of Authors and Stories
*Global Perspectives Listing of Authors
Thematic Index to the Stories
Guide to the Commentaries
**Introduction: Why Read Literature?

PART ONE: STORIES
*Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, A Private Experience
Sherwood Anderson, Hands
Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings
James Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues
Toni Cade Bambara, The Lesson
**Alison Bechdel, The Fellowship [graphic story] 
Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Jorge Luis Borges, The South
*Richard Brautigan, The Cleveland Wrecking Yard
**Angela Carter, The Company of Wolves
Raymond Carver, Cathedral
Willa Cather, Paul’s Case
John Cheever, The Swimmer
Anton Chekhov, The Darling
**Anton Chekhov, The Lady with the Little Dog
Kate Chopin, Désirée’s Baby
Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour
*Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street
*Sandra Cisneros, My Name
*Sandra Cisneros, A House of My Own
*Sandra Cisneros, Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes
Stephen Crane, The Open Boat
*Edwidge Danticat, Without Inspection
* Lydia Davis, The Caterpillar
*Lydia Davis, Happiest Moment
Junot Díaz, How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie
Ralph Ellison, Battle Royal
Louise Erdrich, The Red Convertible
William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
William Faulkner, That Evening Sun
Gabriel García Márquez, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
*Lauren Groff, The Midnight Zone
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown
**Bessie Head, Looking for a Rain-God
*Ernest Hemingway, Big Two-Hearted River
Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants
*Zora Neale Hurston, The Country in the Woman
**Zora Neale Hurston, Sweat
**Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle
Shirley Jackson, The Lottery
Sarah Orne Jewett, A White Heron
James Joyce, Araby
James Joyce, The Dead
Franz Kafka, The Hunger Artist
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Jamaica Kincaid, Girl
*Jamil Jan Kochai, Occupational Hazards
D.H. Lawrence, The Rocking-Horse Winner
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
* Jonathan Lethem, Narrowing Valley
Jack London, To Build a Fire
 *Ling Ma, Peking Duck
**Katherine Mansfield, The Garden-Party
Guy de Maupassant, The Necklace
Herman Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener
*Manuel Muñoz, Anyone Can Do It
*Alice Munro , Night
**Keiji Nakazawa, From Barefoot Gen [graphic story]
Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Flannery O’Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge
Tillie Olsen, I Stand Here Ironing
Grace Paley, A Conversation with My Father
Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado
**Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher
*Annie Proulx, Job History
Marjane Satrapi, From Persepolis: “The Veil” [graphic story]
*George Saunders, Sticks
Said Sayrafiezadeh, A Brief Encounter with the Enemy
Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman
*Zadie Smith, The Lazy River
**Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
John Updike, A& P
**Helena Maria Viramontes, The Moths
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Harrison Bergeron
 Alice Walker, Everyday Use
**Eudora Welty, A Worn Path
*John Edgar Wideman, George Floyd Story
Richard Wright, The Man Who Was Almost a Man

PART TWO: COMMENTARIES
**Paula Gunn Allen, Whirlwind Man Steals Yellow Woman
Sherwood Anderson, Form, Not Plot, in the Short Story
Wayne C. Booth, A Rhetorical Reading of O’Connor’s “Everything that Rises Must Converge”
Jorge Luis Borges, Borges and I
**Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, A New Critical Reading of “The Fall of the House of Usher”
Raymond Carver, Creative Writing 101
Ann Charters, Translating Kafka
Anton Chekhov, Technique in Writing the Short Story
Kate Chopin, How I Stumbled upon Maupassant
Stephen Crane, The Sinking of the Commodore
*Lindsey Drager, Not Essay, Nor Fiction, But Prose: Of Narration
**Terry Eagleton, How to Read Literature
Ralph Ellison, The Influence of Folklore on “Battle Royal
**Richard Ellmann, A Biographical Perspective on Joyce’s “The Dead”
William Faulkner, The Meaning of “A Rose for Emily”
**Janice H. Harris, Levels of Meaning in Lawrence’s “The Rocking Horse Winner”
Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to Be Colored Me
Shirley Jackson, The Morning of June 28, 1948 and “The Lottery”
**Gustav Janouch, Kafka’s View of “The Metamorphosis”
**Sarah Orne Jewett, Looking Back on Girlhood
Jamaica Kincaid, On “Girl”
**D.H. Lawrence, On “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Cask of Amontillado”
**Ursula K. LeGuin, The Scapegoat in Omelas
**Jack London, Letter to the Editor on “To Build a Fire”
Guy de Maupassant, The Writer’s Goal
Herman Melville, Blackness in Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”
**J. Hillis Miller, A Deconstructive Reading of Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
**Vladimir Nabokov, A Reading of Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Little Dog”
**J.C.C. Nachtigal, Peter Klaus the Goatherd
Joyce Carol Oates, Smooth Talk: Short Story into Film
Tim O’Brien, Alpha Company
Grace Paley, A Conversation with Ann Charters
Edgar Allan Poe, The Importance of the Single Effect in a Prose Tale
*George Saunders, Pattern Story: Thoughts on “The Darling”
Leslie Marmon Silko, Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective
Leo Tolstoy, Chekhov’s Intent in “The Darling”
Mario Vargas Llosa, The Prose Style of Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez
Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and a Partisan View
**Eudora Welty, Is Phoenix Jackson’s Grandson Really Dead?

PART THREE: CASEBOOKS

**CASEBOOK ONE: Short Shorts or Flash Fiction
**Aesop, The Fox and the Grapes 
**Franz Kafka, The Wish to become an American Indian
**John Barth, A Few Words about Minimalism
**Charles Baxter, On the Very Short Story
**Joyce Carol Oates, On Very Short Fictions
**Lydia Davis, Reading Short Shorts

CASEBOOK TWO:  James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”
James Baldwin, Autobiographical Notes
**Keith E. Byerman, Words and Music: Narrative Ambiguity in “Sonny’s Blues”
**Kenneth A. McClane, “Sonny’s Blues” Saved My Life

*CASEBOOK THREE: Sandra Cisneros
*Sandra Cisneros, Straw into Gold
*Ellen McCracken, On Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street
*Julián Olivares, The House on Mango Street and the Poetics of Space
*Sandra Cisneros, The Author Responds to Your Letter

**CASEBOOK FOUR: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”  Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Undergoing the Cure for Nervous Prostration Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, A Feminist Reading of Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”     
**S. Weir Mitchell, Evolution of the Rest Treatment
**Elaine Showalter, On “The Yellow Wallpaper”  

PART FOUR: APPENDICES

1. Reading Short Stories

• Grace Paley, Samuel
• Close Reading Short Fiction
• Guidelines for Close Reading Short Fiction
• Sample Close Reading: Grace Paley, Samuel
• Critical Thinking about Short Fiction

2. The Elements of Fiction

• Plot
• Character
• Setting
• Point of View
• Style
• Theme
  

3. *A Brief History of the Short Story

• *The Origins of Storytelling
• Early Forms of the Written Story
• The Tale of the Medieval Period
• The Influence of the Periodical
• The German Influence and Romanticism
• Realism
• Modernism
• The Post-Modern Era

4. Writing About Short Stories

• Keeping a Short Story Journal
• Using the Commentaries and Casebooks
• Writing the Paper
• Types of Literary Papers
• Student Essay: Explication
• Student Essay: Analysis
• Student Essay: Comparison and Contrast
• Writing about the Context and the Stories
• Other Perspectives
• Student Essay
• Writing the Research Paper
• **Argumentation
• **Student Essay: Research Paper
• Revising Your Research Paper

5. Literary Theory and Critical Perspectives

• Formalist Criticism
• Biographical Criticism
• Psychological Criticism
• Historical Criticism
• Reader-Response Criticism
• Poststructuralist and Deconstructionist Criticism
• Gender Criticism
• Cultural Criticism
• Selected Bibliography

6. Glossary of Literary Terms
Acknowledgements
Index of Authors and Titles

Authors

Ann Charters

Ann Charters received her B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Her first book, Nobody: A Story of Bert Williams, was a biography of the West Indian comedian Bert Williams, an early eminent Black entertainer on the American stage. In 1973, she published the first biography of Jack Kerouac after working with him on his bibliography. She went on to edit the Selected Letters of Jack Kerouac, The Portable Jack Kerouac Reader, and The Portable Beat Reader, among other anthologies of Beat literature. Her photographs have appeared in Beats & Company and Blues Faces. Since 1985 she has been the editor of The Story and Its Writer. She is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Connecticut.

Related Titles