Zusatztext "The prestigious O. Henry Awards collection proves that the American short story remains a vigorous and relevant genre in the hands of talented writers." -- The Atlanta Journal Constitution "There are things here to please everyone's appetite." -- The Austin Chronicle Informationen zum Autor Larry Dark is the editor of four anthologies, Literary Outtakes, The Literary Ghost, The Literary Lover , and The Literary Traveler . He lives in Montclair, New Jersey. Michael Chabon is the author, most recently, of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay . He lives in northern California. Mary Gordon is the author of Final Payments, The Company of Women and most recently the biography Joan of Arc . She is a professor of English at Barnard College. Mona Simpson is the author of Off Keck Road and Anywhere But Here . She is a professor at Bard College. Klappentext Established early in the last century as a memorial to O. Henry, throughout its history this annual collection has consistently offered a remarkable sampling of contemporary short stories. Each year, stories are chosen from large and small literary magazines, and a panel of distinguished writers is enlisted to award top prizes. The result is a superb collection of seventeen inventive, full-bodied stories representing the very best in American and Canadian fiction. And in celebration of this distinguished literary form, Prize Stories 2001 a Special Award for Continuing Achievement is presented to Alice Munro. FIRST PRIZE MARY SWAN The Deep SECOND PRIZE DAN CHAON Big Me THIRD PRIZE ALICE MUNRO Floating Bridge FRED G. LEEBRON That Winter T.CORAGHESSAN BOYLE The Love of My Life JOYCE CAROL OATES The Girl with the Blackened Eye DAVID SCHICKLER The Smoker ANTONYA NELSON Female Trouble ELIZABETH GRAVER The Mourning Door PICKNEY BENEDICT Zog-19: A Scientific Romance RON CARLSON At the Jim Bridger LOUISE EDRICH Revival Road WILLIAM GAY The Paperhanger DALE PECK Bliss MURAD KALAM Bow Down GEORGE SAUNDERS Pastoralia ANDREA BARRETT Servants of the Map Zusammenfassung Established early in the last century as a memorial to O. Henry, throughout its history this annual collection has consistently offered a remarkable sampling of contemporary short stories. Each year, stories are chosen from large and small literary magazines, and a panel of distinguished writers is enlisted to award top prizes. The result is a superb collection of seventeen inventive, full-bodied stories representing the very best in American and Canadian fiction. FIRST PRIZE MARY SWAN The Deep SECOND PRIZE DAN CHAON Big Me FRED G. LEEBRON That Winter T.CORAGHESSAN BOYLE The Love of My Life JOYCE CAROL OATES The Girl with the Blackened Eye DAVID SCHICKLER The Smoker ANTONYA NELSON Female Trouble ELIZABETH GRAVER The Mourning Door PICKNEY BENEDICT Zog-19: A Scientific Romance RON CARLSON At the Jim Bridger LOUISE EDRICH Revival Road WILLIAM GAY The Paperhanger DALE PECK Bliss MURAD KALAM Bow Down GEORGE SAUNDERS Pastoralia ANDREA BARRETT Servants of the Map ...

Autorentext
Larry Dark is the editor of four anthologies, Literary Outtakes, The Literary Ghost, The Literary Lover, and The Literary Traveler. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey. Michael Chabon is the author, most recently, of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. He lives in northern California. Mary Gordon is the author of Final Payments, The Company of Women and most recently the biography Joan of Arc. She is a professor of English at Barnard College. Mona Simpson is the author of Off Keck Road and Anywhere But Here. She is a professor at Bard College.

Klappentext

Established early in the last century as a memorial to O. Henry, throughout its history this annual collection has consistently offered a remarkable sampling of contemporary short stories. Each year, stories are chosen from large and small literary magazines, and a panel of distinguished writers is enlisted to award top prizes. The result is a superb collection of seventeen inventive, full-bodied stories representing the very best in American and Canadian fiction. And in celebration of this distinguished literary form, Prize Stories 2001 a Special Award for Continuing Achievement is presented to Alice Munro.

FIRST PRIZE
MARY SWAN
The Deep

SECOND PRIZE
DAN CHAON
Big Me

THIRD PRIZE
ALICE MUNRO
Floating Bridge

FRED G. LEEBRON
That Winter

T.CORAGHESSAN BOYLE
The Love of My Life

JOYCE CAROL OATES
The Girl with the Blackened Eye

DAVID SCHICKLER
The Smoker

ANTONYA NELSON
Female Trouble

ELIZABETH GRAVER
The Mourning Door

PICKNEY BENEDICT
Zog-19: A Scientific Romance

RON CARLSON
At the Jim Bridger

LOUISE EDRICH
Revival Road

WILLIAM GAY
The Paperhanger

DALE PECK
Bliss

MURAD KALAM
Bow Down

GEORGE SAUNDERS
Pastoralia

ANDREA BARRETT
Servants of the Map

Leseprobe
FIRST PRIZE

The Deep
by Mary Swan

Introduced by Mary Gordon

*Prose fiction is the bastard child of poetry and journalism. If we, arbitrarily perhaps, but perhaps not, name poetry as the mother, and journalism the father, it seems to me that current prose fiction suffers as a child who takes too much nourishment from its father's hand, an insufficient amount from its mother's. But "The Deep" triumphantly insists on fiction's kinship with poetry. Its greatest strength lies in its creation of image and atmosphere: the pen that leaks into the servant's pocket at the news of the mother of the house's death, the identical scars on the legs of the identical twins, the scars not quite identical because in incising the scars, the twins sat with their feet touching and the scars are therefore mirror images. "The Deep" marks the deep strangeness of the project of being alive. It begins with the inherently uncanny phenomenon of twinship: the other self that is simultaneously the self and other. It includes the darkness of family hatred, family coldness. It rescues the past--a particular slice of the past, the frequently limned period of the First World War--from the dead life of a museum piece. It touches on the limitations and frustrations of the existence of privileged young women, and points to their resilience in the face of genteel oppression. At the same time, the story has a strong, clear narrative line, an unlooked-for climax that in retrospect seems inevitable, so perfectly connected is it to all the elements that make up the story. In these few pages, a thick and shapely world is presented, and the author has risked the unfashionable in many bold, sure strokes. I chose this story as first among so many strong others because of its utter originality, its daring to assert the primacy of complexity and mystery, its avoidance of the current appetite for ironic anomie and thinness. It flowers entirely on its own terms, and the terms are rich and strange.
*
--Mary Gordon

Mary Swan

an excerpt from The Deep

From The Malahat Review

AFTER

Here there are two tall windows, very tall, many-paned, and the gauzy white curtains swirl in the breeze, lift and fall like a breath, like a sigh. There is a faint, sweet smell, like blossoms; perhaps it is spring. The leaves on the trees also lift and sigh, all that can be seen through those windows. Sounds reach us from the street, wheels turning and hard shoes and sometimes a voice raised, calling out something, but they are muffled, all these sounds. Distant. Father told us once about the Queen's funeral, straw laid in the street to mute the sound. It is like that, and we wonder if someone has died.

HOW TO BEGIN

Has it ever happened to you, that you have wakened suddenly from a long, deep sleep, that it takes some time for you to realize who you are, where you are? Familiar objects, even faces become mysterious, remote. You stumble about, trailing the fog of sleep into the waki…