Introduction
Reading Fiction
Pleasures of Fiction: Experience
Interpretation
Evaluation
The Act of Reading Elements of Fiction: Plot and Structure bullet; Character bullet; Setting Point of View
Style
Theme
Irony
Symbol
Forms of Fiction: Parable, Fable, Tale
Short Story Short Novel
Novel
Reading Novel Openings
Ernest Hemingway and Painting
James Joyce and Song
Myths, Tales, and Legends
Tales From the Far East Chinese: The King's Favorite
The Lost Horse
Japanese: Muddy Road
Urashima the Fisherman
Hindu: from the Panchantantra, from the Ramayan Tales from the Middle East: Hebrew and Yiddish: It Could Always be Worse Wisdom or Luck? Arabic: The Beduin's Gazelle (Saudi Arabian)
The Shipwrecked Sailor (Egyptian) Persian: The Tales of Scheherazad
The Ruined Man Who Became Rich again through a Dream
Tales from the Mediterannean Vicinity: Greek: Echo and Narcissus
Pegasus and Bellerophon
Roman: Cupid and Psyche
Pyramus and Thisbe
Italian: The Crab Prince
Bella Venezi
The School of Salamanca
Spanish: The Tinker and the Ghost French: The Little Fairy Bell
The Story of Merlin Tales from Northern Europe: German: Parsival at the Castle of the Grain
Godfather Death
Celtic: How Thomas Connolly Met The Banshee (Irish)
The Man Who Had No Story (Irish)
The Ostler and the Grave Robbers (Scottish)
Scandinavian: Amleth's Revenge (Danish)
The Treasures of the Gods (Norse)
The Silly Man Who sold His Beard (Swedish Gypsy) Native American Tales: Coyote Fights a Lump of Pitch (Apache)
Deer Hunter and White Corn Maiden (Tewa)
Sedna (Eskimo)
Tales from Africa: African-American-The Word the Devil Made up
Pig's Long Nose and Greedy Mouth
African-Head Tree
The Black Clot
Short Stories
Lee K. Abbott: How Love is Lived in Paradise
Chinua Achebe: Marriage is a Private Affair
Julia Alvarez: Snow
Sherwood Anderson: I'm a Fool
Guillaume Apollinaire: The Posthumous Fiance
Margaret Atwood: Giving Birth
Rape Fantasies
Happy Endings
Isaac Babel: My First Goose
James Baldwin: Sonny's Blues
The Rockpile
Going to Meet the Man
Toni Cade Bambara: The Lesson
Ann Beattie: Snow
Ambrose Bierce: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Heinrich Boll: The Laugher
Kay Boyle: Winter Night
Jorge Luis Borges: Garden of the Forking Paths
Robert Olsen Butler: The Trip Back
Hortense Calisher: The Scream on 57th Street
Raymond Carver: Cathedral
A Small Good Thing
Errand
Willa Cather: Paul's Case
John Cheever: The Swimmer
Anton Chekhov: Gooseberries
The Man in A Case
About Love
The Lady with the Dog
Kate Chopin: A Respectable Woman
A Pair of Silk Stockings
The Storm
Sandra Cisneros: Barbie Q. Colette: The Hand
Julio Cortazar: Continuity of Park
Stephen Crane: The Open Boat
Isak Dinesen: The Blue Stones
Ralph Ellison: Battle Royal
Louise Erdrich: American Horse
William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily
Dry September F. Scott Fitzgerald: Babylon Revisited
Carlos Fuentes: The Doll Queen
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: The Handsomest Drowned Man in All the World Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Yellow Wallpaper Gail Godwin
Dream Children bullet; Nadine Gordimer
Town and Country Lovers Nathaniel Hawthorne
Roger Malvin's Burial
Young Goodman Brown
Rappaccini's Daughter
bullet; Ernest Hemingway: The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber William Holinger: Charles Tries Speed Reading
Zora Neale Hurston: Spunk
Shirley Jackson: The Lottery
James Joyce: Araby
Clay
A Little Cloud
Franz Kafka: Before the Law
The Judgment
A Hunger Artist
Jamaica Kincaid: Girl D. H. Lawrence: The Horse Dealer's Daughter
The Blind Man/The Rocking-Horse Winner
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Wife's Story Doris Lessing: The Old Chief Mshlanga
Woman on a Roof
To Room 19
Bernard Malamud: Idiots First
Thomas Mann: Disillusionment
Katherine Mansfield: Her First Ball
Bobbie Ann Mason: Shiloh/Offerings/Wish
Guy de Maupassant: The Necklace
James Alan McPherson: Why I Like Country Music Yukio Mishima: Swaddling Clothes
Alice Munro: Prue
Joyce Carol Oates: Where are you Going, Where Have You Been
How I Contemplated the World
The Lady with the Pet Dog
Tim O'Brien: The Things They Carried
Flannery O'Connor: Good Country People
A Good Man is Hard to Find
Everything that Rises Must Converge
Frank O'Connor: My Oedipus Complex
The Drunkard
Guests of the Nation
Tillie Olsen: I Stand Here Ironing
Cynthia Ozick: The Shawl
Dorothy Parker: Big Blonde
I. L. Peretz: If Not Higher
Luigi Pirandello: War
Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher
The Purloined Letter
The Cask of Amontillado
Katherine Anne Porter: Rope
The Jilting of Granny Weatherall
Magic. George Scullard: The Nebulous Eye
Richard Selzer: Whither Thou Goest
Leslie Marmon Silko: The Man to Send Rain Clouds
Isaac Bashevis Singer: Gimpel the Fool
Amy Tan: Rules of the Game
James Thurber: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
John Updike: A & P. Luisa Valenzuela: I'm Your Horse in the Night
Alice Walker: To Hell With Dying
Everyday Use
Elethia
Eudora Welty: A Worn Path
Why I Live at the P. O.Death of a Traveling Salesman bullet; Edith Wharton: Roman Fever John Edgar Wideman: Doc's Story
William Carlos Williams: The Use of Force
Virginia Woolf: Kew Gardens bullet; Richard Wright: Big Black Good Man
Short Novels James
Joyce: The Dead
Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis
Leo Tolstoy: The Death of Ivan Ilych
Appendix: Critical Comments on Fiction
Margaret Atwood: Stories and Voices
Elizabeth Bowen: The Writer's Eye
Raymond Carver: Fiction, the Glimpse and Menace
bullet; Anton Chekhov: Letters on Fiction Kate Chopin: On Maupassant
Joseph Conrad: To Make You See
E.L. Doctorow: The Importance of Fiction
Ralph Ellison: Folklore and Fiction
Ernest Hemingway: Notes on Writing Fiction
Henry James: The House of Fiction
D.H. Lawrence: The Bright Book of Life
Guy de Maupassant: Fiction and the Illusion of Life Bobbi Ann Mason: Heroes and Ordinary People
Howard Moss: The Music of Tone
Flannery O'Connor: Fiction and Unfolding
Frank O'Connor: The Short Story as Lyric
Cynthia Ozick: Fiction and Redemption
Edgar Allan Poe: The Single Effect
Leo Tolstoy: What is Art? John Updike: The Subtlety of Fiction
Eudora Welty: Place in Fiction
Edith Wharton: The Short Story and the Novel
Glossary
Index