Anthologies

Short stories by Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, Jean Stafford, Hortense Calisher, Jean Rhys, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Vladimir Nabokov, and Roger Angell offer distinctively individual visions of the aging process in man

Contents: 7 Introduction (The Seventh Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories) (1971) essay by Robert Aickman 11 Levitation (1958) short story by Joseph Payne Brennan 16 Dearth's Farm (1923) short story by Gerald Bullett 29 Esmeralda (1944) novelette by John Keir Cross 50 The Dead Valley (1895) short story by Ralph Adams Cram 61 The Visit to the Museum (1958) short story by Vladimir Nabokov *translation of Посещение музея? (1939) 73 Gone Away (1935) short story by A.E. Coppard 85 Governor Manco and the Soldier (1832) short story by Washington Irving 103 The Cicerones (1967) short story by Robert Aickman 116 Old Mrs. Jones (1882) novella by Mrs. J.H. Riddell [as by Mrs. Riddell] 169 Over an Absinthe Bottle (1893) short story by W.C. Morrow 181 Where the Woodbine Twineth (1964) short story by Davis Grubb (variant of You Never Believe Me)

This capacious anthology has selections from the authors you would expect to find, from others you may be less familiar with, and from writers you might not expect to show up in this company. The result is a treasure trove of unusual fiction, one of the most exciting anthologies to appear in the last decade. This is a poet's companion, a student's delight, great bedside reading: the kind of book you'd take to a desert island!

It is sometimes said that football, unlike cricket, has not produced much writing that is worthy of being re-read and preserved. The Joy of Football, selected and edited by the Sunday Times football correspondent, who has also written many novels and stories with soccer as their theme, shows what outstanding, and outstandingly readable, material there is on the game.

New York City is not only The New Yorker magazine's place of origin and its sensibility's lifeblood, it is the heart of American literary culture. Wonderful Town, an anthology of superb short fiction by many of the magazine's most accomplished contributors, celebrates the seventy-five-year marriage between a preeminent publication and its preeminent context with this collection of forty-four of its best stories from (so to speak) home. East Side? Philip Roth's chronically tormented alter ego Nathan Zuckerman has just moved there, in "Smart Money." West Side? Isaac Bashevis Singer's narrator mingles with the customers in "The Cafeteria" (who debate politics and culture in four or five different languages) and becomes embroiled in an obsessional romance. And downtown, John Updike's Maples have begun their courtship of marital disaster, in "Snowing in Greenwich Village." Wonderful Town touches on some of the city's famous places and stops at some of its more obscure corners, but the real guidebook in and between its lines is to the hearts and the minds of those who populate the metropolis built by its pages. Like all good fiction, these stories take particular places, particular people, and particular events and turn them into dramas of universal enlightenment and emotional impact. Each life in it, and each life in Wonderful Town , is the life of us all. Including these stories from the magazine's most iconic writers: “The Five-Fourty-Eight” by John Cheever “Distant Music” by Ann Beattle “Sailor off the Bremen” by Irwin Shaw “Physics” by Tama Janowitz “The Whore of Mensa” by Woody Allen “What it was Like, Seeing Chris” by Deborah Eisenberg “Drawing Room B” by John O’Hara “A Sentimental Journey” by Peter Taylor “The Balloon” by Donald Barthelme “Another Marvellous Thing” by Laurie Colwin “The Failure” by Jonathan Franzen “Apartment Hotel” by Sally Benson “Midair” by Frank Conroy “The Catbird Seat” by James Thurber “I See You, Bianca” by Maeve Brennan “You’re Ugly, Too” by Lorrie Moore “Signs and Symbols” by Vladimir Nabokov “Poor Visitor” by Jamaica Kincaid “In Greenwich, There Are Many Gravelled Walks” by Hortense Calisher “Some Nights When Nothing Happens Are the Best Nights in this Place” by John McNulty “Slight Rebellion Off Madison” by J. D. Salinger “Brownstone” by Renata Adler “Partners” by Veronica Geng “The Evolution of Knowledge” by Niccolo Tucci “The Way We Live Now” by Susan Sontag “Do the Windows Open?” by Julie Hecht “The Mentocrats” by Edward Newhouse “The Treatment” by Daniel Menaker “Arrangement in Black and White” by Dorothy Parker “Carlyle Tries Polygamy” by William Melvin Kelley “Children Are Bored on Sunday” by Jean Stafford “Notes from a Bottle” by James Stevenson “Man in the Middle of the Ocean” by Daniel Fuchs “Me Spoulets of the Splendide” by Ludwig Bemelmans “Over by the River” by William Maxwell “Baster” by Jeffrey Eugenides “The Second Tree from the Corner” by E. B. White “Rembrandt’s Hat” by Bernard Malamud “Shot: A New York Story” by Elizabeth Hardwick “A Father-To-Be” by Saul Bellow “Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer” by S. J. Perelman “Water Child” by Edwidge Danticat “The Smoker” by David Schickler

“The editing is more than brilliant: It is nearly unimaginable how the Library of America team managed to do so much so well. . . . Every possible kind of poem is here in its best examples. No one has ever done a better anthology of modern American poetry, or even come close.” — Talk This second volume of the landmark two-volume Library of America anthology of twentieth-century poetry, organized chronologically by the poets’ birthdates, takes the reader from E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) to May Swenson (1913–1989). In the wake of the modernist renaissance, American poets continued to experiment with new techniques and themes, while the impact of the Depression and World War II and the continuing political struggle of African Americans became part of the fabric of a literature in transition. New schools and definitions of poetry seemed often to divide the literary scene. This was the era of the Harlem Renaissance, the Objectivists, the Fugitives, the proletarian poets. It was also an era of vigorously individuated voices—knotty, defiant, sometimes eccentric. The range of tone and subject matter is immense: here are Melvin B. Tolson’s swirlingly allusive Harlem portraits, Phyllis McGinley’s elegant verse transcriptions of suburbia, May Swenson’s playful meditations on the laws of physics. The diversity of formal approaches includes the extreme linguistic experiments of Eugene Jolas and Abraham Lincoln Gillespie, Rolfe Humphries’s adaptation of traditional Welsh meter, the haiku of Richard Wright, the ballads of Helen Adam and Elder Olson, the epigrams of J.V. Cunningham. A selection of light verse is joined by lyrics from the era’s greatest songwriters, including Robert Johnson, Woody Guthrie, and Ira Gershwin. Several important long poems are presented complete, including Hart Crane’s The Bridge , Louis Zukofsky’s Poem beginning “The” and Robert Penn Warren’s Audubon: A Vision . Rounding out the volume are such infrequently anthologized figures as Vladimir Nabokov, James Agee, Tennessee Williams, and John Cage. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

John Updike has selected enduring stories from the eighty-four annual volumes of THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, and the result is a "spectacular tapestry of fictional achievement" (Entertainment Weekly). Volume 1 of the audio edition features a wide variety of contemporary writers reading classics of the genre, along with authors reading from their own work. "America and the 20th century -- at its best" (Wall Street Journal). Contents: The Other Woman by Sherwood Anderson, read by John Updike. Theft by Katherine Anne Porter, read by Jill McCorkle. Crazy Sunday by F. Scott Fitzgerald, read by George Plimpton. The Interior Castle by Jean Stafford, read by Mary Gordon. Gold Coast by James Alan McPherson, read by James Alan McPherson. The German Refugee by Bernard Malamud, read by Alan Cheuse. The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick, read by Cynthia Ozick. How to Win by Rosellen Brown, read by Rosellen Brown. I Want to Live! by Thom Jones, read by Thom Jones. Birthmates by Gish Jen, read by Gish Jen.

Explore the fascinating lives and loves of the greatest novelists, poets, and playwrights. From William Shakespeare and Jane Austen to Gabriel García Márquez and Toni Morrison, Writers explores more than 100 biographies of the world’s greatest writers. Trace the friendships, loves, and rivalries that inspired each individual and affected their writing, revealing insights into the larger-than-life characters, plots, and evocative settings that they created. You will also uncover details each writer’s most famous pieces and understand the times and cultures they lived in - see how the world influenced them and how their works influenced the world. Writers introduces key ideas, themes, and literary techniques of each figure, revealing the imaginations, and personalities behind some of the world's greatest novels, short stories, poems, and plays. A diverse variety of authors are covered, from the Middle Ages to present day, providing a compelling glimpse into the lives of the people behind the page.