Richard Bausch

Ronald Verlin Cassill

The classroom standard for readers and aspiring writers of fiction, The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction offers the most comprehensive, engaging selection of classic and contemporary stories in the field.

The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction

Joyce Carol Oates

Sixteen new writers have been added, includingCharles Baxter, Ron Carlson, Sandra Cisneros, and Jamaica Kincaid,among others, as have useful biographical notes and bibliographies forall authors in the anthology.

The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction

Writing Fiction

Walton Beacham

Intro 4

Short Stories

Fifteen by Three: R. V. Cassill, Herbert Gold [and] James B. Hall

Patrimonies

"These seven stories discover something of what lies beneath the ordinary surfaces of decent people," says George P. Elliott in his introduction to this volume. "Mr. Cassill's characters are for the most part," he continues, "white respectable Middle-Western Protestants, and their way of life is lethal enough. But his heresy is to treat them as possible human beings who in fact do go on living as we live - dreadfully troubled but possible, human, living." Cassill obviously incorporates in his best work all the uncommon qualities listed by Elliott, plus quite a few more: psychological precision, sociological understanding and philosophical thrust, not to mention a command of organic form in the short story and a remarkable range of flexible styles.

And Other Stories

The Happy Marriage

The Father

A Novel

After Goliath

"Is sex the basic force of life-or is it a terminal disease? For Rodney Buckthorne, sensitive satyr, literate lecher, aging Bohemian nearing the summit in a life-long struggle up the dizzying heights of Mount Venus, the answer to this question seemed near at hand. Seeking it, he had fled wife, child, and the groves of academe, and put behind him the years misspent in guiding nubile co-eds through pastures of poetic plenty, and had launched himself into one last seminal odyssey through the hearts and beds of New York's women. His guide (and his nemesis) was Nickie Duart, a clean-cut, curly-headed, pot-smoking, vicious young artist with dreams of grandeur beyond Andy Warhol's wildest imaginings. It was through Nickie that he met Lois, the dark lady of macaroni commercials, and the too-fecund Cynthia, and Maris, and Marsie, and Regina, and the former champion baton twirler and all the ones who remained nameless in the lusting, searching nights. And as the staff of life at last began to bend and the lure of the veiled lady became blinding, it was through Nickie that he came to the end of the world, perhaps the most bizarre and ironic "happening" in modern fiction and found the answer to the riddle of his long quest. For Rodney Buckthorne, like Humbert Humbert, is a seeker-and as with Nabokov's obsessed wanderer, the passionate journey of Rodney Bucktbome casts a brilliant light on the current cultural scene and deftly pricks the frail bubble of American morality."--Amazon

A Tale of the Great American's Last Rally and Curious Death; a Novel

La Vie Passionnée of Rodney Buckthorne

Ronald Verlin Cassill

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