About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group

ISBN-100375712453

ISBN-139780375712456

eBay Product ID (ePID)170207663

Product Key Features

Book TitleStories of Fatherhood

Number of Pages352 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicFamily Life, Anthologies (Multiple Authors), Literary

Publication Year2014

GenreFiction

AuthorDiana Secker Tesdell

Book SeriesEveryman's Library Pocket Classics Ser.

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height1.1 in

Item Weight13 Oz

Item Length7.4 in

Item Width4.8 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

Dewey Edition23

Reviews"The earmark of these collections is the quality and range of the stories, and Stories of Fatherhood holds to those standards. . . . Every story is, in its own way, a small masterpiece. . . . The book itself is compact and inexpensive; the literature within is priceless." -- Shelf Awareness "A geographically, generationally, and stylistically heterogeneous array of stories. Joyce, Nabokov, and Updike are not even the most unlikely brethren in this marvelously diverse collection. . . . A surprising mix, perhaps, but one of the most instructive things about the book is that it proves a meaty theme can bridge the distance between even the most unalike of writers. It turns out that fatherhood is a theme - like war and peace or love and marriage - that everyone has a stake in." -- The Christian Science Monitor, "The earmark of these collections is the quality and range of the stories, and Stories of Fatherhood holds to those standards. . . . Every story is, in its own way, a small masterpiece. . . . The book itself is compact and inexpensive; the literature within is priceless." -- Shelf Awareness "There are as many different experiences of fatherhood as there are fathers; each experience in this collection examines a different facet, and each is beautiful and poignant, never saccharine or maudlin. . . . The collection is beautifully edited, with a perfect emotional flow from one story to the next. Dip into it gently, taking time to reflect, appreciate, and slowly savor the gems in this treasure." - San Francisco Book Review "A geographically, generationally, and stylistically heterogeneous array of stories. Joyce, Nabokov, and Updike are not even the most unlikely brethren in this marvelously diverse collection. . . . A surprising mix, perhaps, but one of the most instructive things about the book is that it proves a meaty theme can bridge the distance between even the most unalike of writers. It turns out that fatherhood is a theme - like war and peace or love and marriage - that everyone has a stake in." -- The Christian Science Monitor

Dewey Decimal808.83935251

Table Of ContentHarold Brodkey, "His Son, in His Arms, in Light, Aloft" Frank O'Connor, "My Oedipus Complex" Raymond Carver, "Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarets" Graham Swift, "Gabor" Ron Carlson, "The H Street Sledding Record" Andre Dubus, "A Father's Story" E. L. Doctorow, "The Writer in the Family" Vladimir Nabokov, "Christmas" Ann Packer, "Her Firstborn" Guy de Maupassant, "Simon's Father" James Joyce, "A Little Cloud" Grace Paley, "Anxiety" Franz Kafka, "The Judgment" Katherine Mansfield, "The Daughters of the Late Colonel" Helen Simpson, "Sorry?" D. H. Lawrence, "The Christening" Edith Wharton, "His Father's Son" Jim Shepard, "The Mortality of Parents" John Updike, "My Father's Tears" William Maxwell, "The Man Who Lost His Father"

SynopsisStories of Fatherhood gathers more than a century of classic short stories about having, becoming, loving, and losing fathers. Frank O'Connor's hilarious tale of a tiny boy's war against his paternal rival in "My Oedipus Complex" sits beside Ann Packer's touching portrait of a man preparing for the wonder and terror of his first child's birth. At the other end of the lifespan, John Updike's "My Father's Tears," Jim Shepard's "The Mortality of Parents," and William Maxwell's "The man who lost his father" bring us face to face with a loss that is like no other. In between, we encounter a full range of emotions connecting men and their offspring: tenderness and devotion, anxiety and incomprehension, admiration and regret. Powerful patriarchs cast a long shadow in Katherine Mansfield's "The Daughters of the Late Colonel" and D. H. Lawrence's "The Christening," while Edith Wharton's "His Father's Son" sheds a more ironic light on the paternal legacy. E. L. Doctorow's young protagonist, forced to write letters impersonating his dead father, arrives at a deeper understanding of him, while in Helen Simpson's "Sorry?" an old man's hearing aid seems to reveal what his children secretly think about him. Paternal bonds are forged outside biology, too: Graham Swift portrays a man wistfully seeking a substitute son, while Guy de Maupassant's forlorn waif triumphantly acquires an ideal father. In these twenty stories, an array of great writers--ranging from Kafka, Joyce, and Nabokov to Raymond Carver, Harold Brodkey, and Andre Dubus--offers a wonderfully varied assortment of fictional takes on paternity.

LC Classification NumberPN6120.95.F3S76 2014