Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #93489 in Books
• Published on: 1992-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Synopsis
A collection of 75 short stories, none longer than 750 words, includes works by Raymond Carver, Richard Brautigan, Margaret Atwood, John Updike, Tim O'Brien, and Joyce Carol Oates.

Customer Reviews

Fast, Fun, & Furiously Inventive: 75 gem-like tales!
Every practicing artist knows that limitations can be inspiring, and the 75 artists gathered here offer an inspirational look at what can be done in the smallest of spaces. From Spencer Holst's perfect "Brilliant Silence", which opens the collection, through such masterworks as Allan Gurganus's funny-yet-wrenching "A Public Denial" & Bernard Cooper's enigmatic "The Hurricane Ride", to ending with Larry Fondation's eerie "Deportation at Breakfast", there isn't a runt in the litter. Frequently provocative, at times hilarious, and always satisfying, you simply won't get more bang for your book dollar than this anthology. Would-be practitioners of fiction take note: here's all the textbook you'll need. It's got it all: instruction AND delight.

Still in print! They're doing something right!
Bought this book at City Lights in 1992. Finished it that night on a flight to Las Vegas.

I liked 90% of the stories.

Re-read them yesterday with the same result.

Each is about a page and a half. If you don't a story, you haven't lost much of an investment of time, concentration, or movement of lips as you read silently.

Fiction with all of the fat trimmed away!

Bad - no. Excellent - definitely not.
How do you work out exactly how many stars to give a book? The minimum allowed is one, so I assume that if I think a book is absolutely awful then I give it one star, because I cannot give it zero. It follows that if the book is tremendous in my eyes then it warrants the five star treatment. This leaves two, three and four. So - I will call two stars 'Fair', three stars 'Good' and four stars 'Very Good'.

With the above in mind, if I am being totally honest with myself, I can award this book three stars because it is in my opinion good - on the whole. You see, some of the stories were excellent and some were good but I have to wonder what on earth the compilers were thinking of when they added some of them. There are a few here that a primary school pupil would have rejected!!

If you like very short stories then the book will be a good buy, as long as you don't expect every story to be wonderful.