The Story and Its Writer, Compact

Chapter PART ONE: STORIES

• • *Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, A Private Experience
• • Sherwood Anderson, Hands
• • Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings
• • James Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues
• • Toni Cade Bambara, The Lesson
• • **Alison Bechdel, The Fellowship [graphic story]
• • Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
• • Jorge Luis Borges, The South
• • *Richard Brautigan, The Cleveland Wrecking Yard
• • **Angela Carter, The Company of Wolves
• • Raymond Carver, Cathedral
• • Willa Cather, Paul’s Case
• • John Cheever, The Swimmer
• • Anton Chekhov, The Darling
• • **Anton Chekhov, The Lady with the Little Dog
• • Kate Chopin, Désirée’s Baby
• • Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour
• • *Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street
• • *Sandra Cisneros, My Name
• • *Sandra Cisneros, A House of My Own
• • *Sandra Cisneros, Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes
• • Stephen Crane, The Open Boat
• • *Edwidge Danticat, Without Inspection
• • * Lydia Davis, The Caterpillar
• • *Lydia Davis, Happiest Moment
• • Junot Díaz, How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie
• • Ralph Ellison, Battle Royal
• • Louise Erdrich, The Red Convertible
• • William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
• • William Faulkner, That Evening Sun
• • Gabriel García Márquez, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
• • Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
• • *Lauren Groff, The Midnight Zone
• • Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown
• • **Bessie Head, Looking for a Rain-God
• • *Ernest Hemingway, Big Two-Hearted River
• • Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants
• • *Zora Neale Hurston, The Country in the Woman
• • **Zora Neale Hurston, Sweat
• • **Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle
• • Shirley Jackson, The Lottery
• • Sarah Orne Jewett, A White Heron
• • James Joyce, Araby
• • James Joyce, The Dead
• • Franz Kafka, The Hunger Artist
• • Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
• • Jamaica Kincaid, Girl
• • *Jamil Jan Kochai, Occupational Hazards
• • D.H. Lawrence, The Rocking-Horse Winner
• • Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
• • * Jonathan Lethem, Narrowing Valley
• • Jack London, To Build a Fire
• • *Ling Ma, Peking Duck
• • **Katherine Mansfield, The Garden-Party
• • Guy de Maupassant, The Necklace
• • Herman Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener
• • *Manuel Muñoz, Anyone Can Do It
• • *Alice Munro , Night
• • **Keiji Nakazawa, From Barefoot Gen [graphic story]
• • Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
• • Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
• • Flannery O’Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge
• • Tillie Olsen, I Stand Here Ironing
• • Grace Paley, A Conversation with My Father
• • Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado
• • **Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher
• • *Annie Proulx, Job History
• • Marjane Satrapi, From Persepolis: “The Veil” [graphic story]
• • *George Saunders, Sticks
• • Said Sayrafiezadeh, A Brief Encounter with the Enemy
• • Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman
• • *Zadie Smith, The Lazy River
• • **Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
• • John Updike, A& P
• • **Helena Maria Viramontes, The Moths
• • Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Harrison Bergeron
• • Alice Walker, Everyday Use
• • **Eudora Welty, A Worn Path
• • *John Edgar Wideman, George Floyd Story
• • Richard Wright, The Man Who Was Almost a Man

Chapter PART TWO: COMMENTARIES

• • **Paula Gunn Allen, Whirlwind Man Steals Yellow Woman
• • Sherwood Anderson, Form, Not Plot, in the Short Story
• • Wayne C. Booth, A Rhetorical Reading of O’Connor’s “Everything that Rises Must Converge”
• • Jorge Luis Borges, Borges and I
• • **Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, A New Critical Reading of “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• • Raymond Carver, Creative Writing 101
• • Ann Charters, Translating Kafka
• • Anton Chekhov, Technique in Writing the Short Story
• • Kate Chopin, How I Stumbled upon Maupassant
• • Stephen Crane, The Sinking of the Commodore
• • *Lindsey Drager, Not Essay, Nor Fiction, But Prose: Of Narration
• • **Terry Eagleton, How to Read Literature
• • Ralph Ellison, The Influence of Folklore on “Battle Royal
• • **Richard Ellmann, A Biographical Perspective on Joyce’s “The Dead”
• • William Faulkner, The Meaning of “A Rose for Emily”
• • **Janice H. Harris, Levels of Meaning in Lawrence’s “The Rocking Horse Winner”
• • Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to Be Colored Me
• • Shirley Jackson, The Morning of June 28, 1948 and “The Lottery”
• • **Gustav Janouch, Kafka’s View of “The Metamorphosis”
• • **Sarah Orne Jewett, Looking Back on Girlhood
• • Jamaica Kincaid, On “Girl”
• • **D.H. Lawrence, On “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Cask of Amontillado”
• • **Ursula K. LeGuin, The Scapegoat in Omelas
• • **Jack London, Letter to the Editor on “To Build a Fire”
• • Guy de Maupassant, The Writer’s Goal
• • Herman Melville, Blackness in Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”
• • **J. Hillis Miller, A Deconstructive Reading of Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
• • **Vladimir Nabokov, A Reading of Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Little Dog”
• • **J.C.C. Nachtigal, Peter Klaus the Goatherd
• • Joyce Carol Oates, Smooth Talk: Short Story into Film
• • Tim O’Brien, Alpha Company
• • Grace Paley, A Conversation with Ann Charters
• • Edgar Allan Poe, The Importance of the Single Effect in a Prose Tale
• • *George Saunders, Pattern Story: Thoughts on “The Darling”
• • Leslie Marmon Silko, Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective
• • Leo Tolstoy, Chekhov’s Intent in “The Darling”
• • Mario Vargas Llosa, The Prose Style of Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez
• • Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and a Partisan View
• • **Eudora Welty, Is Phoenix Jackson’s Grandson Really Dead?

Chapter PART THREE: CASEBOOKS

• • **CASEBOOK ONE: Short Shorts or Flash Fiction
• • **Aesop, The Fox and the Grapes
• • **Franz Kafka, The Wish to become an American Indian
• • **John Barth, A Few Words about Minimalism
• • **Charles Baxter, On the Very Short Story
• • **Joyce Carol Oates, On Very Short Fictions
• • **Lydia Davis, Reading Short Shorts
• • CASEBOOK TWO: James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”
• • James Baldwin, Autobiographical Notes
• • **Keith E. Byerman, Words and Music: Narrative Ambiguity in “Sonny’s Blues”
• • **Kenneth A. McClane, “Sonny’s Blues” Saved My Life
• • *CASEBOOK THREE: Sandra Cisneros
• • *Sandra Cisneros, Straw into Gold
• • *Ellen McCracken, On Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street
• • *Julián Olivares, The House on Mango Street and the Poetics of Space
• • *Sandra Cisneros, The Author Responds to Your Letter
• • **CASEBOOK FOUR: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”
• • Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”
• • Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Undergoing the Cure for Nervous Prostration
• • Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, A Feminist Reading of Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”
• • **S. Weir Mitchell, Evolution of the Rest Treatment
• • **Elaine Showalter, On “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Chapter PART FOUR: APPENDICES

• • 1. Reading Short Stories
• • Grace Paley, Samuel
• • Close Reading Short Fiction
• • Guidelines for Close Reading Short Fiction
• • Sample Close Reading: Grace Paley, Samuel
• • Critical Thinking about Short Fiction
• • 2. The Elements of Fiction
• • Plot
• • Character
• • Setting
• • Point of View
• • Style
• • Theme
• • 3. *A Brief History of the Short Story
• • *The Origins of Storytelling
• • Early Forms of the Written Story
• • The Tale of the Medieval Period
• • The Influence of the Periodical
• • The German Influence and Romanticism
• • Realism
• • Modernism
• • The Post-Modern Era
• • 4. Writing About Short Stories
• • Keeping a Short Story Journal
• • Using the Commentaries and Casebooks
• • Writing the Paper
• • Types of Literary Papers
• • Student Essay: Explication
• • Student Essay: Analysis
• • Student Essay: Comparison and Contrast
• • Writing about the Context and the Stories
• • Other Perspectives
• • Student Essay
• • Writing the Research Paper
• • **Argumentation
• • **Student Essay: Research Paper
• • Revising Your Research Paper
• • 5. Literary Theory and Critical Perspectives
• • Formalist Criticism
• • Biographical Criticism
• • Psychological Criticism
• • Historical Criticism
• • Reader-Response Criticism
• • Poststructuralist and Deconstructionist Criticism
• • Gender Criticism
• • Cultural Criticism
• • Selected Bibliography
• • 6. Glossary of Literary Terms