The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories

I just purchased my second copy for a friend because I didn't want to give mine up! This a gem of a book!

Great selections of atypical stories--not your average short story textbook. Everyone of them is a winner. Great even for quality reading.

I use anthologies as a way of discovering new authors. If a particular story is thought good enough by the editor to be included in his anthology, I am encouraged to give it a try. In "The Art of the Tale" I have yet to find a clinker. Halpern has introduced me to authors I have been wondering about and authors new to me, with stories great and good, but always well worth reading. This anthology is my new back seat book: the book I keep in the back seat of the car so that I always have something to read at the diner or waiting room, or in line at the bank.

I'm a teacher of a small short-stories course, and it is harder than you'd think to find a collection of short stories that shows true variety. _The Art of the Tale_ is one of those rare ones--it is truly international (most that claim to be are actually feature nearly all-American or all-British writers) and varied in subject (many collections are devoted to a theme--which is fine, but not suitable for my purposes). On top of that, it is HUGE, with over 80 stories, yet lightweight enough to carry around easily, and the price easily beats any other comparable collection. (The last one we used had 1/3 the stories for nearly triple the price.)And even better, this is not yet another collection of all those "standard" stories that seem to appear again and again in every collection. Halpern did include many great authors, but for the most part he sought out less-well-known stories by those authors, so I can share the joy of discovery experienced by my students.

I don't believe that I will ever uncover a more diverse, richly rewarding and profoundly influencing introduction to the higher planes of human endeavor than I have in this single book. The diversity of style from ultra modern to classical is extreme and deadly effective. Intellectual food for will be scarred for life with a painful awareness of the insanely limitless and tenuous boundaries which we think defines our inner psyche from our tangible world, and of the realms within human societies.To attempt to explore the works within this book is taking a major step in gaining an awareness that will only serve to further the cause of mankind, and serve as a weapon against those that would attempt to hold it back