Contemporary West Coast Stories/a Collection of 20 Contemporary Short Stories [Hardcover]

C. Michael Curtis (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1993

An anthology of previously published short stories reflect the landscape and mores of California and the Pacific Northwest and exhibit the talents of today's most respected fiction writers--including Alice Adams, Ethan Canin, Raymond Carver, and Wallace Stegner.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Curtis, senior editor at the Atlantic , has assembled a line-up of 20 writers--among them Joyce Carol Oates, Ethan Canin, Amy Tan and Richard Ford--who deliver an array of short, punchy stories, loosely linked by their West Coast settings. Varied though these authors' voices are, their entries (all of which have previously appeared in print) have in common writing that is intelligent and finely honed. From Tobias Wolff comes "The Other Miller," a deadpan parable of denial. Merrill Joan Gerber offers "I Don't Believe This," a gut-wrenching account of a woman witnessing her sister's marriage fall apart. Life on the edges of society is described with a jittery, nearly hallucinogenic intensity in Peter Behrens's "I-80" and Robert Stone's "Aquarius Obscured." In contrast, Harriet Doerr's soothing, melancholy "Edie: A Life" (the only tale in the collection that is not set in the latter half of this century) exudes nostalgic elegance. Provocative, piquant and a pleasure to read, this is a fine sampling of the work of a talented group of writers.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Here are 20 stories by some of the major names in American fiction, collected in a poorly conceived, mistitled anthology. First, while the stories are contemporary in the sense that their authors are still living, they are not very timely. Most, such as Robert Stone's "Aquarius Obscured," focus on the laid-back California of the Sixties and Seventies. Only Amy Tan's story, "Two Kinds," examines the immigrant experience, arguably the topic of the Eighties and Nineties. Further, the collection deals almost exclusively with California; the Pacific Northwest is completely ignored. Finally, many notable West Coast authors are unaccountably omitted, whereas "outsiders" seem overrepresented: Joyce Carol Oates but not Wallace Stegner, Richard Ford but not Raymond Carver. Ultimately, this anthology has little to say about the contemporary West Coast scene. For larger fiction collections only.
- Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Globe Pequot Pr; 1st edition (November 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564402452
• ISBN-13: 978-1564402455
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,675,911 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)