More Time

More Time

by Lee Clark Mitchell
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date: 04/04/2019

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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.

ISBN:
9780192575807
9780192575807
Category:
Literary studies: fiction
Format:
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date:
04-04-2019
Language:
English
Publisher:
OUP Oxford
Lee Clark Mitchell

Lee Clark Mitchell is Holmes Professor of Belles-Lettres at Princeton University, USA. He is the author of six books, including Mere Reading: The Poetics of Wonder in Modern American Novels (Bloomsbury 2017), which named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year, Late Westerns: The Persistence of a Genre (Nebraska University Press, 2018), and More Time: Contemporary Short Stories and Late Style (Oxford University Press, 2019).

He is the editor of five books, including The American by Henry James (Signet, 2005, with “Introduction”) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (Oxford University Press, 1993, with "Introduction").

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