Stories
I want to know why / Sherwood Anderson
Death by Landscape
Related: Atwood, Why do you write? / Margaret Atwood
Sonny's blues / James Baldwin
Gorilla, my love
Related: Bambara, What is it I think I'm doing anyhow? / Toni Cade Bambara
Snow / Ann Beattie
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge / Ambrose Bierce
Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote / Jorge Luis Borges
Miriam /Truman Capote
Cathedral
Related: Carver, From on writing / Raymond Carver
Paul's case
Related: Andrea Barrett on Paul's case / Willa Cather
Enormous radio / John Cheever
Lady with the dog
Related: Chekhov, Letter to DV Grigorovich
Letter to A S Suvorin / Anton Chekhov
Story of an hour / Kate Chopin
Heart of darkness
Related: Conrad, Preface to the nigger of the Narcissus''
Letter to Barrett H Clark
Barry Hannah on heart of darkness
C P Sarvan, Racism and the heart of darkness / Joseph Conrad
Continuity of parks / Julio Cortazar
Open boat
Related: Crane, Letter to John Northern Hiliard
Allan Gurganus on the open boat
Charles C Walcutt, [Stephen Crane: Naturalist] / Stephen Crane
Wall of fire rising / Edwidge Danticat
Intruder / Andre Dubus
King of the bingo game
Related: Ellison, an interview / Ralph Ellison
Matchimanito / Louise Erdrich
Barn burning
Rose for Emily
Related: Faulkner, an interview / William Faulkner
Babylon revisited / F Scott Fitzgerald
Great falls
Related: Ford on Bharati Mukherjee's
Management of grief / Richard Ford
Handsomest drowned man in the world / Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Yellow wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Soldier's embrace / Nadine Gordimer
Young Goodman Brown
Related: Edgar Allan Poe, Review of Hawthorne's twice told tales / Nathaniel Hawthorne
Hills like white elephants
Related: Frederick Busch on hills like white elephants
Hemingway, an interview / Ernest Hemingway
Conscience of the court / Zora Neale Hurston
Araby
Dead
Related: C C Loomis, Jr., structure and sympathy in Joyce's The dead'' / James Joyce
Metamorphosis
Hunger artist
Related: Stanley Corngold, Kafka's the metamorphosis: metamorphosis of the metaphor
Kafka, Letter to Max Brod / Franz Kafka
White horse / Yasunari Kawabata
Girl / Jamaica Kincaid
Horse dealer's daughter
Rocking horse winner
Related: Lawrence, Why the novel matters / DH Lawrence
Ones who walk away from Omelas / Ursula K Le Guin
Angel Levine / Bernard Malamud
Disorder and early sorrow
Related: Mann, letter to Paul Amann / Thomas Mann
Bliss / Katherine Mansfield
Shiloh / Bobbie Ann Mason
Adventure in Paris
Related: Maupassant, the novel / Guy De Maupassant
Why I like country music / James Alan Mcpherson
Bartleby, the Scrivener
Related: Leo Marx, Melville's parable of the walls / Herman Melville
Management of grief
Related: Richard Ford on the Management of grief
Mukherjee, a four-hundred-year-old woman / Bharati Mukherjee
Royal beatings
Related: Munro, What is real? / Alice Munro
Signs and symbols / Vladimir Nabokov
How I contemplated the world from the Detroit house of correction and began my life over again
Related: Oates, the Art and craft of revision / Joyce Carol Oates
Things they carried / Tim O'Brien
Good man is hard to find
Everything that rises must converge
Related: O'Connor, the Nature and aim of fiction
Lee Smith on a good man is hard to find / Flannery O'Connor
Guests of the nation
Related: Edward P Jones on Guests of the nation / Frank O'Connor
O yes / Tillie Olsen
Fall of the House of Usher
Related: Poe, the Philosophy of composition
Poe, Review of Hawthorne's twice told tales
Richard Wilbur, the House of Poe / Edgar Allan Poe
Jilting of Granny Weatherall
Related: Porter, an interview / Katherine Anne Porter
Conversion of the Jews / Philip Roth
Gimpel the fool / Isaac Bashevis Singer
Chrysanthemums / John Steinbeck
Rules of the game / Amy Tan
Secret life of Walter Mitty
Related: Thurber, an interview / James Thurber
Death of Ivan Ilych
Related: Gary Saul Morson, the Reader as Voyeur: Tolstoi and the poetics of didactic fiction
Tolstoy, What is art? / Leo Tolstoy
A & P
Related: Updike, Accepting the Howells medal / John Updike
Moths / Helena Maria Viramontes
Everyday use / Alice Walker
Blackberry winter / Robert Penn Warren
Worn path
Related: Susan Dodd on a Worn path
Welty, an interview / Eudora Welty
Use of force / William Carlos Williams
In the garden of the North American martyrs / Tobias Wolff
Kew gardens / Virginia Woolf
Man who was almost a man / Richard Wright
Writers On Writing
Why do you write? / Margaret Atwood
What is it I think I'm doing anyhow? / Toni Cade Bambara
Letter to a young writer / Richard Bausch
from On writing / Raymond Carver
Letter to DV Grigorovich, March 28, 1886
Letter to AS Suvorin, October 27, 1888 / Anton Chekhov
Preface to the Nigger of the Narcissus''
Letter to Barrett H Clark, May 14, 1918 / Joseph Conrad
Letter to John Northern Hiliard, February 1895 / Stephen Crane
Interview / Ralph Ellison
Interview / William Faulkner
Interview / Ernest Hemingway
Letter to Max Brod, July 5, 1922 / Franz Kafka
Why the novel matters / D H Lawrence
Letter to Paul Amann, September 10, 1915 / Thomas Mann
Novel / Guy De Maupassant
Four-hundred-year-old woman / Bharati Mukherjee
What is real /Alice Munro
Art and craft of revision / Joyce Carol Oates
Nature and aim of fiction / Flannery O'Connor
Philosophy of composition / Edgar Allan Poe
Interview / Katherine Anne Porter
Interview / James Thurber
What is art? / Leo Tolstoy
Accepting the Howells medal / John Updike
Interview / Eudora Welty
Writing Fiction
Reviews And Commentaries
Willa Cather's Paul's case'' / Andrea Barrett
Ernest Hemingway's Hills like white, elephants'' / Frederick Busch
Kafka's the Metamorphosis: metamorphosis of the metaphor / Stanley Corngold
Eudora Welty's A worn path'' / Susan Dodd
Bharati Mukherjee's The management of grief'' / Richard Ford
Stephen Crane's The open boat / Allan Gurganus
Joseph Conrad's Heart of darkness / Barry Hannah
Frank O'Connor's Guests of the nation'' / Edward P Jones
Structure and Sympathy in Joyce's The dead'' / C C Loomis, Jr
Melville's Parable of the walls / Leo Marx
Reader as voyeur: Tolstoi and the poetics of didactic fiction / Gary Saul Morson
Review of Hawthorne's twice told tales / Edgar Allan Poe
Racism and the heart of darkness / C P Sarvan
Flannery O'Connor's "A good man is hard to find'' / Lee Smith
[Stephen Crane: Naturalist] / Charles C Walcutt
From the house of Poe / Richard Wilbur
Glossary of critical terms
Permissions acknowledgments
Index of titles