In this Book
- Hugh Garner's Best Stories: A Critical Edition
- Book
- 2015
- Published by: University of Ottawa Press
- Series: Canadian Literature Collection
Hugh Garner’s Best Stories received the Governor General’s Literary Award for English-language fiction in 1963. The collection consists of twenty-four stories composed between the late 1930s and the early 1960s and reflects the immense flux of the mid-century, from the Great Depression to the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Civil Rights movement, and second-wave feminism. Garner takes on issues ranging from anglophone–francophone conflict in Canada to racism in the American South, from the disenfranchisement of First Nations people to the mistreatment of the mentally disabled. Best Stories is not only notable for the devastating precision of its prose, but also for its contribution to the Spanish Civil War literary canon. This new edition brings short fiction by Garner into conversation with the wider canon of Canadian and transnational leftist and proletarian literature.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- pp. ix-x
- Introduction
- pp. xi-xxxvi
- Hugh Garner’s Best Stories
- Acknowledgements
- pp. 3-4
- Acknowledgements
- pp. 5-6
- The Father (1958)
- pp. 15-24
- A Couple of Quiet Young Guys (1951)
- pp. 24-29
- Lucy (1952)
- pp. 29-39
- The Yellow Sweater (1951)
- pp. 39-47
- Make Mine Vanilla (1963)
- pp. 47-52
- Our Neighbours the Nuns (1951)
- pp. 53-58
- The Expatriates (1955)
- pp. 59-62
- Red Racer (1950)
- pp. 62-71
- Tea with Miss Mayberry (1956)
- pp. 72-82
- A Visit with Robert (1952)
- pp. 82-94
- One Mile of Ice (1952)
- pp. 98-107
- The Magnet (1954)
- pp. 108-117
- Some are so Lucky (1949)
- pp. 118-131
- Hunky (1961)
- pp. 131-143
- Interlude in Black and White (1952)
- pp. 143-146
- The Nun in Nylon Stockings (1963)
- pp. 146-153
- A Manly Heart (1955)
- pp. 153-161
- The Stretcher Bearers (1952)
- pp. 161-167
- A Trip for Mrs. Taylor (1951)
- pp. 167-175
- E Equals MC Squared (1963)
- pp. 175-184
- How I Became an Englishman (1953)
- pp. 184-189
- One-Two-Three Little Indians (1950)
- pp. 189-198
- Explanatory Notes
- pp. 199-214
- Textual Notes
- pp. 215-281