BASC50040 - Twentieth Century North American Short Stories

Course Description

If “novels tell us everything,” as V. S. Pritchett puts it, “the short story tells us only one thing, and that, intensely.” It is, in Edgar Allan Poe’s words, designed to convey “a certain unique or single effect.” What does the accretion of a multitude of such intensely conveyed unique effects convey about a particular time and place common to them all? In this course we will read selected stories by Bernard Malamud (1914-1986), Carson McCullers (1917-1967), James Baldwin (1924-1987), Alice Munro (b. 1931), and Raymond Carver (1938-1988) in search of a picture of Twentieth Century America. Recognized as among the most accomplished craftsmen in the genre, these five writers reflect the diversity of experience of the English-speaking population of the continent in the last half of the last century.

Course Outline

Required Texts

• Bernard Malamud, The Magic Barrel (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003, 1958) ISBN 978-0-374-52586-6
• Carson McCullers, Collected Stories (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998, Mariner Books) ISBN 978-0-395-92505-8
• James Baldwin, Going to Meet the Man New York: Random House, 1995 Vintage International Edition) ISBN 0-679-76179-9
• Alice Munro, A Wilderness Station, Selected Stories, 1968-1994 (New York: Random House, 1997, Vintage International Edition) ISBN 978-1-101-97036-2
• Raymond Carver, Cathedral (New York: Random House, 1984, Vintage International Edition) ISBN 0-679-72369-2