“Last Courtesies” won the O. Henry Award in 1977, shortly after the short story’s first appearance in print, in a 1976 Harper’s Magazine . When the collection Last Courtesies was published in 1980, John Romano, for the New York Times , described the collection as a series of “sad tales” which contain characters who are…
Tag: Analysis
Immortality by Yiyun Li – Analysis
Li’s collection of stories, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers , in which “Immortality” appeared, was greeted with universal acclaim. Reviewers admired Li’s treatment of the different ways in which Chinese people came to terms with the dramatic changes in their society during the 1990s and also her many portraits of Chinese immigrants adapting to…
Great Day by David Malouf – Analysis
Dream Stuff earned Malouf overwhelming critical praise, and “Great Day” is often singled out as the finest story in the collection. Paul Sharrad, in his article on Malouf’s short prose, insists that Malouf is “Australia’s leading producer of ‘poetic prose.’” He finds that “the shorter work . . . relies for its impact on musical…
The Good Doctor by Adam Haslett – Analysis
In Adam Haslett’s short story, “The Good Doctor,” setting is both an historical and a geographical context, the decades-long persistent local economic depression and a history of failure of the federally funded medical outreach program, sponsored by the National Health Service Corps, to respond effectively to local substance abuse needs. The chronic poverty and the…
Fish by Jill McCorkle – Analysis
McCorkle’s short story “Fish” is something of a memoir, capturing for the reader particular events in the lives of the narrator and her dying father. While the narrator’s theme is resurrection, her method is memory. The sequence of memories is not strictly chronological, and this story does not pretend to be the narrator’s autobiography. Autobiographies…
The English Pupil – Analysis
Reviewers were generous in their praise of Barrett’s collection of eight short stories, Ship Fever and Other Stories (1996), in which “The English Pupil” appeared. Donna Seaman in Booklist comments that Barrett “has used science as a conduit to understanding the human psyche. . . . [Her] stories are precise and concentrated, containing a truly…
The Canal by Richard Yates – Analysis
During his lifetime, Richard Yates was read and respected by other writers to a much greater degree than he was read by the general public. His 1961 novel, Revolutionary Road , sold well, and over the years, it continued to be widely known, mostly due to its being assigned in literature classes. But from 1961…
Titanic Survivors Found in Bermuda Triangle – Analysis
Robert Olen Butler’s 1996 short story collection Tabloid Dreams has a gimmick: each of the stories that it contains is based on a title that resembles the types of titles one finds in tabloid newspapers, the kind that shoppers thumb through while waiting in line at the supermarket. “Help Me Find My Spaceman Lover,”“Boy Born…
A Silver Dish by Saul Bellow – Analysis
In a 1959 essay published in the New York Times called “The Search for Symbols, a Writer Warns, Misses All the Fun and Facts of the Story,” Saul Bellow takes literary critics to task for reading too deeply, asserting that close scrutiny can in fact be a threat to fiction. He presents a hypothetical situation:…
Rosa by Cynthia Ozick – Analysis
How does one deal with the Holocaust and its memory? This is the question that “Rosa” brings to mind, but does not necessarily answer. Rosa Lublin’s niece Stella theorizes that there are three lives: before the Holocaust, during, and after. Rosa claims: “Before is a dream. After is a joke. Only during stays.” Rosa’s answer…