From Publishers Weekly
"For all its impact on twentieth-century American Literature, the Iowa Workshop must be acknowledged not only for the great writers connected with it but for the writers not connected with it," notes Grimes, a novelist and Iowa alum, in one of a spate of new books celebrating the Iowa M.F.A. program. Such disclaimers aside, this hefty volume, culled from the work of students and faculty, amply confirms the program's preeminent place in American writing. Though chronologically apt, it is dangerous to open such a collection with Wallace Stegner and Flannery O'Connor: there's not much room for improvement. But Grimes does an admirable job in compiling a diverse cast and a wide range of work. Standouts include Stuart Dybek's densely lyrical fable of love and fire, "Paper Lantern"; Denis Johnson's "Work," a pitch-perfect tale of a heroin junkie, with an unforgettable last line; Andre Dubus's gorgeously sad "Falling in Love," about a wounded veteran and the young actress who captures his heart; and two very different stories about children and the complicated ways they revolve around their parents, Jayne Anne Phillips's "Alma" and Pinckney Benedict's "The Sutton Pie Safe." If there is a misstep, it is the "Recollections" section, in which graduates complain about scalding critiques, drop famous names or recount their own accomplishments. A warm elegy to Richard Yates, a beloved teacher at Iowa in 1967, as famous for his trenchant fiction as for his incessant smoking and poor mental health, is also included. Yates, we are told, "thought his obituary would mention only Revolutionary Road," his devastating novel about failure, published in 1961. How fitting it would have been, therefore, to reprint one of Yates's incisive short stories.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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From Library Journal
These complementary titles offer a range of writing from and about the influential Iowa Writers' Workshop, the first creative writing program in the country. Conroy, the current director of the workshop, asked former students and faculty to write about writing. Chris Offutt, supplying the title, writes that each of his stories results from "ten or eleven drafts over a two-year period." Physician Abraham Verghese notes that schools of medicine and writing both use the same aphorism: "God is in the details." Marilynne Robinson accepts a canon of literature that is regarded as a treasure by a population but objects to "treating such works as categorically different from anything we ourselves can aspire to." In The Workshop, Grimes, a novelist and graduate of the workshop, selected 43 stories, recollections, and essays by participants and organized them by decade. "The book," he writes, "can be read sequentially, as a narrative about the workshop" or as an anthology. Selections include pieces by Wallace Stegner (1930s), Jayne Anne Phillips (1970s), Ethan Canin (1980s), Charles D'Ambrosio (1990s), and many others. Both titles will be of interest to academic libraries, particularly those whose institutions support creative writing programs.ANancy Patterson Shires, East Carolina Univ., Greenville, NC
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
