Randall Jarrell's Book of Stories (New York Review Books Classics) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590170059 ISBN 13: 9781590170052

Publisher: NYRB Classics, 2002

Synopsis

Storytelling as a fundamental human impulse, one that announces itself at the moment, hidden in infancy, that dreams begin—this is what the poet and critic Randall Jarrell set out to illuminate in this extraordinary book. Here Jarrell presents ballads, parables, anecdotes, and legends along with some of the finest work of Chekhov, Babel, Elizabeth Bowen, Isak Dinesen, Kafka, Peter Taylor, and Katherine Anne Porter. This wonderful anthology, with its celebrated introductory essay, enlarges and deepens our perception of the storyteller's art and its central place in the world of our feelings.

Contents
RANDALL JARRELL: Introduction
FRANZ KAFKA: A Country Doctor
ANTON CHEKHOV: Gusev
RAINER MARIA RILKE: The Wrecked Houses; The Big Thing
ROBERT FROST: The Witch of Coös
GIOVANNI VERGA: La Lupa
NIKOLAI GOGOL: The Nose
ELIZABETH BOWEN: Her Table Spread
LUDWIG TIECK: Fair Eckbert
BERTOLT BRECHT: Concerning the Infanticide, Marie Farrar
LEO TOLSTOY: The Three Hermits
PETER TAYLOR: What You Hear from 'Em?
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN: The Fir Tree
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER: He
ANONYMOUS: The Red King and the Witch
ANTON CHEKHOV: Rothschild's Fiddle
THE BROTHERS GRIMM: Cat and Mouse in Partnership
E. M. FORSTER: The Story of the Siren
THE BOOK OF JONAH
FRANZ KAFKA: The Bucket-Rider
SAINT-SIMON: The Death of Monseigneur
ISAAC BABEL: Awakening
CHUANG T'ZU: Five Anecdotes
HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL: A Tale of the Cavalry
WILLIAM BLAKE: The Mental Traveller
D. H. LAWRENCE: Samson and Delilah
LEO TOLSTOY: The Porcelain Doll
IVAN TURGENEV: Byezhin Prairie
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: The Ruined Cottage
FRANK O'CONNOR: Peasants
ISAK DINESEN: Sorrow-Acre

About this title

About the Author:

Randall Jarrell (1914-1965) was born in Tennessee and graduated from Vanderbilt. A poet, novelist, translator, and critic as well as writer for children, Jarrell was a prolific author whose best-known works include the poems collected in The Woman at the Washington Zoo and The Lost World, the academic comedyPictures from an Institution, the children’s story The Bat Poet, and Poetry and the Age, a group of essays. An influential critic who, as poetry reviewer for The Nation, helped to launch the careers of Robert Lowell and other contemporaries, Jarrell taught for many years at the University of North Carolina, where he was much revered. He died in a car accident in 1965.

Review:

"Long out of print, this landmark volume—and the sweeping essay at the front—may change how you think about fiction. (It may also change how you think about your own life.) This is a book to return to, and to keep." — Stephen Burt

"It has been clear for some time that Randall Jarrell is one of the most gifted poets and critics of his generation." — The New York Times Book Review

"Randall Jarrell was such a gifted reader of poetry that it’s easy to overlook how keenly he read and discussed prose. The introduction to this wide—ranging collection is alone worth the price of admission: a brilliant, characteristically light—stepping little journey into the heart of the narrative impulse. This is as fine an entry into the art of the short story as any I know." — Brad Leithauser

"[Jarrell was] perhaps the most fearsome (and admired) American critic of the twentieth century." — The Atlantic Monthly

"My favorite short—story anthology is Randall Jarrell’s, with a brilliant essay as a preface." — Michael Dirda, The Washignton Post

About this edition

• Publisher: NYRB Classics
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1590170059
• ISBN 13: 9781590170052
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400
• Editor: Jarrell Randall