A Companion to the American Short Story A Companion to the American Short Story Edited by Alfred Bendixen and James Nagel © 2010 Alfred Bendixen and James Nagel. ISBN: 978-1-405-11543-8 Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture This series offers comprehensive, newly written surveys of key periods and movements and certain major authors, in English literary culture and history. Extensive volumes provide new perspectives and positions on contexts and on canonical and post - canonical texts, orientating the beginning student in new fi elds of study and providing the experienced undergraduate and new graduate with current and new directions, as pioneered and developed by leading scholars in the fi eld. Published Recently 50. A Companion to Digital Literary Studies Edited by Ray Siemens and Susan Schreibman 51. A Companion to Charles Dickens Edited by David Paroissien 52. A Companion to James Joyce Edited by Richard Brown 53. 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A Companion to Crime Fiction Edited by Charles Rzepka and Lee Horsley 67. A Companion to Medieval Poetry Edited by Corinne Saunders 68. A New Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Edited by Michael Hattaway Culture 69. A Companion to the American Short Story Edited by Alfred Bendixen and James Nagel A C O M P A N I O N T O T A HE MERICAN S S HORT TORY EDITED BY ALFRED BENDIXEN AND JAMES NAGEL A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication This edition fi rst published 2010 © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd except for editorial material and organization © 2010 Alfred Bendixen and James Nagel Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientifi c, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell. 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If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A companion to the American short story / edited by Alfred Bendixen and James Nagel. p. cm. – (Blackwell companions to literature and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4051-1543-8 (alk. paper) 1. Short stories, American–History and criticism. I. Bendixen, Alfred. II. Nagel, James. PS374.S5C58 2010 813′.0103–dc22 2009035861 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Set in 11 on 13 pt Garamond 3 by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited Printed in Singapore 1 2010 Contents Notes on Contributors viii Acknowledgments xiv Part I: The Nineteenth Century 1 1 The Emergence and Development of the American Short Story 3 Alfred Bendixen 2 Poe and the American Short Story 20 Benjamin F. Fisher 3 A Guide to Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” 35 Steven T. Ryan 4 Towards History and Beyond: Hawthorne and the American Short Story 50 Alfred Bendixen 5 Charles W. Chesnutt and the Fictions of a “New” America 68 Charles Duncan 6 Mark Twain and the American Comic Short Story 78 David E. E. Sloane 7 New England Local-Color Literature: A Colonial Formation 91 Josephine Donovan 8 Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Feminist Tradition of the American Short Story 105 Martha J. Cutter 9 The Short Stories of Edith Wharton 118 Donna Campbell vi Contents Part II: The Transition into the New Century 133 10 The Short Stories of Stephen Crane 135 Paul Sorrentino 11 Kate Chopin 152 Charlotte Rich 12 Frank Norris and Jack London 171 Jeanne Campbell Reesman 13 From “Water Drops” to General Strikes: Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Short Fiction and Social Change 187 Andrew J. Furer Part III: The Twentieth Century 215 14 The Twentieth Century: A Period of Innovation and Continuity 217 James Nagel 15 The Hemingway Story 224 George Monteiro 16 William Faulkner’s Short Stories 244 Hugh Ruppersburg 17 Katherine Anne Porter 256 Ruth M. Alvarez 18 Eudora Welty and the Short Story: Theory and Practice 277 Ruth D. Weston 19 The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Structure, Narrative Technique, Style 295 Kirk Curnutt 20 “The Look of the World”: Richard Wright on Perspective 316 Mikko Tuhkanen 21 Small Planets: The Short Fiction of Saul Bellow 328 Gloria L. Cronin 22 John Updike 345 Robert M. Luscher 23 Raymond Carver in the Twenty-First Century 366 Sandra Lee Kleppe 24 Multi-Ethnic Female Identity and Denise Chávez’s The Last of the Menu Girls 380 Karen Weekes Contents vii Part IV: Expansive Considerations 389 25 Landscape as Haven in American Women’s Short Stories 391 Leah B. Glasser 26 The American Ghost Story 408 Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock 27 The Detective Story 425 Catherine Ross Nickerson 28 The Asian American Short Story 436 Wenying Xu 29 The Jewish American Story 450 Andrew Furman 30 The Multiethnic American Short Story 466 Molly Crumpton Winter 31 “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” American Restlessness and the Short-Story Cycle 482 Jeff Birkenstein Index 502 Notes on Contributors Ruth M. Alvarez is the Curator of Literary Manuscripts at the University of Maryland Libraries. She has responsibility for the Papers of Katherine Anne Porter as well as nearly twenty related collections of primary materials that support the study of Katherine Anne Porter. With Thomas F. Walsh, she edited Uncollected Early Prose of Katherine Anne Porter and, with Kathryn Hilt, Katherine Anne Porter: An Annotated Bibliography . For Mexico ’ s Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, she edited Un pa í s familiar: Escritos sobre M é xico [ “ My Familiar Country ” : Katherine Anne Porter ’ s Writings on Mexico]. Alfred Bendixen is Professor of English at Texas A& M University. He is the founder of the American Literature Association, which he currently serves as Executive Direc- tor. His books include H aunted Women (1985), an edition of the composite novel T he Whole Family (1986), “ The Amber Gods ” and Other Stories by Harriet Prescott Spofford, (1989), and E dith Wharton: New Critical Essays (1992). He is the associate editor of the Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature (1999), the co - editor of the recently published Cambridge Companion to American Travel Writing (2009), and the editor of the forthcoming Blackwell Companion to the American Novel . Jeff Birkenstein has strong interests in the short story and the story sequence as well as in food and cultural criticism. His co -e dited collection of essays entitled Reframing 9/11: Film, Popular Culture and the “ War on Terror ” (with Anna Froula of East Carolina University and Karen Randell of Southampton Solent University) is due out in the Spring of 2010. He is working currently on Cultural Representation in the International Short Story Sequence , co - edited with Robert M. Luscher. He is an Associate Professor of English at Saint Martin ’ s University. Donna Campbell is Associate Professor of English at Washington State University. She is the author of Resisting Regionalism: Gender and Naturalism in American Fiction, 1885 – 1915 (1997), and her work has appeared in L egacy , Studies in American Fiction , American Literary Realism , and S tudies in American Naturalism , among other journals. Notes on Contributors ix Recent publications include essays on Kate Chopin ’ s At Fault in The Cambridge Com- panion to Kate Chopin and on Naturalism in the forthcoming C ambridge History of the American Novel. Her work on Edith Wharton includes a critical introduction to Edith Wharton ’ s The Fruit of the Tree (2000) and essays in the E dith Wharton Review , Jack London: One Hundred Years a Writer , and Twisted from the Ordinary: Essays on American Literary Naturalism . Her current project is a book on American women writers of Naturalism. Gloria L. Cronin is College of Humanities Professor and Professor of English at Brigham Young University. She is the editor of the T he Saul Bellow Journal , an executive coordinator of the American Literature Association, recipient of the Pozner Bibliogra- phy Prize awarded by the Jewish Library Association, director of the Jewish American and Holocaust Literature Annual Symposium, and board member of the African Ameri- can Literature and Culture Association. She has published extensively in Saul Bellow studies and in the fi elds of Jewish American and African American literatures. She recently edited, with Alan L. Berger, the J ewish American Literature Encyclopedia . Kirk Curnutt is Professor and Chair of English at Troy University Montgomery. He is the author of two novels, Breathing Out the Ghost and Dixie Noir , as well as several other books, including The Cambridge Introduction to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Coffee with Hemingway . Martha J. Cutter is an Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Connecticut and the editor of MELUS: Multi- E thnic Literature of the United States . Her fi rst book, U nruly Tongue: Identity and Voice in American Women ’ s Writing 1850 – 1930 , won the 2001 Nancy Dasher Award from the College English Association. Her second book, Lost and Found in Translation: Contemporary Ethnic American Writing and the Politics of Language Diversity , was published in 2005. Her articles have appeared in American Literature , African American Literature , Callaloo , Women ’ s Studies , Arizona Quarterly , MELUS , Legacy , Criticism , and in the collections Mixed Race Literature and Passing and the Fictions of Identity . Josephine Donovan has written or edited eleven books in literary criticism, feminist theory, and animal ethics, including New England Local Color Literature ; Sarah Orne Jewett ; After the Fall: The Demeter - Persephone Myth in Wharton, Cather, and Glasgow ; Feminist Theory: The Intellectual Traditions ; “ Uncle Tom ’ s Cabin ” : Evil, Affl iction and Redemptive Love; and Gnosticism in Modern Literature. Most recently, she co- e dited (with Carol J. Adams) The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics. She is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Maine. Charles Duncan is Professor of English, Head of the English Department, and Moderator of the Faculty at Peace College, where he teaches American and African American Literature. He has published two books, T he Absent Man: The Narrative Craft of Charles W. Chesnutt and The Northern Stories of Charles W. Chesnutt, as well as several articles on Chesnutt, the fi rst African American fi ction writer to earn a national x Notes on Contributors reputation. In addition, he has written essays on fi gures including James Baldwin, Frank Norris, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Kate Chopin, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Timothy Flint. Benjamin F. Fisher, Professor of English, University of Mississippi, has many pub- lications focusing upon or related to Poe and his writings. He is a past president of the Poe Studies Association. Fisher is a member of editorial boards for the E dgar Allan Poe Review, Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism , Gothic Studies, Victorian Poetry, and several other journals. He has recently published The Cambridge Introduction to Edgar Allan Poe (2008), has forthcoming from University of Iowa Press, E dgar Allan Poe in His Own Times, and another book about Poe (The Contemporary Reviews) with Cambridge University Press. In 1988 Fisher was awarded a Governor ’ s Citation, State of Mary- land, for his outstanding contributions to Poe studies. Andrew J. Furer has taught at the University of Connecticut, Harvard University, Emerson College, and Fordham University. He is the author of essays on such writers as Jack London, Stephen Crane, and James Weldon Johnson, including the fi rst major article - length overview of London ’ s racial views, as well as a similar essay on London ’ s ideal of “ the new womanhood. ” Furer is the editor of a forthcoming volume, T he Genders of Naturalism, and is currently working on a book- l ength study of London’ s radicalism. His other research interests include Zitkala - Sa, Paul Robeson, Richard Wright, Bernarr Macfadden, and Jazz and Literature. Andrew Furman is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English at Florida Atlantic University. His essays and articles on American literature 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 M iami 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 .