Amazon.com: The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction: Ann Charters: Books

Product Description

During her many years of teaching introduction to fiction courses, Ann Charters developed an acute sense of which stories work most effectively in the classroom. She also discovered that writers, not editors, have the most interesting and useful things to say about the making and the meaning of fiction. Accordingly, her choice of fiction in the first edition of her The Story and Its Writer was as notable for its student appeal as it was for its quality and range. And to complement these stories, she introduced a lasting innovation: an array of the writers' own commentaries on the craft and traditions of the short story. In subsequent editions her sense of what works was confirmed as the book evolved into the most comprehensive, diverse-- and bestselling -- introduction to fiction anthology. Instructors rely on Ann Charters' ability to assemble an authoritative and teachable anthology, and anticipate each edition's selection of new writers and stories.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

ANN CHARTERS (Ph.D., Columbia University) is a professor of English at the University of Connecticut and has taught courses in the short story for over thirty years. A preeminent authority on the Beat writers, Charters has written a critically acclaimed biography of Jack Kerouac; compiled Beats & Company, a collection of her own photographs of Beat writers; and edited the best-selling Portable Beat Reader. Her recent books include The Kerouac Reader, Selected Letters of Jack Kerouac, 1957-1969, Beat Down to Your Soul, and The Portable Sixties Reader. Her other textbooks with Bedford/St. Martin's include Literature and Its Writers, co-edited with Samuel Charters, and The American Short Story and Its Writer.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

Paperback: 1666 pages
Publisher: Bedford/St Martins; 4th edition (January 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312101376
ISBN-13: 978-0312101374
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds

Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,583,062 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

Inside This Book (learn more)
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First Sentence:
Read literature for the pleasure of it, Ernest Hemingway once told an interviewer, adding, "Whatever else you find will be the measure of what you brought to the reading." Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
grandson really dead, sliort story, thesis sentence, prose tale, falling action, rising action

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Ivan Ilych, Aunt Kate, New York, Peter Ivanovich, Goodman Brown, Mary Jane, Missie May, Arnold Friend, Miss Emily, Aunt Julia, Freddy Malins, Raymond Carver, Rip Van Winkle, Walter Mitty, Anna Sergeevna, Miss Ivors, Miss Moore, Zora Neale Hurston, United States, Wing Biddlebaum, Flannery O'Connor, June Star, Katherine Mansfield, John Wesley, Lieutenant Cross

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 170 books:

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories by Raymond Carver on 9 pages
Young Goodman Brown (Creative Short Stories) by Nathaniel Hawthorne on 6 pages
Death of Ivan Ilych (Signet Classic) by Leo Tolstoy on 5 pages
Rip Van Winkle (Illustrated Stories for Children) by Washington Irving on 5 pages
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad on 5 pages

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21 books cite this book:

Thematic Guide to Popular Short Stories: by Patrick A. Smith on 55 pages
A Short Story Writer's Companion by Tom Bailey on 7 pages
The Culture and Commerce of the American Short Story (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture) by Andrew Levy on 4 pages
Imagining Numbers: (particularly the square root of minus fifteen) by Barry Mazur in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
Imagining Numbers: (particularly the square root of minus fifteen) by Barry Mazur in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)

See all 21 books citing this book

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Customer Reviews

16 Reviews

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good stories with commentaries by their writers, March 30, 2001

By	ninjasuperstar (Iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction (Paperback)

Ann Charters has done a wonderful job of compiling a variety of great works of short fiction. There's Oates, Chekhov, Borges, Updike, Bierce, Carver, Cheever, and MANY others.

There is also an extended amount of commentary on the works themselves. You'll read about Flannery O'Connor's "Reasonable Use of the Unreasonable," John Cheever's "Why I Write Short Stories," and more. You often get a candid response from writers about not only their writing, but other writers as well. It is a very nice touch.

Before each story, there is a small biography of the writer, often informing the reader about the origin of the story that follows.

Last, the appendices to the book are quite good as well. They cover the basic "Elements of Fiction" and "A Brief History of the Short Story" as well as a glossary of literary terms that are handy for students of short fiction and helpful for those simply interested in the technique behind the art.

The book doesn't pretend to present everything about short fiction, but gives you a taste for the good stuff out there.

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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good anthology, August 11, 2001

By	Kharmic Tide Pool (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction (Paperback)

This anthology belongs on the shelves of any serious reader of literary fiction. The short stories in it are among the highest caliber and are often used by professors to teach students how to write. If you enjoy reading good fiction, or want to study how good authors write so you can write like them, then this book is one you ought to consider getting from your library or owning.

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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Teaching manual at its best, November 29, 2005

By	H. Dewar (Chicago) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction, Compact Sixth Edition (Paperback)

Charters' book is both a great read and a valuable teaching tool. The book lives up to its title: it successfully places the emphasis on the story and its writer rather than on the story and its editor or the story and its teacher. As a textbook/anthology this is sure to be more helpful - and interesting - to students than to read a lot of pedagogical and prescriptive information from a secondhand source. Whether you are a teacher or a student, new to the short story or old hand, the opportunity to read about writers' processes and intentions firsthand is invaluable, and Charters' selection of short stories is exceptional. Charters obviously cares about the project of teaching the short story well, and her dedication shines through in this volume.