New Stories from the South 1998: The Year's Best (Paperback)

by Shannon Ravenel (Editor), Padgett Powell (Preface) "It is a mystery why those chronicling the history of photography have chosen to obscure the name of Augustus Robin..." (more)
Key Phrases: Dale Mae, Megan Michele, New Orleans (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In his characteristically witty preface to this fine collection, Padgett Powell evokes Faulkner's "they mought have kilt us, but they ain't whupped us yet," but in fact these 19 stories capture more than whippedness. The varied pleasures of these short narratives range from the close descriptions of the daguerreotype art of Augustus Robin in John Russell's "Yellow Jack" through Mark Richard's hilarious "Memorial Day," in which a newcomer to Alcoholics Anonymous sets out to tell his life story and ends up telling the tale of his wife's (dubious) kidnapping by a vagrant. The bittersweet tendrils of love bonding a young girl and her disorderly "mental" mother in Nancy Richard's "The Order of Things" and the persistence of Mozart (and Jimi Hendrix) in the Vietnam hangover of a radio show host in Scott Ely's "Talk Radio" breed a kind of still life, dormant or dead, that mocks the abundance of nature. Whether raunchy, like Frederick Barthelme's erotically claustrophobic reworking of a John Updike story in "The Lesson," or poetically haunting, like the cosmology of Powell's "Aliens of Affection," each story, each "county," teems with residents touched by a Southern gift of gab. Whether (in Updike's words) "a cosmology without a theology" or a stubborn insistence that what we know best (even the sacred) begins right in front of our noses, the lasting impression of these stories (not a bad one among them) is of people maybe "kilt," maybe even "whupped" but, wait, there's more to come, only (as Uncle Oliver in Annette Sanford's "In the Little Hunky River" says) it's "too complicated to get into now." Tim Gautreaux, Stephen Dixon and Tony Earley are some of the other voices who spin their own set of complications.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In his preface, Padgett Powell attempts to pin down the source, if not the overriding theme, of what is called Southern literature. Whether the anthologized stories prove his thesis correct will be left to the reader, but the volume demonstrates the difficulty in defining a body of work that seems to have nothing but geography in common. The 19 pieces range from the Southern Gothic of Mark Richard's "Memorial Day" and Nancy Richard's "The Order of Things" to the earthy humor of Frederick Barthelme's "The Lesson" to Powell's own entry, the bizarre tour de force "Angels of Affection." Special mention must be made of Sara Powers's moving and ultimately happy love story, "The Baker's Wife." Recommended for most academic and public libraries.?Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Idaho Lib., Moscow
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 299 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565122194
• ISBN-13: 978-1565122192
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,548,970 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, July 13, 1999

By A Customer

As with all the books in this series, this collection shows how vibrant, diverse and rich the short story form remains in the United States, and how Southerners are pushing the form. Ravenel, who had a lot to do with the short story renaissance during the 1980s as editor of Best American Short Stories, has a truly fine eye. I highly recommend this one.

1.0 out of 5 stars Vapid and depressing, May 30, 1999

By A Customer

This whole thing and its predecessors are mighty depressing. Sometime in the 1960's short story writing slipped out of the hands of adults who had actually gone out in the world and held jobs and had families and thus had something to write about, and into the hands of graduate students. These workshop set pieces are dreadful and depressing and have little or nothing to do with the South, The exceptions -- Ellen Douglas stands out -- are too few and far between to make these books worthwhile. Stock up on Lewis Grizzard or Jeff Foxworthy instead and buy John Cheever's Collected Stories if you really want to see how it's done.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not up to par, January 13, 2000

By A Customer

I've read 3-4 previous editions of "New Stories From the South", and this was probably my least favorite. There were some good moments, and some good writing, but nevertheless, I got to the end of some stories and thought "Huh?". Then again, as another reviewer says, some of that could possibly be attributed to what's 'hip' in short stories these days. A former co-worker said he thought that some stories being published these days were 'the literary equivalent of modern art'.