The Circus in the Attic: and Other Stories [Paperback]

Robert Penn Warren (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1968 | Series: Harvest/HBJ Book

A collection of Penn Warren’s best short fiction: two novelettes and twelve stories that skillfully handle a variety of themes and styles.”Worth reading for their craftsmanship and variety” (Charles Poore, New York Times).

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) won three Pulitzer Prizes, the National Book Award, the National Medal for Literature, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1986 he was named the country's first poet laureate.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (January 1, 1968)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156180022
• ISBN-13: 978-0156180023
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,494,883 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Haunting, lovely, and memorable, May 8, 2000

By 

J. C Clark "eanna" (Overland Park, KS United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Circus in the Attic: and Other Stories (Paperback)

I have been a fan of Warren's writing for many years. He is known for his novels, yet in many of those the most poignant and moving parts are the inserts, the chapters placed there to highlight the main story. Cass Mastern evokes so much, that it is impossible to imagine AKM without it. Warren achieves much the samee here...while not every story is a masterpiece, at least 2, The Circus in the Attic, and Blackberry Winter, will linger long in the memory. These are stories of a different era, slow, warm, evocative, suggestive and delightful.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Highly underrated author., March 8, 2002

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Circus in the Attic: and Other Stories (Paperback)

Robert Penn Warren, The Circus in the Attic (Dell, 1947)

The back jacket of the book says, "These stories come from the pen of one of America's half-dozen great writers." Given the time period of the book's release, that was really saying something. Something accurate, but something nonetheless. Penn Warren (who won the Pulitzer two year's before for All the King's Men) wrote the stories in this book over the course of fifteen years. Most were previously published.

The book is framed with two novellas, the title story and "Prime Leaf," with a number of shorter works in between. As with most of Penn Warren's work, the tales are about depression-era and WW2-era life in the American south, people going on about their day-to-day business. A number of the stories deal with the same town, and the same characters pass in and out of them, so the reader gets the feeling of getting to know different aspects of the town as he goes from story to story.

Part of the magic of Penn Warren's work is the ability to simultaneously expose to the reader the quiet dignity of the proletariat and the basic stupidity of human nature. Not an easy thing to make the reader respect the people he's laughing at. But that's exactly what happens time and again in this book. The characters do dumb things for various reasons, but we always understand what those reasons are, and most of the time we can see how the character gets from the reason to the justification to the act without a problem. And while there's always a moral to be had, Robert Penn Warren is certainly not Aesop. The moral is there, waiting to be found, but the reader who's not interested in the morality of the tales is allowed to go off on his merry way and not contemplate the deeper meaning of what's here. That, too, is part of Robert Penn Warren's gift. *** 1/2

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Warren, January 9, 2007

By 

SunViolet (Kansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Circus in the Attic: and Other Stories (Paperback)

Penn Warren offers a unique glimpse of southern culture in the 1940's. This collection is comprehensive and leave you ready for other books.