Emperor of the Air

by Ethan Canin

Overview

The critical and popular success (New York Times bestseller) that won a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship and launched Canin's career, Emperor of the Air explores tricky family relationships and tender moments of self-discovery with a voice of compassion rarely found in contemporary short fiction" (San Francisco Chronicle). As People magazine commented, "Like a spider's web, this collection of spare, precise short stories is cleverly alluring and deceptively strong."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780544310445
Publisher:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date:	09/28/1999
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Ethan Canin lives in Iowa City and San Francisco.

Hometown:

Iowa City, IA

Date of Birth:

196007

Place of Birth:

Ann Arbor, MI

Education:

A.B., Stanford, 1982; M.F.A., University of Iowa, 1984; M.D., Harvard Medical School, 1991

Editorial Reviews

Canin's outstanding debut, winner of a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship, gathers nine stories originally published in the Atlantic, Esquire and Ploughshares, among others; two were selected for the Best American Short Stories 1985 and 1986. At 27, the gifted author, a Harvard Medical School student who was a creative writing instructor and an Iowa Review editor, informs a technical expertise with a keen sense of the dynamics of the human psyche. His far-reaching vision encompasses ``The Year of Getting to Know Us,'' where the protagonist recognizes in himself aspects of his father's disturbing uncommunicativeness, and ``American Beauty,'' where a teenager cannot escape his bitter older brother's grim prescription of life's inevitabilities: ``You're going to turn into a son of a bitch, just like me.'' Several of the marvelous tales showcase love's singular, redemptive powers: an elderly couple revives their comatose relationship in ``We Are Nighttime Travelers''; a daughter bribes a guard to release her mother who is caught shoplifting in ``Pitch Memory''; and a straight-arrow husband lies for his wife in ``Where We Are Now.'' With a fine attention to detail, Canin continually surprises readers as he casts the mundane in new light (for example, the young narrator of ``Star Food'' unloads bags of potato chips in their aluminum racks ``as if I were putting children to sleep in their beds''). (February 3)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This collection is the deserving winner of a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. The nine stories show their young author to be a worthy successor to such distinguished past winners as Philip Roth, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Penn Warren. Writing primarily in the first person, Canin speaks convincingly in a variety of fictional voices: a deprived Iowa teenager, a 69-year-old astronomy teacher, a troubled husband in southern California, a young woman harried by her mother's disappointments. Canin's ordinary Americans are memorable individuals caught in situations leading to sudden, still moments of comprehension. This is an engrossing achievement, recommended for all fiction collections.Starr E. Smith, Georgetown Univ. Lib., Washington, D.C.

Library Journal

"The stories prove Canin guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of brilliance." Boston Globe

"A series of shots that find their target with devastating accuracy and frequent grace." The Los Angeles Times

From the Publisher