DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

More Time

Contemporary Short Stories and Late Style

Lee Clark Mitchell author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:10th Apr '19

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

More Time cover

More Time studies the contemporary short story and focuses on four recent collections: Alice Munro's Dear Life (2012); Andre Dubus's Dancing After Hours (1996); Joy Williams's The Visiting Privilege (2015); and Lydia Davis's Can't and Won't (2014). Each publication has appeared near the conclusion of a career devoted all but exclusively to short stories, with each defining a 'late style' honed over a lifetime. As well, each diverges from others in ways that have profoundly shaped our generic conceptions, and collectively they represent the four most innovative practitioners of the past half-century (with the arguable exception of Raymond Carver). Yet in an era when writing programs, The New Yorker, and distinguished journals all promulgate the short story, it remains relatively under-examined as a major literary form. We continue to argue about what a story inherently is, ignoring how differences among practitioners enliven the field. Dubus, Munro, Williams, and Davis each defy critical efforts to identify the story form's presumed constitution, marked by a supposedly special shape or requisite length or distinct narrative trajectory. And the very contrast among their efforts reveals the expansiveness of the genre, though few have taken such a cross-glancing interpretive approach. This volume opens up discussion, shifting from close analysis into larger speculation about possibilities established by the most innovative writers in their later work.

Recommended. * T. Ware, emeritus, Queen's University, Kingston, CHOICE *

ISBN: 9780198839224

Dimensions: 224mm x 142mm x 18mm

Weight: 388g

224 pages