A Companion to the American Short Story traces the development of this versatile literary genre over the past two centuries. Written by leading critics in the field, and edited by two major scholars, it explores a wide range of writers, from Edgar Allen Poe and Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, and Charles Chesnutt at the end of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth the focus is on such important Modern writers as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Richard Wright before moving into the contemporary period with essays on Raymond Carver, Saul Bellow, and Denise Chávez. Contributions with a broader focus address groups of multiethnic, Asian, and Jewish writers. All the essays set the short story in context, focusing on the interaction of cultural forces and aesthetic principles. The Companion takes account of cutting edge approaches to literary studies and contributes to the ongoing redefinition of the American canon, embracing genres such as ghost and detective fiction, cycles of interrelated short fiction, and comic, social and political stories. The volume also reflects the diverse communities that have adopted this literary form and made it their own, featuring entries on a variety of feminist and multicultural traditions. This volume presents an important new consideration of the role of the short story in the literary history of American literature.
Notes on Contributors viii
Preface xiv
Acknowledgments xvi
Part I: The Nineteenth Century 1
1 The Emergence and Development of the American Short Story 3
Alfred Bendixen
2 Poe and the American Short Story 20
Benjamin F. Fisher
3 A Guide to Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" 35
Steven T. Ryan
4 Towards History and Beyond: Hawthorne and the American Short Story 50
Alfred Bendixen
5 Charles W. Chesnutt and the Fictions of a "New" America 68
Charles Duncan
6 Mark Twain and the American Comic Short Story 78
David E. E. Sloane
7 New England Local-Color Literature: A Colonial Formation 91
Josephine Donovan
8 Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Feminist Tradition of the American Short Story 105
Martha J. Cutter
9 The Short Stories of Edith Wharton 118
Donna Campbell
Part II: The Transition into the New Century 133
10 The Short Stories of Stephen Crane 135
Paul Sorrentino
11 Kate Chopin 152
Charlotte Rich
12 Frank Norris and Jack London 171
Jeanne Campbell Reesman
13 From "Water Drops" to General Strikes: Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Short Fiction and Social Change 187
Andrew J. Furer
Part III: The Twentieth Century 215
14 The Twentieth Century: A Period of Innovation and Continuity 217
James Nagel
15 The Hemingway Story 224
George Monteiro
16 William Faulkner's Short Stories 244
Hugh Ruppersburg
17 Katherine Anne Porter 256
Ruth M. Alvarez
18 Eudora Welty and the Short Story: Theory and Practice 277
Ruth D. Weston
19 The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Structure, Narrative Technique, Style 295
Kirk Curnutt
20 "The Look of the World": Richard Wright on Perspective 316
Mikko Tuhkanen
21 Small Planets: The Short Fiction of Saul Bellow 328
Gloria L. Cronin
22 John Updike 345
Robert M. Luscher
23 Raymond Carver in the Twenty-First Century 366
Sandra Lee Kleppe
24 Multi-Ethnic Female Identity and Denise Chávez's The Last of the Menu Girls 380
Karen Weekes
Part IV: Expansive Considerations 389
25 Landscape as Haven in American Women's Short Stories 391
Leah B. Glasser
26 The American Ghost Story 408
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
27 The Detective Story 425
Catherine Ross Nickerson
28 The Asian American Short Story 436
Wenying Xu
29 The Jewish American Story 450
Andrew Furman
30 The Multiethnic American Short Story 466
Molly Crumpton Winter
31 "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" American Restlessness and the Short-Story Cycle 482
Jeff Birkenstein
Index 502
