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Reviewed by:
  • The Oxford Book of American Short Storiesed. by Joyce Carol Oates
  • Carolyn Stoermer (bio)
The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, edited by Joyce Carol Oates 2nd ed.New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xix + 873 pp. Paper, $21.95.

For the new edition of The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, Joyce Carol Oates has curated a thoughtful assortment of American works with an emphasis on “familiar names, unfamiliar titles.” Although Oates retains some often-anthologized favorites, like Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” and Faulkner’s “That Evening Sun,” she has sought out lesser-known stories by a variety of writers in an effort to represent a wide range of cultural and regional traditions. The result is an evocative collection that spans an expanse of styles, voices, and techniques and yet remains wholly American.

There is much here for enthusiasts of American naturalism to appreciate. Henry James’s “The Middle Years,” a raw, affecting tale of unrealized artistry, and Jack London’s “In a Far Country,” a story that explores the brutal trajectory of those who journey unprepared into the North Country, exemplify Oates’s efforts to move beyond the stories we’ve grown to expect from anthologies of this type. Her inclusion of Sarah Orne Jewett’s “A White Heron” and Edith Wharton’s “A Journey” further underscores this focus as well as her desire to demonstrate “the quest . . . for one’s place in the world, one’s cultural and spiritual identity” that she sees threaded throughout so many American stories. Stephen Crane’s “The Little Regiment,” a story that Oates identifies as “virtually unknown,” also illustrates this thread. In it, Dan and Billie Dempster—brothers and Civil War compatriots whose rivalry and quarreling belies a deep, mutual affection—find their identities as men, soldiers, and brothers tested and reaffirmed when their regiment suffers heavy casualties during fierce combat.

When Oates moves on to contemporary writers, her selection reflects a deep sense of the diverse, fundamentally American nature of ethnic and minority fiction and its ties to the regionalist narratives that pervade so many American short stories. To this end, she includes stories by writers like Louise Erdrich, Ha Jin, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Junot Díaz as well as by Tim O’Brien, Stephen King, and Pinckney Benedict, to name just a few. The brief but lively manner in which Oates introduces each writer and story, contemporary or otherwise, affords just enough contextualization and focus to augment readers’ experiences without making them feel overly directed. On the whole, the second edition of The Oxford Book of American Short Storiesdemonstrates the breadth and depth of the American short story genre, and Oates’s accessible treatment of the writers and their works will energize any reader’s study of that genre. [End Page 120]

Carolyn Stoermer
Wright State University
Carolyn Stoermer

Carolyn Stoermer is an instructor of English at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, where she teaches Great Books and advises the English Club. In addition, she also serves as the Teaching Innovation Coordinator at the university’s Center for Teaching and Learning.

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