All the Days and Nights: The Collected Stories

Maxwell's prose is beautiful and evocative, but his approach is meticulous and his viewpoint almost clinical. What fascinates him most is that, unlike the big events recorded in newspapers and histories, the stories of ordinary people are recorded mainly in the memories of living persons. Those memories are not only ephemeral, but mutable and prone to mistakes, editing and embellishment. Great family deeds are magnified; misdeeds are forgotten and their perpetrators and their histories (good and bad) shunned. For me, the most poignant moment comes in Man in the Moon when the narrator, who had known his black sheep uncle mainly through the disparaging comments of his family, decides to visit him, and comes to see in him a core of goodness and dignity. No this is not Hollywood, it is cinema verite.

I loved this short story collection. His portrayal of 1920s and 30s New York is inviting, raw, interesting, and a hits home to all the universal qualities of life and the way we perceive the world. The stories are a treasure trove of feelings, not narrated, but shown by the actions, interactions, and lack of both portrayed in the very believable characters.

This, like the Bible, is a book of two halves: one long and relatively weighty, the other short and attractively simple.The first part is Maxwell's collected stories, chosen to represent a period of time stretching from the thirties to the nineties. These all, to varying degrees follow the trademark Maxwell approach of hovering on the edges of fiction and biography. Some (The Man in the Moon, Billie Dyer) appear to be straight non-fiction, while in others the elements of fiction are stronger. All, however, are powerful evocations of the human landscape of Maxwell's childhood, or of the experiences of later life. The second part of the work is a collection of what Maxwell calls "improvisations": fables or fairy stories which contrast strikingly with his more familiar naturalistic pieces. The connecting thread is his moving clarity of vision. Most of these stories are only a few pages long, but they combine humour and humanity in a way which makes them a permanent part of the reader's mind.All the Days and Nights is a wonderful book, which for those familiar with Maxwell's longer works offers, in the best sense, more of the same. Or, for those new to the author, the improvisations in particular are an enticing and accessible introduction to one of America's best 20th century writers.

These short stories are best read slowly. They contained lovingly detailed characters, characters that require you to spend the time to get to know them. Maxwell examines some rather ordinary people in their ordinary life struggles. But he does so insightfully and lovingly. The "improvisations" at the end of the book are rather unique, and their genesis (improvised bedtime stories to his wife) mesh perfectly with the themes of the rest of the stories.

I've read this book at University as I'm doing a Master on Translation. My teacher is the "official translator" of this book in Spain, so she asked us to translate a couple of short stories: "The Sound of Waves" and "All the Days and Nights". I have to say that I've liked it very much. It's amazing how Maxwell can make us see those images he has in his mind by words in a very clear way. I'm reading now the rest of the stories, but I can tell I have discovered one of my favourite authors!!!