You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe

"An exciting new anthology of short fiction chosen by thirty-five of this country's most distinguished and popular fiction writers, You've Got to Read This offers readers an unusually intimate glimpse into how accomplished writers experience literature." "Here are stories that inspired today's leading novelists and short-story writers to embark on their own writing careers, stories that took their breath away and changed them, or the way they responded to literature, forever. Oscar Hijuelos confesses his debt to the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, whose brilliant story "The Aleph" inspired him to become a writer himself. Mary Gordon stands in awe of what James Joyce wrought in "The Dead," and wonders how writers who come after him can equal it. Robert Coover writes movingly of Angela Carter and her mysterious story "Reflections," while Kenneth A. McClane says that "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin literally saved his life." "Some of the stories presented here are classics, like Anton Chekhov's "Gooseberries," introduced by Eudora Welty, or Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," selected by Sue Miller. Some are less well known, like Lars Gustafsson's "Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases," introduced by Charles Baxter, or John Updike's "Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, a Dying Cat, a Traded Car," whose beauty stunned Lorrie Moore." "All were critically important to some of our finest contemporary writers - among them Annie Dillard, John Irving, Amy Tan, Louise Erdrich, Russell Banks, Jane Smiley, Bobbie Ann Mason, Tobias Wolff - and their comments about the selections offer fascinating entrances into the stories. For lovers of fiction, You've Got to Read This is a treasure trove, a dazzling collection of stories passionately and imaginatively chosen."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved