A powerful and âstunningâ (Publishers Weekly, starred review) selection of the best of John Edgar Widemanâs short stories over his fifty-year career, representing the wide range of his intellectual and artistic pursuits.
When John Edgar Wideman won the PEN Malamud Award in 2019, he joined a list of esteemed writersâfrom Eudora Welty to George Saundersâall of whom are acknowledged masters of the short story. Widemanâs commitment to short fiction has been lifelong, and here he gathers a representative selection from throughout his career, stories that âhave a wary, brooding spirit, a lonely intelligenceâŚ[and] air the problem of consciousness, including the fragile contingency of our existenceâ (The New York Times).
Widemanâs stories are grounded in the streets and the people of Homewood, the Pittsburgh neighborhood of his childhood, but they range far beyond there, to the small western towns of Wyoming and historic Philadelphia, the contemporary world and the ancient past. He explores the interior lives of his characters, and the external pressures that shape them. These stories are as intellectually intricate as they are rich with the language and character. âWideman has been compared to William Faulkner and James BaldwinâŚ[these] prove that he is every bit as masterful a cartographer of the American spirit as his forebears" (Esquire).
Comprised of thirty-five stories drawn from past collections (American Histories, Briefs, Godâs Gym, All Stories Are True, Fever, and Damballah), and an introductory essay by the National Book Critics Circle board member and scholar Walton Muyumba, this volume of Widemanâs selected stories celebrates the lifelong significance of this major American writerâs essential contribution to a formâilluminating the ways that he has made it his own. âIf there were any doubts Wideman belongs to the American canon, this puts them to bedâ (Publishers Weekly, starred review).