The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories

by Tobias Wolff

Overview

The thirty-three stories in this volume prove that American short fiction maybe be our most distinctive national art form. As selected and introduced by Tobias Wolff, they also make up an alternate map of the United States that represents not just geography but narrative traditions, cultural heritage, and divergent approaches.

Contributors and stories include: Mary Gaitskill, "A Romantic Weekend"; Thom Jones, "A White Horse";  Andre Dubus, "The Fat Girl"; Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried"; Chris Offutt, "Aunt Granny Lith"; Raymond Carver, "Cathedral"; Joyce Carol Oates, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"; Robert Stone, "Helping";  Mona Simpson, "Lawns";  Ann Beattie, "A Vintage Thunderbird"; Jamaica Kincaid, "Girl"; Stuart Dybek, "Chopin in Water"; Barry Hannah, "Testimony of Pilot";  John Edgar Wideman, "Daddy Garbage"; Ron Hansen, "Wickedness"; Denis Johnson, "Emergency"; Edward P. Jones, "The First Day"; John L'Heureux, "Departures"; Ralph Lombreglia, "Men Under Water"; Leonard Michaels, "Murderers"; Robert Olmstead, "Cody's Story"; Jayne Anne Phillips, "Home"; Susan Power, "Moonwalk"; Amy Tan, "Rules of the Game"; Stephanie Vaughn, "Dog Heaven"; Joy Williams, "Train"; Dorothy Allison, "River of Names"; Richard Bausch, "All The Way in Flagstaff, Arizona"; Carol Bly, "Talk of Heroes"; Scott Bradfield, "The Darling"; Kate Braverman, "Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta"; Richard Ford, "Rock Springs"; and Allan Gurganus, "Minor Heroism."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679745136
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/06/1994
Series:	Vintage Contemporaries Series
Edition description:	1st ed
Pages:	576
Sales rank:	78,294
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.99(h) x 1.01(d)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Although Tobias Wolff has described his own youthful self as a liar and an imposter, he has achieved in his writing a level of honesty so unflinching it is almost painful to read. The author of two groundbreaking literary memoirs and several volumes of autobiographical fiction (short and long), Wolff is not just willing to lay bare his pretenses and self-deceptions; he feels an obligation to do so. Like Rumpelstilskin, he has spun experience, memory, and a remarkable gift for storytelling into literary gold.

Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, Wolff barely knew his largely absent father, a man he and his older brother Geoffrey (also a writer) have described as a con artist and a compulsive liar. While he was still young, Wolff's parents officially split up. Geoffrey went to live with his father; Tobias stayed with his mother, who moved around from state to state in a steady, westerly progression that finally landed them in Washington. Never a good judge of character where men were concerned, his mother married an abusive martinet who made her son's life miserable. Wolff recounted his misspent, miserable youth in This Boy's Life, a groundbreaking 1989 memoir that later became a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Barkin, and Robert De Niro.

Wolfe escaped his troubled home environment by falsifying an application to a private boys' school in the East and fabricating a resumé so remarkable it got him in. He flunked out before graduating, enlisted in the military, and was sent to Vietnam -- an experience he chronicled in a second memoir, In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War, published in 1994. When he was discharged from service, he visited England, fell in love with the country, and studied, with the help of tutors, to gain entrance to Oxford. He graduated with honors in 1972 and received a scholarship to Stanford, where he received his master's degree.

A three-time winner of the O. Henry Award, Wolff is widely respected for his short stories. His first collection, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, was published in 1981 and received rave reviews from such past masters of the genre as Annie Dillard and Joyce Carol Oates. Subsequent anthologies have only served to solidify his reputation as a preternaturally gifted storyteller. His 1984 novella The Barracks Thief won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction; and in 2003, he published his first novel, Old School, a shrewdly observed, heavily autobiographical coming-of-age tale set in an elite boys' boarding school.

Nearly as famous for his teaching as for his books, Wolff served on the faculty of Syracuse University for 17 years before accepting a position at Stanford in 1997 as a professor of English literature and creative writing. He is also a crackerjack editor and has shepherded several short story anthologies through to publication.

Hometown:

Northern California

Date of Birth:

June 19, 1945

Place of Birth:

Birmingham, Alabama

Education:

B.A., Oxford University, 1972; M.A., Stanford University, 1975

Table of Contents

	Introduction
	River of Names	3
	All the Way in Flagstaff, Arizona	13
	A Vintage Thunderbird	29
	Talk of Heroes	48
	The Darling	69
	Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta	89
	Cathedral	108
	The Fat Girl	125
	Chopin in Winter	141
	Rock Springs	162
	A Romantic Weekend	185
	Minor Heroism	207
	Testimony of Pilot	229
	Wickedness	256
	Emergency	274
	The First Day	286
	A White Horse	291
	Girl	306
	Departures	308
	Men Under Water	320
	Murderers	342
	Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?	347
	The Things They Carried	366
	Aunt Granny Lith	385
	Cody's Story	399
	Home	410
	Moonwalk	426
	Lawns	445
	Helping	467
	Rules of the Game	497
	Dog Heaven	509
	Daddy Garbage	521
	Train	537

Editorial Reviews

Editor Wolff (This Boy's Life, LJ 1/89) describes the stories he selected for this volume as representing a reaction to the postmodern, self-conscious fictional attitude emerging from the Sixties. Realistic and convincing, these voices of the past decade and a half create a sense of kinship that remains with readers as insistently as do their own memories. This collection gives us 33 well-chosen stories. Side by side with classics by favorite writers-Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, Richard Ford-are recent contributions by Dennis Johnson, Allan Gurganus, Thom Jones, and others. While these diverse stories defy categorization as an identifiable trend in writing, they do share exuberance and clarity, offering depictions of often painful contemporary situations softened by humor and honesty. Highly recommended.-Eleanor Mitchell Arizona State Univ., West Phoenix

Library Journal