A Companion to the American Short Story

529 Pages·2010·4.184 MB·English

by  Alfred Bendixen, James Nagel (eds.)

A Companion to
the American Short Story
A Companion to the American Short Story Edited by Alfred Bendixen and James Nagel
© 2010 Alfred Bendixen and James Nagel. ISBN: 978-1-405-11543-8
Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture
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A C O M P A N I O N T O
T A
HE MERICAN
S S
HORT TORY
EDITED BY
ALFRED BENDIXEN AND JAMES NAGEL
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
This edition fi rst published 2010
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd except for editorial material and organization
© 2010 Alfred Bendixen and James Nagel
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A companion to the American short story / edited by Alfred Bendixen and James Nagel.
p. cm. – (Blackwell companions to literature and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-1543-8 (alk. paper)
1. Short stories, American–History and criticism. I. Bendixen, Alfred. II. Nagel, James.
PS374.S5C58 2010
813′.0103–dc22
2009035861
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Set in 11 on 13 pt Garamond 3 by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited
Printed in Singapore
1 2010
Contents
Notes on Contributors viii
Acknowledgments xiv
Part I: The Nineteenth Century 1
1 The Emergence and Development of the American Short Story 3
Alfred Bendixen
2 Poe and the American Short Story 20
Benjamin F. Fisher
3 A Guide to Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” 35
Steven T. Ryan
4 Towards History and Beyond: Hawthorne and the American
Short Story 50
Alfred Bendixen
5 Charles W. Chesnutt and the Fictions of a “New” America 68
Charles Duncan
6 Mark Twain and the American Comic Short Story 78
David E. E. Sloane
7 New England Local-Color Literature: A Colonial Formation 91
Josephine Donovan
8 Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Feminist Tradition of
the American Short Story 105
Martha J. Cutter
9 The Short Stories of Edith Wharton 118
Donna Campbell
vi Contents
Part II: The Transition into the New Century 133
10 The Short Stories of Stephen Crane 135
Paul Sorrentino
11 Kate Chopin 152
Charlotte Rich
12 Frank Norris and Jack London 171
Jeanne Campbell Reesman
13 From “Water Drops” to General Strikes: Nineteenth- and
Early Twentieth-Century Short Fiction and Social Change 187
Andrew J. Furer
Part III: The Twentieth Century 215
14 The Twentieth Century: A Period of Innovation and Continuity 217
James Nagel
15 The Hemingway Story 224
George Monteiro
16 William Faulkner’s Short Stories 244
Hugh Ruppersburg
17 Katherine Anne Porter 256
Ruth M. Alvarez
18 Eudora Welty and the Short Story: Theory and Practice 277
Ruth D. Weston
19 The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Structure, Narrative
Technique, Style 295
Kirk Curnutt
20 “The Look of the World”: Richard Wright on Perspective 316
Mikko Tuhkanen
21 Small Planets: The Short Fiction of Saul Bellow 328
Gloria L. Cronin
22 John Updike 345
Robert M. Luscher
23 Raymond Carver in the Twenty-First Century 366
Sandra Lee Kleppe
24 Multi-Ethnic Female Identity and Denise Chávez’s The Last of
the Menu Girls 380
Karen Weekes
Contents vii
Part IV: Expansive Considerations 389
25 Landscape as Haven in American Women’s Short Stories 391
Leah B. Glasser
26 The American Ghost Story 408
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
27 The Detective Story 425
Catherine Ross Nickerson
28 The Asian American Short Story 436
Wenying Xu
29 The Jewish American Story 450
Andrew Furman
30 The Multiethnic American Short Story 466
Molly Crumpton Winter
31 “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” American Restlessness and
the Short-Story Cycle 482
Jeff Birkenstein
Index 502
Notes on Contributors
Ruth M. Alvarez is the Curator of Literary Manuscripts at the University of Maryland
Libraries. She has responsibility for the Papers of Katherine Anne Porter as well as
nearly twenty related collections of primary materials that support the study of
Katherine Anne Porter. With Thomas F. Walsh, she edited Uncollected Early Prose of
Katherine Anne Porter and, with Kathryn Hilt, Katherine Anne Porter: An Annotated
Bibliography . For Mexico ’ s Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, she edited
Un pa í s familiar: Escritos sobre M é xico [ “ My Familiar Country ” : Katherine Anne Porter ’ s
Writings on Mexico].
Alfred Bendixen is Professor of English at Texas A& M University. He is the founder
of the American Literature Association, which he currently serves as Executive Direc-
tor. His books include H aunted Women (1985), an edition of the composite novel T he
Whole Family (1986), “ The Amber Gods ” and Other Stories by Harriet Prescott Spofford,
(1989), and E dith Wharton: New Critical Essays (1992). He is the associate editor of
the Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature (1999), the co - editor of the recently
published Cambridge Companion to American Travel Writing (2009), and the editor of
the forthcoming Blackwell Companion to the American Novel .
Jeff Birkenstein has strong interests in the short story and the story sequence as well
as in food and cultural criticism. His co -e dited collection of essays entitled Reframing
9/11: Film, Popular Culture and the “ War on Terror ” (with Anna Froula of East Carolina
University and Karen Randell of Southampton Solent University) is due out in the
Spring of 2010. He is working currently on Cultural Representation in the International
Short Story Sequence , co - edited with Robert M. Luscher. He is an Associate Professor
of English at Saint Martin ’ s University.
Donna Campbell is Associate Professor of English at Washington State University.
She is the author of Resisting Regionalism: Gender and Naturalism in American Fiction,
1885 – 1915 (1997), and her work has appeared in L egacy , Studies in American Fiction ,
American Literary Realism , and S tudies in American Naturalism , among other journals.
Notes on Contributors ix
Recent publications include essays on Kate Chopin ’ s At Fault in The Cambridge Com-
panion to Kate Chopin and on Naturalism in the forthcoming C ambridge History of the
American Novel. Her work on Edith Wharton includes a critical introduction to Edith
Wharton ’ s The Fruit of the Tree (2000) and essays in the E dith Wharton Review , Jack
London: One Hundred Years a Writer , and Twisted from the Ordinary: Essays on American
Literary Naturalism . Her current project is a book on American women writers of
Naturalism.
Gloria L. Cronin is College of Humanities Professor and Professor of English at
Brigham Young University. She is the editor of the T he Saul Bellow Journal , an executive
coordinator of the American Literature Association, recipient of the Pozner Bibliogra-
phy Prize awarded by the Jewish Library Association, director of the Jewish American
and Holocaust Literature Annual Symposium, and board member of the African Ameri-
can Literature and Culture Association. She has published extensively in Saul Bellow
studies and in the fi elds of Jewish American and African American literatures. She
recently edited, with Alan L. Berger, the J ewish American Literature Encyclopedia .
Kirk Curnutt is Professor and Chair of English at Troy University Montgomery. He
is the author of two novels, Breathing Out the Ghost and Dixie Noir , as well as several
other books, including The Cambridge Introduction to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Coffee with
Hemingway .
Martha J. Cutter is an Associate Professor of English and African American Studies
at the University of Connecticut and the editor of MELUS: Multi- E thnic Literature of
the United States . Her fi rst book, U nruly Tongue: Identity and Voice in American Women ’ s
Writing 1850 – 1930 , won the 2001 Nancy Dasher Award from the College English
Association. Her second book, Lost and Found in Translation: Contemporary Ethnic
American Writing and the Politics of Language Diversity , was published in 2005. Her
articles have appeared in American Literature , African American Literature , Callaloo ,
Women ’ s Studies , Arizona Quarterly , MELUS , Legacy , Criticism , and in the collections
Mixed Race Literature and Passing and the Fictions of Identity .
Josephine Donovan has written or edited eleven books in literary criticism, feminist
theory, and animal ethics, including New England Local Color Literature ; Sarah Orne
Jewett ; After the Fall: The Demeter - Persephone Myth in Wharton, Cather, and Glasgow ;
Feminist Theory: The Intellectual Traditions ; “ Uncle Tom ’ s Cabin ” : Evil, Affl iction and
Redemptive Love; and Gnosticism in Modern Literature. Most recently, she co- e dited (with
Carol J. Adams) The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics. She is Professor Emerita
of English at the University of Maine.
Charles Duncan is Professor of English, Head of the English Department, and
Moderator of the Faculty at Peace College, where he teaches American and African
American Literature. He has published two books, T he Absent Man: The Narrative Craft
of Charles W. Chesnutt and The Northern Stories of Charles W. Chesnutt, as well as several
articles on Chesnutt, the fi rst African American fi ction writer to earn a national
x Notes on Contributors
reputation. In addition, he has written essays on fi gures including James Baldwin,
Frank Norris, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Kate Chopin, Herman Melville, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, and Timothy Flint.
Benjamin F. Fisher, Professor of English, University of Mississippi, has many pub-
lications focusing upon or related to Poe and his writings. He is a past president of
the Poe Studies Association. Fisher is a member of editorial boards for the E dgar Allan
Poe Review, Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism , Gothic Studies, Victorian Poetry, and several
other journals. He has recently published The Cambridge Introduction to Edgar Allan
Poe (2008), has forthcoming from University of Iowa Press, E dgar Allan Poe in His
Own Times, and another book about Poe (The Contemporary Reviews) with Cambridge
University Press. In 1988 Fisher was awarded a Governor ’ s Citation, State of Mary-
land, for his outstanding contributions to Poe studies.
Andrew J. Furer has taught at the University of Connecticut, Harvard University,
Emerson College, and Fordham University. He is the author of essays on such writers
as Jack London, Stephen Crane, and James Weldon Johnson, including the fi rst major
article - length overview of London ’ s racial views, as well as a similar essay on London ’ s
ideal of “ the new womanhood. ” Furer is the editor of a forthcoming volume, T he
Genders of Naturalism, and is currently working on a book- l ength study of London’ s
radicalism. His other research interests include Zitkala - Sa, Paul Robeson, Richard
Wright, Bernarr Macfadden, and Jazz and Literature.
Andrew Furman is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of
English at Florida Atlantic University. His essays and articles on American literature
and other topics have appeared in a variety of publications, including Contemporary
Literature , MELUS , Poets & Writers , The Chronicle of Higher Education , JBooks , and Zeek .
He is also a regular fi ction reviewer for the M iami Herald . His most recent book is the
novel Alligators May Be Present with Syracuse Press. His non - fi ction book on the effort
to desegregate the Los Angeles Unifi ed School District will be published in 2010.
Leah B. Glasser teaches American literature and Creative Writing at Mount Holyoke
College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she is also the Dean of First - Year
Studies. Her publications include essays in numerous literary journals and, more
recently, in the Chronicle of Higher Education . Her focus is on nineteenth - and early
twentieth - century American women writers. Glasser is the author of the literary
biography In a Closet Hidden: The Life and Work of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman . She is
currently working on a new book tentatively titled A Landscape of One ’ s Own: Nature -
Writing and Women ’ s Autobiography .
Sandra Lee Kleppe is Associate Professor of English/American Studies at Hedmark
University College, Norway. She is the director of the International Raymond Carver
Society and the co - editor of New Paths to Raymond Carver: Critical Essays on His Life,
Fiction, and Poetry . Her articles on Carver have appeared in Classical and Modern Litera-
ture , Journal of Medical Humanities , and Journal of the Short Story in English .