Randall Jarrell's Book of Stories: An Anthology

In this engagingly diverse anthology, critic and poet Randall Jarrell illuminates storytelling as a fundamental human impulse. Redefining the story form in this collection of world classics, he sets ballads, poems, parables, anecdotes, fairy tales, and legends alongside short stories by Anton Chekhov, Isak Dinesen, Robert Frost, D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Anne Porter, Leo Tolstoy, and others. Jarrells inimitable taste and innovative choices he includes both well-known works like Gogols The Nose and quirkier selections such as Chuang Tzus Five Anecdotes deepen the readers appreciation of the storytellers art and its place in the world. Jarrell is everywhere the man who has just read something he loves or hates.... And what unfailing taste he possessed. Leslie Fiedler