Reading and Writing about Short Fiction

I hate to begin on this note, but I imagine that many people will scoff at the price of this yet another "overpriced text-book" (It is used as a college textbook, so...). But anyway, assuming that your are purchasing this book for school, this is one of those books that you buy and upon reading you realize that this was worth the money. Why? Edward Proffitt has achieved a mighty--the mightiest--task: to assemble a meaningful and cogent collection of fine short stories which are representative of many genres, styles, cultures, and eras for the purpose of improving ones writing and reading of fiction. As a writing guide on fiction, the book despite being 600 pages long feels like one of those handy "quick guide to" books. The first section, "Reading and Writing," alone holds more than all your high school English teachers and remedial Professors ever told you about writing on fiction, and on writing in general. He does this by analyzing Ozick's "The Shawl"; going into deep detail on how to formulate and expand on ones initial writing ideas, ending with a sample essay. And here is where the true worth of the book surfaces. This book will improve all writing; for if you can improve your writing on fiction--a very difficult task even for gifted students-- all of your writing improves. This book is also indispensable for its greatly organized collection of 86 short stories--86! The stories are organized into sections which cover all the elements of fiction: plot, character, narration, mood, style, setting, symbol, theme; and each section is explained with direct and clear language so that we know why these are the elements of fiction and how they contribute to the stories' art. Each one of these sections contain several stories which best represent the section in question. And at the end of each story you'll find questions which help stimulate ideas and which also help for the greater appreciation and understanding of the story. The authors and stories contained in this book range from the habitual (Chekhov, Lawrence, Maupassant, Mansfield [?])] to the now more famous and accepted Garcia Marquez and Borges. There's even one of Nabokov's gem short stories in here. I highly recommend this book not only for its worth as a tool for writing, but for the great organization of short stories. Too often short stories are lumped into meaningless blobs of anthologies which merely represent an editor's likes and the current fads; this book however has direction and maintains its force as worthwhile anthology of short stories.