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Books : The Best American Short Stories of the Century (The Best American Series (TM).) |
from: Houghton Mifflin
Binding: Audio CD
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.010805
EAN: 9780618093205
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
ISBN: 0618093206
Label: Houghton Mifflin
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 10
Publication Date: October 09, 2000
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Studio: Houghton Mifflin
Sales Rank: 561509
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
John Updike has selected enduring stories from the eighty-four annual volumes of THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, and the result is "a spectacular tapestry of fictional achievement" (Entertainment Weekly). Available for the first time on compact disc, this extraordinary collection features a wide variety of contemporary writers reading classics of the genre, along with authors reading from their own work. Containing twenty-two unabridged stories in all, the expanded audio edition includes a new story from THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 1999 to round out the century.
Amazon.com Review:
At age 67, the perennially youthful John Updike may at last qualify as something of an elder statesman. But the Best American Short Stories annual--whose greatest hits package Updike has now assembled--is almost a generation older, having commenced publication in 1915. This staying power allows the hefty Best American Short Stories of the Century to perform double duty. It is, on the one hand, a priceless compendium of American manners and morals--a decade-by-decade survey of how we lived then, and how we live now. Yet Updike very consciously avoided the sociological angle in making his selection. "I tried not to select stories because they illustrated a theme or portion of the national experience," he writes in his introduction, "but because they struck me as lively, beautiful, believable, and, in the human news they brought, important." In this he succeeded: the 55 fictions that made the grade are most notable for their human (rather than merely historical) interest.
So who got in? There are a good number of cut-and-dried classics here, including Hemingway's "The Killers," Faulkner's "That Evening Sun Go Down," and Philip Roth's acidic spin on religious connivance, "Defender of the Faith." In other cases, major authors are represented by relatively minor works. Yet it's hard to quibble with the inclusion of Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams, J.F. Powers, Eudora Welty--particularly when you take into account that their second-tier creations are fully the equal of anybody else's masterpieces. And the final third of the book really does constitute an honor roll of contemporary American fiction, with brilliant entries by Saul Bellow, Donald Barthelme, Raymond Carver, Tim O'Brien, Bernard Malamud, Cynthia Ozick, John Cheever, and Vladimir Nabokov. (For the latter, Updike actually succumbed to his own idolatry and bent the rules for admission--but nobody who reads the hallucinatory "That in Aleppo Once..." will regret it.) It goes without saying that fiction fans will be complaining about the editor's sins of omission well into the next century. But no matter how you slice it, this remains an elegant and essential advertisement for the short form. --James Marcus
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
I selected this audio book because I liked the idea of listening to a selection of well read stories and I thought the variety of stories looked interesting. The stories themselves are fine, but the audio book is marred by a selection of readers who lack expression and whose voice qualities are not sufficiently professional for an audio book. I expected the quality of reading to be comparable to that heard in NPR's "Selected Shorts." This isn't even close. The first story was fine, I cringed through ... Read More
Rating:  -
I am part of a short story group that meets weekly. We read two stories each week. We've read the first 12 stories so far. I can't tell you how much I am enjoying this opportunity to sample authors that "somehow" I completely missed even though I have a master's degree in language arts. Even if I don't care for a story, I am glad to sample the writing. It also gives me an opportunity to decide which artists to delve further into. An example: After reading Willa Cather's Double Birthday I am now ... Read More
Rating:  -
Only unknown authors to me. I was expecting some works by Edgar Allan Poe, O. Henry and/or Agatha Christie (maybe I ordered the wrong volume!). Also, some of the stories are quite dull and end as if the author didn't know how to end it! Quite disappointing!
Rating:  -
I read "The Best American Short Stories of the Century" to get a broad overview of the contemporary American short story genre. John Updike edited the collection. The introduction, written by Updike, is an interesting essay on the difficulties inherent in assembling any best-of collection. I suppose I would have liked to have read more of his thoughts on the form, its progress over the century and perhaps its place in contemporary fiction rather than his struggle in selecting pieces. But taken together ... Read More
Rating: -
To reduce the boredom of exercise I decided to listen to audio books. Short stories work well as I'm inclined to keep moving until the end.
This audio CD collection is very good and really well done. Many of the stories are read by their authors. The sound is crisp and clean, and (with rare exception) the diction fluid and natural. The stories themselves are varied and high-quality.
One thing to note, though, is that the audio version does not contain all the stories from ... Read More
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