The Paris Review Book of People with Problems - Softcover

The Paris Review

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312422415 ISBN 13: 9780312422417

Publisher: Picador, 2005

Synopsis

The Paris Review asks: who hasn't survived a tax audit, a snowstorm, a break-up, or presided over a murder?

The next addictively clever Paris Review anthology is not a self-help manual; rather it is a wicked elaboration on the human effort to overcome--and instigate--trouble. Throughout these pages you will find men plagued with guilt, women burdened by history, scientists bound by passion, mothers fogged with delusion, and lovers vexed with jealousy. In the theme that encompasses every life, no protagonist--or reader!--is exempt.

Among those to appear:
- Annie Proulx
- Andre Dubus
- Norman Rush
- Charles Baxter
- Wells Tower
- Julie Orringer
- Elizabeth Gilbert
- Ben Okri
- Rick Bass

About this title

About the Author:

The Paris Review has published the work of Gabriel García Márquez, Alice Munro, Raymond Carver, Michael Chabon, and Jack Kerouac, among many others. They celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in 2003.

From Booklist:

It is said that all literature is ultimately about people in trouble--in short, people with problems. Hence this collection of 17 short stories about protagonists in fixes, exemplary tales that first appeared in the Paris Review. Notables such as Rick Bass, Norman Rush, Charles Baxter, and Elizabeth Gilbert twist the lives of the problem-ridden in stories resonating with all-too-human travails. On one end of the spectrum is Joanna Scott's "A Borderline Case," featuring a suave, sophisticated gentleman, K, analyst for 30 years to patient B, a fellow gentleman, lover of boys, closet scientist, and object of K's love and lust. In contrast, blue-collar Buddy, in Annie Proulx's "The Wamsutter Wolf," loses jobs because of his temper and finds himself unemployed in a run-down, single-wide, furnished trailer. There, in a setting that makes Tobacco Road look luxurious, he suffers a venomous snakebite as prelude to the trashy neighbors who embroil him in their violent, squalid lives. Is all life a problem or the overcoming of it? This far-ranging collection will inspire lively discussion. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0312422415
• ISBN 13: 9780312422417
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384