A Companion to the American Short Story Read online

  and other topics have appeared in a variety of publications, including Contemporary

  Literature , MELUS , Poets & Writers , The Chronicle of Higher Education , JBooks , and Zeek .

  He is also a regular fi ction reviewer for the Miami Herald . His most recent book is the

  novel Alligators May Be Present with Syracuse Press. His non - fi ction book on the effort

  to desegregate the Los Angeles Unifi ed School District will be published in 2010.

  Leah B. Glasser teaches American literature and Creative Writing at Mount Holyoke

  College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she is also the Dean of First - Year

  Studies. Her publications include essays in numerous literary journals and, more

  recently, in the Chronicle of Higher Education . Her focus is on nineteenth - and early

  twentieth

  -

  century American women writers. Glasser is the author of the literary

  biography In a Closet Hidden: The Life and Work of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman . She is

  currently working on a new book tentatively titled A Landscape of One ’ s Own: Nature -

  Writing and Women ’ s Autobiography .

  Sandra Lee Kleppe is Associate Professor of English/American Studies at Hedmark

  University College, Norway. She is the director of the International Raymond Carver

  Society and the co - editor of New Paths to Raymond Carver: Critical Essays on His Life,

  Fiction, and Poetry . Her articles on Carver have appeared in Classical and Modern Litera-

  ture , Journal of Medical Humanities , and Journal of the Short Story in English .

  Notes on Contributors

  xi

  Robert M. Luscher , Professor of English at the University of Nebraska at Kearney,

  is the author of John Updike: A Study of the Short Fiction , as well as critical essays on

  the short fi ction of Updike, Robert Olen Butler, Clark Blaise, Ernest Gaines, Mary

  Wilkins Freeman, and J. D. Salinger. His essay “ The Short Story Sequence: An Open

  Book, ” appeared in Short Story Theory at a Crossroads , and he has published pieces in

  a number of reference works on the short story sequence and the short fi ction of

  William Faulkner, Fred Chappell, Susan Minot, and John Updike. He is currently

  co - editing a collection of essays with Jeff Birkenstein, Cultural Representation in the

  International Short Story Sequence , to which he is contributing an essay on Butler.

  George Monteiro , who has spent his teaching career at Brown University, is the

  author or editor of books such as Robert Frost and the New England Renaissance , The

  Correspondence of Henry James and Henry Adams , Stephen Crane ’ s Blue Badge of Courage ,

  The Presence of Pessoa , Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop , and, most recently, Stephen

  Crane: The Contemporary Reviews . His work on Ernest Hemingway includes essays on

  the short stories in Prairie Schooner , Journal of Modern Literature , Criticism , Georgia

  Review , Journal of American Studies , and Journal of Medical Humanities and Bioethics . “ The

  Jungle Out There: Nick Adams Takes to the Road ” will appear in the Fall 2009 issue

  of the Hemingway Review .

  James Nagel is the Eidson Distinguished Professor of American Literature at the

  University of Georgia. Early in his career he founded the scholarly journal Studies in

  American Fiction and the widely infl uential series Critical Essays on American Literature ,

  which published 156 volumes of scholarship. Among his twenty - two books are Stephen

  Crane and Literary Impressionism, Hemingway in Love and War (which was made into a

  Hollywood fi lm directed by Lord Richard Attenborough), The Contemporary American

  Short - Story Cycle , and Anthology of the American Short Story . He has been a Fulbright

  Professor as well as a Rockefeller Fellow. He has published some eighty articles in

  the fi eld and lectured on American literature in fi fteen countries.

  Catherine Ross Nickerson is Associate Professor of American Studies at Emory

  University. She is the author of The Web of Iniquity: Early Detective Fiction by American

  Women and the editor of The Dead Letter and the Figure Eight by Metta Victor and That

  Affair Next Door and Lost Man ’ s Lane by Anna Katharine Green. She is editor of the

  forthcoming Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction .

  Jeanne Campbell Reesman is Professor of English at the University of Texas at San

  Antonio, where she has also served as Graduate Dean and Director of English, Clas-

  sics, Philosophy and Communication. She has taught at the University of Pennsylva-

  nia, Baylor University, and at the University of Hawaii. She has published over 40

  monographs, collections, textbooks, and editions. Reesman has received awards from

  the US Fulbright Commission, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the

  Huntington Library, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Science

  Foundation. Her critical biography, Jack London ’ s Racial Lives , was published in 2009,

  the fi rst full study of the role of race in his life and writings. Additional Jack London

  xii

  Notes on Contributors

  titles include Jack London: One Hundred Years a Writer (with Sara S. Hodson), No Mentor

  but Myself: Jack London on Writing and Writers (with Dale Walker), Jack London: A

  Study of the Short Fiction , Rereading Jack London , and Jack London , Revised Edition (with

  Earle Labor).

  Charlotte Rich is an Associate Professor of English at Eastern Kentucky University.

  Her book Transcending the New Woman: Multiethnic Narratives in the Progressive Era was

  published in 2009. She has published an edition of Charlotte Perkins Gilman ’ s novel

  What Diantha Did and essays in The Edith Wharton Review , Legacy , MELUS , and The

  Southern Quarterly . She also contributed an essay to Charlotte Perkins Gilman among Her

  Contemporaries . She has served as newsletter editor for the Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Society and has coordinated national conference panels for the Wharton Society and

  the Gilman Society.

  Hugh Ruppersburg is Senior Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences and Professor of

  English at the University of Georgia. He has written books on Faulkner and Robert

  Penn Warren and edited four anthologies of Georgia writing as well as a collection

  of essays about Don DeLillo. He recently received the Governor

  ’

  s Award in the

  Humanities in Georgia. He is writing a book on fi lms about the American South.

  Steven T. Ryan has taught American literature at Austin Peay State University since

  1977. He has co

  -

  edited special issues for the

  Southern Quarterly

  on Evelyn Scott,

  Caroline Gordon, and Robert Penn Warren. In addition to publishing extensively

  on these authors, he has published articles on Herman Melville, William Faulkner,

  Flannery O ’ Connor, Ernest Hemingway, Allen Tate, and Kate Chopin. He has also

  written a performed dramatic adaptation of Gordon ’ s The Strange Children .

  David E. E. Sloane is Professor of English and Education at the University of New

  Haven and is past president of the American Humor Studies Association and the Mark

  Twain Circle. He was named Carnegie - Mellon College Teacher of the Year for Con-

  necticut in 2001. His books include Mark Twain as a Literary Comedian , The Literary

  Humor of the Urban Northeast, 1830
– 1890 , American Humor Magazines and Comic Peri-

  odicals , Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: American Comic Vision , and A Student Companion

  to Mark Twain , among others. In recognition of ten years of outstanding contributions

  to humor studies from 1976 to 1986, he was named the fi rst Henry Nash Smith

  Fellow of the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College.

  Paul Sorrentino is Professor of English at Virginia Tech, and the founder of the

  Stephen Crane Society and editor of its journal, Stephen Crane Studies . His most recent

  book is an edition of The Red Badge of Courage .

  Mikko Tuhkanen is Assistant Professor of English and Africana Studies at Texas

  A & M University. His teaching and research interests include African American lit-

  erature and culture, especially in their diasporic contexts, LGBT studies, queer theory,

  critical theory, and critical race theory. He has published essays in these fi elds in

  American Literature , diacritics , Modern Fiction Studies , GLQ , Cultural Critique , and

  Notes on Contributors

  xiii

  elsewhere. He is also the author of The American Optic: Psychoanalysis, Critical Race

  Theory, and Richard Wright and the editor of “ Sameness, ” a special queer theory issue

  of Umbr(a): A Journal of the Unconscious .

  Karen Weekes is an Associate Professor of English and Division Head of Arts and

  Humanities at Pennsylvania State University. She has published criticism on Ameri-

  can writers Lorrie Moore, Audre Lorde, Don DeLillo, and Edgar Allan Poe, among

  others. She is the editor of Privilege and Prejudice (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009)

  and Women Know Everything! (Quirk, 2007). Her current project is a book manuscript

  on women ’ s automythographical life - writing.

  Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

  is Professor of American Literature and Culture at

  Central Michigan University. He is the author of Scare Tactics: Supernatural Fiction by

  American Women , The Rocky Horror Picture Show , and Vampires: Undead Cinema . He has

  edited or co - edited six academic collections on topics ranging from Poe to South Park.

  In addition to editing four volumes of the fi ction of H. P. Lovecraft, he is at work on

  a monograph on American Gothicist Charles Brockden Brown.

  Ruth D. Weston has taught at Tulsa Community College, the University of Tulsa,

  the US Military Academy at West Point, and Oral Roberts University, where she

  retired as Professor of English in 1998. She was twice named Outstanding Scholar at

  Oral Roberts; at West Point she received the US Army ’ s Outstanding Civilian Service

  Medal in 1993. Weston has published extensively on the literature of the American

  South, including books on Eudora Welty and on Barry Hannah. Focusing often on

  narrative technique and on the short story, she has contributed articles on lyric tech-

  nique in the journal Short Story and on surfi ction in the essay collection Creative and

  Critical Approaches to the Short Story . She is past president of the Eudora Welty Society

  and is the recipient of the Society ’ s Phoenix award for Distinguished Achievement in

  Welty Studies. In 2009, she came out of retirement to be Adjunct Professor of English

  at the University of Tulsa.

  Molly Crumpton Winter is Associate Professor of English at the California State

  University at Stanislaus. Her book, American Narratives: Multiethnic Writing in the Age

  of Realism , examines how multicultural writers represented ideas of assimilation and

  exclusion at the turn into the twentieth century. Her work on multicultural topics

  has also appeared in Western American Literature , Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transna-

  tionalism , Humanities in the South , and in the collection Post - Bellum, Pre - Harlem: Rethink-

  ing African American Literature and Culture, 1880 – 1914 . Her current project is a study

  of multiethnic California writing.

  Wenying Xu is Professor and Chair of English at Florida Atlantic University. She is

  the author of Eating Identities: Reading Food in Asian American Literature , Ethics, Aesthet-

  ics of Freedom in American and Chinese Realism , and numerous articles on Asian American

  stories in Cultural Critique, boundary 2 , MELUS , and LIT .

  Acknowledgments

  Both editors want to thank all of the scholars who contributed essays to this volume

  and responded professionally, cheerfully, and promptly to requests for revisions.

  Emma Bennett at Wiley - Blackwell invited us to undertake this project and provided

  generous encouragement at every step, and we appreciate her confi dence and support.

  We are also grateful for the skilled work of the editorial team at Wiley - Blackwell,

  particularly Caroline Clamp, Isobel Bainton, and Pandora Kerr Frost.

  Alfred Bendixen also wishes to express his appreciation to his colleagues in the

  English Department at Texas A

  &

  M University, who provided valuable advice on

  various essays, particularly Dennis Berthold, M. Jimmie Killingsworth, Jerome

  Loving, David McWhirter, and Larry Reynolds. He also wishes to thank the Depart-

  ment and Texas A & M University for providing funds to cover part of the costs of

  preparing the index. His greatest expression of appreciation is reserved for his wife

  and partner, Judith Hamera, who makes every scholarly act a pleasure.

  James Nagel wishes to express his gratitude to the University of Georgia Founda-

  tion for the support of his position as J. O. Eidson Distinguished Professor of Ameri-

  can Literature. His research assistant, Katherine Barrow, provided professional support

  with every phase of the project, and he is appreciative of her dedication and attention

  to detail. Many scholars within the fi eld of American literature contributed wise

  counsel for the development of the volume, and together we share the mutual stimula-

  tion and warm colleagueship afforded by the American Literature Association.

  Part I

  The Nineteenth Century

  1

  The Emergence and Development

  of the A merican Short Story

  Alfred Bendixen

  The short story is an American invention, and arguably the most important literary

  genre to have emerged in the United States. Before Washington Irving created the

  two masterpieces that may be said to have inaugurated this new literary form, “ Rip

  Van Winkle ” and “ The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, ” there certainly were an abundance

  of prose forms that contained some of the elements that characterize the short story.

  Storytelling is, after all, one of the oldest human activities, and oral narratives, espe-

  cially fairy tales and folk tales, have played a signifi cant role in most cultures. Various

  other kinds of narratives also contributed to the nation ’ s political and domestic life.

  For instance, the histories written during the early national period often provided

  strong character sketches as well as imaginative episodes designed to illuminate some

  moral virtue or quality. Some of these, perhaps most notably Parson Weems ’ s famous

  story of the young George Washington admitting to chopping down his father ’ s cherry

  tree, became enshrined in the cultural mythology of the United States. Fictional ele-

  ments can also be found in the illustrative episodes and anecdotes of eighteenth - century

  sermo
ns and in some of the moral and satiric essays that were popular during the

  Enlightenment, particularly the bagatelles of Ben Franklin. Indeed, it is tempting to

  see the best of Franklin ’ s comic pieces, such as “ The Speech of Miss Polly Baker, ” as

  proto – short stories. All of these works probably deserve some credit for contributing

  to the development of the short story, but they, like the self - contained episodes one

  sometimes fi nds in eighteenth - century novels, lack the development of theme and

  technique that we now think of as distinguishing this genre as a literary form. In these

  works, setting is rarely more than the listing of a place or type of scene; characteriza-

  tion consists largely of ascribing a few virtues or vices and perhaps a couple of physical

  details to the primary fi gures; plot development is generally either very straightforward

  or very clumsy, culminating in a conclusion that is usually either overtly moral or

  sentimental but occasionally comic. Almost no thought is given to the possibilities

  implicit in narrative point of view, and the style of most of the works that prefi gure

  the true short story can be charitably described as artifi cial, wordy, and awkward.

  4

  Alfred Bendixen

  Washington Irving changed all of that. The short story as Irving shaped it in the

  installments of The Sketch Book was a work rich in description of scenery and locale,

  with memorable characters and vivid situations rendered through a highly polished

  style that shifted easily through a variety of moods but seemed especially successful

  in its mastery of a new kind of comedy. The Sketch Book also gave American culture

  its fi rst literary best - seller, a critical and commercial success so great that the new

  democracy fi nally had an answer to those critics who had emphasized its paucity of

  cultural achievement. In the January 1820 Edinburgh Review , critic Sydney Smith had

  been able to begin a list of insulting questions about the United States with the

  phrase, “ who reads an American book? ” Because of Irving ’ s success, the answer soon

  became “ almost everybody. ” Nevertheless, current scholarship fails to emphasize how

  original Washington Irving was in his invention of a new genre. Even in his own