44 short stories from different view points printed between 1922 and 1994 from the most celebrated writers ( )

Excellent anthology that organizes short stories by narrative perspective. Used Irwin Shaw's "'Act of Faith" in conjunction with our reading of Elie Wiesel's "Night" to practice synthesizing ideas and writing thematic statements.

The afterword is also insightful, in that it summarizes the development of the complex individual point of view, with internal voice and conflicts. Basically, Moffett contends that this way of telling a story is very modern and comes from our increasingly individualistic, non-communal society. ( )

This was a large collection of short stories that sometimes hit, other times miss. Nevertheless, there are classics here-- as well as other inclusions that touch on the basis of narrative. The entire book formulates itself around points of view and the various ways that they can be used to write, describe, and facilitate the telling of a story. Overall, the small briefs before each section are considerably well-written and allow for deep, meaningful thoughts about the subject matter. Overall, it was a nice collection, and its lessons are not easily forgotten for the savvy reader.

3.5 ( )

Loads of great authors. I read this in high school and I think I'm going to read it again. The stories are substantial ranging from the romantic to the horrific. ( )

This is a valuable book because it works on two levels.

First: It's a solid collection of 44 short stories, sort of a "best of the best" type collection. They were obviously chosen with a great deal of thought. The stories were written between the mid-19th century and the early 1990s, half were written by men and half by women, and the authors come from diverse backgrounds. However, although there is deliberate diversity, the book is still entirely US-centric--only five of the authors are from elsewhere. Further, none of the stories is translated. Representing US diversity, there are Asian-Americans, Latino-Americans, Jewish-Americans, African-Americans, and so on.

An aside here -- I found it interesting how the majority of these stories were about people struggling in dire poverty. Urban poor, rural poor, western poor, Appalachian poor, southern poor . . . if an alien was to read this book, it would believe people living in the United States are a downtrodden bunch!

I've called this book a "best-of-the-best" sort of anthology because it has stories by Eudora Welty, Alice Munro, Alice Walker, T Coraghessan Boyle, James Baldwin, Raymond Carver, John Cheever, Amy Tan, Frank O'Connor, Truman Capote, VS Naipaul, Henry James, Katherine Mansfield, etc and so on. However, there are a handful of obscure authors, and some of their stories were very strong indeed. In this category I have to list "My Sister's Marriage," by Cynthia Marshall Rich; "The Circuit," by Francisco Jimenez; "The Passing," by Durango Mendoza, "Doby's Gone," by Ann Petry, and perhaps my favourite, "Inez," by Merle Hodge.

The second level this book works on is as a text book or self-learning tool. The stories are arranged in a purposeful chronological order, and are designed to be read in order (back to front, or front to back, it doesn't matter). They are divided into categories, and there is a short lesson at the beginning of each category. These are:

Interior monologue
Dramatic monologue
Letter narration
Diary narration
Subjective narration
Detached autobiography
Memoir, or observer narration
Anonymous narration--single character point of view
Anonymous narration--dual character point of view
Anonymous narration--multiple character point of view
Anonymous narration--no character point of view

This helps the reader observe and study narrative techniques, and to see how authors use different techniques to best tell their story. After all, how a story is told is often as important as what is told.

Recommended for: Anyone looking for a solid collection of short stories and doesn't mind the strong US-centric flavour. But this book is really great for the reader who wants to sharpen his or her skills and become a more sophisticated and perceptive reader.

Not recommended for: English teachers and people who already know this stuff! Also, readers who've read widely through the short story world will find a lot of repetition in this volume. ( )