Why I Like This Story

Presents essays by leading short-story writers on their favorite American short stories and why they like them. It will send readers to the library or bookstore to read, or re-read, the stories selected.
Presents essays by leading short-story writers on their favorite American short stories and why they like them. It will send readers to the library or bookstore to read, or re-read, the stories selected.On the assumption that John Updike was correct when he asserted, in a 1978 letter to Joyce Carol Oates, that "Nobody can read like a writer," Why I Like This Story presents brief essays by forty-eight leading American writers on their favorite American short stories, explaining why they like them. The essays, which are personal, not scholarly, not only tell us much about the story selected, they also tell us a good deal about the author of the essay, about what elements of fiction he or she values. Among the writers whose stories are discussed are such American masters as James, Melville, Hemingway, O'Connor, Fitzgerald, Porter, Carver, Wright, Updike, Bellow, Salinger, Malamud and Welty; but the book also includes pieces on stories by canonical but lesser-known practitioners such as Andre Dubus, Ellen Glasgow, Kay Boyle, Delmore Schwartz, George Garrett, Elizabeth Tallent, William Goyen, Jerome Weidman, Peter Matthiessen, Grace Paley, William H. Gass and Jamaica Kincaid, and relative newcomers such as Lorrie Moore, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Phil Klay, Viet Thanh Nguyen and Edward P. Jones. Why I Like This Story will send readers to the library or bookstore to read or re-read the stories selected. Among the contributors to the book are Julia Alvarez, Andrea Barrett, Richard Bausch, Ann Beattie, Andre Dubus, George Garrett, William H. Gass, Julia Glass, Doris Grumbach, Jane Hamilton, Jill McCorkle, Alice McDermott, Clarence Major, Howard Norman, Annie Proulx, Joan Silber, Elizabeth Spencer and Mako Yoshikawa.

Contributor: Jackson R. Bryer (Edited by), A. R. Gurney (Contributions by), Alan Cheuse (Contributions by), Alice McDermott (Contributions by), Andre Dubus (Contributions by), Andrea Barrett (Contributions by), Ann Beattie (Contributions by), Beverly Lowry (Contributions by), Clarence Major (Contributions by), Diana Wagman (Contributions by), Doris Betts (Contributions by), Doris Grumbach (Contributions by), E. Annie Proulx (Contributions by), Edmund Keeley (Contributions by), Edward Kelsey Moore (Contributions by), Elizabeth Spencer (Contributions by), Ellen Douglas (Contributions by), Elliot Ackerman (Contributions by), Frederick Busch (Contributions by), George Garrett (Contributions by), Herbert Gold (Contributions by), Howard Norman (Contributions by), Jack Greer (Contributions by), Jackson R. Bryer (Contributions by), Jane Hamilton (Contributions by), Jill McCorkle (Contributions by), Joan Silber (Contributions by), Joanna Scott (Contributions by), Joyce Kornblatt (Contributions by), Julia Alvarez (Contributions by), Julia Glass (Contributions by), Kao Kalia Yang (Contributions by), Kate Christensen (Contributions by), Lee K. Abbott (Contributions by), Leslie Pietrzyk (Contributions by), Mako Yoshikawa (Contributions by), Mary Kay Zuravleff (Contributions by), Mary Lee Settle (Contributions by), Maud Casey (Contributions by), Molly Giles (Contributions by), Nicholas Delbanco (Contributions by), Olga Grushin (Contributions by), Pamela Erens (Contributions by), R. H. W. Dillard (Contributions by), Richard Bausch (Contributions by), Rilla Askew (Contributions by), Rion Amilcar Scott (Contributions by), Sabina Murray (Contributions by), Susan Coll (Contributions by), William H. Gass (Contributions by)

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