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Selected stories from the Southern review, 1965-1985

1988

Format:	Book
Title:	Selected stories from the Southern review, 1965-1985 / edited by Lewis P. Simpson [and others].
Publisher, Date:	Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [1988] ©1988
Description:	viii, 374 pages ; 24 cm
Subjects:	Short stories, American. Short stories, English. American fiction -- 20th century.
Other Author:	Simpson, Lewis P.
Other Title:	Southern review (Baton Rouge, La.)
Notes:	453249 ; *453250 Old, unclassified state document.
LCCN:	87021383
ISBN:	080711443X
Other Number:	16470927
System Availability:	2
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Publishers Weekly Review

There are several outstanding stories among the 25 in this hefty collection. ``Detente,'' a penetrating political tale by Joyce Carol Oates, explores with feeling and delicate irony the meeting of intellectuals at an East-West cultural conference. When Antonia becomes suddenly involved with Soviet writer Vasily, language resonates as both a symbolic force and impediment, full of social and sexual implications. Politics also informs Mary Lavin's ``The Face of Hate,'' set in Belfast. An aging white workingman revisits Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, in Nadine Gordimer's ``Abroad''; Gordimer masterfully handles Manie Swemmer's hardbitten racial attitudes, while maintaining a measure of dignity, even pity for him. Pat Carr's exquisite ``Party'' affords a brief, pointed childhood glimpse into adult vulnerability. Two fine dramas of family life are Richard Perry's ``Blues for My Father, My Mother, and Me,'' about a sophisticated black man galvanized into confronting his parents, and Anne Tyler's ``The Artificial Family,'' which deals with a shaky second marriage. Reynolds Price's ``Truth and Lies'' captures the stylized, incantatory speech rhythms of a betrayed woman. Many of the remaining entries, however, are genteel, old-fashioned stories, personal reminiscences and musings, dinosaurs of the genre without much bite. (March) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

The Southern Review is certainly one of the most prestigious literary quarterlies in the country. A gathering of any of the short stories that have appeared in its estimable pages over the past two decades would be a powerful anthology indeed, but the compilers of this particular selection have gone the extra mile, sensitively drawing not only 25 of the finest stories published in the journal since 1965, but also those best demonstrating the geographical and aesthetic cosmopolitanism that the Southern Review has consistently succeeded in maintaining. This compilation has the right primary ingredient for wide readership and library purchase: a good mixture of well-known writers, the kind everyone who is familiar with contemporary short fiction wants to read everything by-say, Nadine Gordimer (South African), Mary Lavin (Irish), and Reynolds Price (American)-and lesser-known writers whose lack of name recognition gives the reader a sense of having discovered a ``find'' (e.g., David Madden and Martha Lacy Hall, both American). BH. [CIP] 87-21383

Kirkus Review

The editors of The Southern Review have here selected 25 stories from the nearly three hundred published since the magazine was revived for its second series in 1965. Their criteria for inclusion were simple (""excellence in the craft of fiction and the diversity of authorship and subject matter"") if not simply met. For this is an anthology of widely disparate accomplishment, ranging from the masterly prose of Nadine Gordimer and Reynolds Price to the rather clumsy efforts of lesser-known Charles East and Elaine Gottlieb. Evidence of the editors' cosmopolitan tastes, the stories travel to Africa, where, in Gordimer's ""Abroad,"" a white South African visits his sons in the racially freer Zambia; to Northern Ireland, where, in Mary Lavin's ""The Face of Hate,"" the tensions in Belfast help define the genesis of hatred; to Brazil, where, in Elizabeth Bishop's ""Memories of Uncle Neddy."" the poet recalls her wild drunkard of an uncle when, after his death, a portrait arrives in the mail; to an international writers' conference in Joyce Carol Oates' ""Detente,"" a personal episode in East-West politics. Many of the selections play out against a Southern landscape, and two of the best are set right in Louisiana, home of the magazine. John Corrington's ""Pleadings,"" a superior piece of genre fiction, blends hard-boiled talk of booze and brunettes with Dixie freaks and Jesus-lovers, and ends with a hell-fire reconciliation in flames. At the other extreme is Robb Forman Dew's ""Two Girls Wearing Perfume in the Summer,"" a tale as exquisite and delicate as the southern belles of the title--two charming and pretty girls from Natchez, Miss., who take up residence in innocence-shattering New Orleans. On the down side, Charles East's fictional memoir of a daughter's suicide and Elaine Gottlieb's account of a matriarchy of Jewish divorcÉes seldom get beyond their limiting premises. Many of the remaining stories, for better and worse, find their organizational principles in memoir or character study. The editors close the volume with John Wideman's challenging ""Surfiction,"" a playful exercise in literary criticism, the kind of unusual fiction served well by small magazines. Uneven to be sure, but a fine testament to a thriving journal. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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