The Best of the West: New Short Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri - Softcover

Thomas, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0879053321 ISBN 13: 9780879053321

Publisher: Gibbs Smith, 1988

Synopsis

Twenty stories portray the problems of modern life in the Western states

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Of the omnibus's 20 stories, a few, like Elizabeth Tallent's superb "No One's a Mystery," possess only indirect reference to the West, and others involve Southern characters and settings, pointing to the arbitrariness of classifying some literature by region. Richard Bausch's haunting "The Man Who Knew Belle Starr" is, in fact, also anthologized in Algonquin's New Stories From the South. Readers may wonder, too, why John Updike's "Nevada," first published in the early '70s, is labeled here as "new." Still, Thomas's ( Pictures, Moving ) first volume in a series includes many individual triumphs and, as a whole, it offers a provocative though bleak vision of American life far from the urban sprawl. Richard Ford and Raymond Carver satisfy with their customary deftness, and less-known writers account for pleasant surprises. Tom McNeal's "True" captures the sense of random violence that often tinges small Western towns, and Rick DeMarinis's "Under the Wheat" juxtaposes a man's doomed marriage with his work at nuclear silos for mesmeric effect.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gibbs Smith
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0879053321
• ISBN 13: 9780879053321
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1