Nothing But You: Love Stories from The New Yorker [Hardcover]

New Yorker Magazine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 21, 1997

A landmark anthology of fiction on the theme of love from the magazine that has defined the American short story for almost a century. Not all the stories gathered here have love or romance as their sole and central focus. But, taken together, they dramatize how affairs of the heart affect--permeate--every other aspect of our lives. Illustrations throughout. 448 pp. National ads. 25,000 print.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For decades The New Yorker has kept the short story in America's literary consciousness. While the sales of novels have eclipsed those of short stories in the marketplace, short-story writers take comfort in the fact that each week their craft is showcased in the pages of one of the country's best-known publications. Now Roger Angell, a senior editor at The New Yorker, has assembled a collection of stories by the likes of John Updike, Alice Munro, Woody Allen, and Raymond Carver. Culled from more than 30 years of issues, these stories are united by the theme of love, a term that covers a multitude of emotions: romantic love, platonic love, parental love, filial love, and love for mankind, not to mention lost love, twisted love, nostalgic love.... These 38 stories cover them all.

From Publishers Weekly

Modern love in all its unpredictable reality unfolds in this delightfully unorthodox anthology of 38 New Yorker stories from the past three decades. Many of the selections are love stories only in the broadest sense, viewing love as an element inextricably woven into the fabric of characters' lives. For example, William Maxwell's "The Man in the Moon" explores the emotional effect over three generations of a once-prominent Midwestern family's scandals, self-deceptions and failures on the male narrator, now an elderly historian. In Daniel Menaker's "Influenza," a self-described "neurotic school-teaching Jew" at a posh private school in Manhattan spars with his hectoring Cuban Freudian analyst as he carries on a torrid affair with a wealthy, sex-starved, WASPish widow. Angell, a longtime senior editor at the New Yorker, adventurously brings together stories that delve into the diversity of love: a macho New Orleans 16-year-old's sexual confusion over a furtive homerotic kiss (Ben Neihart's "Hey, Joe"); an English adventurer's quasi-clinical investigation of eros as part of a 1920s surrealist circle in Paris (Julian Barnes's "Experiment"); a devoted May-December couple-she 35, he 78-bravely facing her terminal illness (Mary Robison's "Yours"). Some may feel the humorous entries (by Woody Allen, Ian Frazier and others) fall flat, and others may find the entire roundup of wry, fiercely observant stories too cerebral or unromantic. Yet there are strong selections from Ann Beattie, John Cheever, Raymond Carver, Edna O'Brien, V.S. Pritchett, Jean Rhys, John Updike and lesser-known writers. Timed to coincide with Valentine's Day, this quirky omnibus makes a funny Valentine indeed. Illustrated. Local Valentine's Day readings by contributors.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 471 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (January 21, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679457011
• ISBN-13: 978-0679457015
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,401,370 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sticks to its focus of only love stories; most of them dry., July 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Nothing But You: Love Stories from The New Yorker (Hardcover)

When I think of love stories, I tend to think of something that touches the soul. While these stories were good and well compiled, they didn't touch me in any way--with the exception of "In the Gloaming". These stories appealed to me becuase they didn't focus on other conventional love stories. They were about friends, siblings, people having affairs. This book strived hard to discover love in more places than just the two newly weds. But did throw confusion and boredom in with this discovery.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent theme, an excellent collection, December 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Nothing But You: Love Stories From The New Yorker (Paperback)

This is a really excellent book and should please anyone who likes short story collections and especially fiction from The New Yorker. Although I quibbled with the inclusion of certain stories and didn't like every one, it's hard for me to imagine a much better, broader, or satisfying range of stories on love than the one displayed in this volume. The book mixes many respected and famous authors with less established, newer ones, and I honestly can't say that the stories by either set of authors are better than the others.

My three favorite stories were Gabriel Garcia Marquez's classic "Eyes of a Blue Dog," John Cheever's previously anthologized "Marito in Citta," and Alice Munro's recent "The Jack Randa Hotel." Each of these stories, like most of the best stories in this book, works so well because it conveys the intensity and idealism and adventure of love but is also grounded in the concrete, mundane details of everyday life. Other standouts include Alice Elliott Dark's recent but already classic "In the Gloaming," Katherine Keiny's charming, Jane Austenish "How to Give the Wrong Impression," R. Prawer Jhabvala's culture-clashing "The Man with the Dog," Bobbie Ann Mason's hilarious and moving "Love Life," John O'Hara's piercing "How Old, How Young," Raymond Carver's Edgar Allan Poe-imitating "Blackbird Pie," and Mary Grimm's probing "We."

As the editor, Roger Angell, and other reviewers here have noted, the book is not all full of happy endings and is not even always about passionate love affairs per se, but the broad theme of love is the perfect motif to carry along a short fiction anthology, and this theme keeps you moving through the stories just as love in real life keeps you moving through the everyday ups and downs of being with a romantic partner. One of the best short story anthologies I've read in a while.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Unrewarding Selections, March 3, 2009

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Lisa M. Taber "lisa" (NY, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nothing But You: Love Stories From The New Yorker (Paperback)

Read this with my book club and NONE of us liked it. We expected a few more selections that were at least somewhat romantic. There was only one story that all of us really liked. We were disappointed.