Prize Stories 1993: The O'Henry Awards

by William Abrahams

Overview

"Widely regarded as the nation's most prestigious award for short fiction."--The Atlantic Monthly

Established in 1918 as a memorial to the master of the short story genre, O. Henry, Prize Stories has long been recognized as the premier forum for the contemporary story. The volume for 1993 carries forth the time-honored literary tradition in 23 selections as original and varied as the current trends in short fiction. The top prize for 1993 is awarded to Thom Jones's "The Pugilist at Rest," which explores the interior depths of depression through the eyes of Vietnam vet and former Marine boxing champion. Other stories in this collection include:

Andrea Lee "Winter Barley"
William F. Van Wert "Shaking"
Joyce Carol Oates "Goose-Girl"
Charles Eastman "Yellow Flags"
Cornelia Nixon "Risk"
Rilla Askew "The Killing Blanket"
Antonya Nelson "Dirty Words"
John H. Richardson "The Pink House"
Diane Levenberg "A Modern Love Story"
John Van Kirk "Newark Job"
Alice Adams "The Islands"
Stephen Dixon "The Rare Muscovite"
Lorrie Moore "Charades"
Kate Wheeler "Improving My Average"
Peter Weltner "The Greek Head"
C. E. Poverman "The Man Who Died"
Jennifer Egan "Puerto Vallarta"
Charles Johnson "Kwoon"
Linda Svendsen "The Edger Man"
Daniel Stern "The Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka: A Story"
Josephine Jacobsen "The Pier-Glass"
Steven Schwarz "Madagascar"

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385425322
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/01/1993
Series:	The O. Henry Prize Collection
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Born in 1919, William Abrahams published four successful novels and a number of poems before finding his true calling as an editor. He presided over the O. Henry Awards for more than 30 years starting in 1965. Abrahams also worked as the west coast editor of Atlantic Monthly Press and collaborated on nonfiction books with his partner, Peter Stansky. He passed away in 1998.

Editorial Reviews

This uneven entry in the 73-year-old short-fiction series features a bevy of tense relationships involving lovers and spouses, members of different races, and parents and children. Abrahams chooses stories by some of his perennial favorites with lackluster results (Joyce Carol Oates depicts a mother who helps her college-age son extricate himself from a rendezvous with an older woman; Alice Adams pens a reverie to a cat). And some stories feature timely plots or important themes but are written in prose that is amateurish or unbelievable (Peter Weltner describes gay lovers whose dissatisfactions with each other come to a head when their older gay neighbor dies; C. E. Poverman recounts an acquaintance rape from the point of view of the rapist, a male professor; in Josephine Jacobsen's scenario, a rich tourist catches her maid trying on her jewelry and inadvertently ruins her life. However, the anthology has some pieces that are both finely crafted and incisive. Through her description of a Christmas game of charades, Lorrie Moore demonstrates how members of a family fail to relate to one another; Cornelia Nixon captures the unhappy but symbiotic union of a wife, who says she desperately wants children, and a husband who refuses to be a father; and Steven Schwartz limns the guilt of a son whose father hid from the Nazis in a cramped baker's oven. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly