Martha Foley

Contents: Survivors / Elsie Singmaster -- Lost Phoebe / Theodore Dreiser -- Golden honeymoon / Ring W. Lardner -- I'm a fool / Sherwood Anderson -- My old man / Ernest Hemingway -- Telephone call / Dorothy Parker -- Double birthday / Willa Cather -- Faithful wife / Morley Callaghan -- Little wife / William March -- Babylon revisited / F. Scott Fitzgerald-- How beautiful with shoes / Wilbur Daniel Steele -- Resurrection of a life / William Saroyan -- Only the dead know Brooklyn / Thomas Wolfe -- Life in the day of a writer / Tess Slesinger -- Iron City / Lovell Thompson -- Christ in concrete / Pietro Di Donato -- Chrysanthemums / John Steinbeck -- Bright and morning star / Richard Wright -- Hand upon the waters / William Faulkner -- Net / Robert M. Coates -- Nothing ever breaks except the heart / Kay Boyle -- Search through the streets of the city / Irwin Shaw -- Who lived and died believing / Nancy Hale -- Peach stone / Paul Horgan -- Dawn of remembered spring / Jesse Stuart -- Catbird seat / James Thurber -- Of this time, of that place / Lionel Trilling -- Wind and the snow of winter / Walter Van Tilburg Clark -- Enormous radio / John Cheever -- Children are bored on Sunday / Jean Stafford -- NRACP / George P. Elliott -- In Greenwich there are many gravelled walks / Hortense Calisher -- Other foot / Ray Bradbury -- Three players of a summer game / Tennessee Williams -- Mother's tale / James Agee -- Magic barrel / Bernard Malamud -- Circle in the fire / Flannery O'Connor -- First flower / Augusta Wallace Lyons -- Contest for Aaron Gold / Philip Roth -- One ordinary day, with peanuts / Shirley Jackson -- To the wilderness I wander / Frank Butler -- Ledge / Lawrence Sargent Hall -- This morning, this evening, so soon / James Baldwin -- Tell me a riddle / Tillie Olsen -- Old army game / George Garrett -- Pigeon feathers / John Updike -- Sound of a drunken drummer / H.W. Blattner -- Keyhole eye / John Stewart Carter -- Long day's dying / William Eastlake -- Upon the sweeping flood / Joyce Carol Oates.

The novellas consist of a fantasy about a man who discovers he can fly, a sentimental story abut a dentist's wife who wins a $10,000 novel contest,a realistic report on New Year's Eve in a flop housw, a whimsy about a girl whose poetic sprightliness enchants a middle-aged doctor, and a sentimental reminiscence of childhood.

Stories by Alice Adams, Stephen Minot, Cynthia Ozick, Michael Rothschild, Peter Taylor, John Updike, and others.

Includes twenty short stories by some of the best American writers.

The Stories Chosen for This Year's Anthology

Outstanding short fiction gathered from Best American short stories and its predecessors.

Page # | Title | Author xi | Foreword | Martha Foley (Foreward) 1 | The Trouble with Being Food | Frederick Busch (Esquire 1976) 15 | Tarzan Meets the Department Head | Price Caldwell (The Carleton Miscellany 1976) 24 | Falconer | John Cheever (Playboy Jan 1976) 43 | At Peace | Ann Copeland (Canadian Fiction Magazine Aug 1976) 66 | Pleadings | John William Corrington (The Southern Review 1976) 102 | Growing Up in No Time | Philip Damon (Hawaii Review 1976) 111 | The Steinway Quintet | Leslie Epstein (Antæus 1976) 161 | The Lover | Eugene K. Garber (Shenandoah 1976) 181 | Look at a Teacup | Patricia Hampl (The New Yorker Jun 28 1976) 188 | Rider | Baine Kerr (The Denver Quarterly 1976) 205 | A Questionnaire for Rudolph Gordon | John Matthews (Malahat Review Jul 1976) 210 | A Passion for History | Stephen Minot (The Sewanee Review Spr 1976) 222 | The Woman Who Thought Like a Man | Charles Newman (The Partisan Review v43 #4 1976) 235 | Gay | Joyce Carol Oates (Playboy Dec 1976) 256 | Going After Cacciato | Tim O’Brien (Ploughshares Spr 1976) 275 | The Chink and the Clock People | Tom Robbins (American Review 1976) 291 | A Fresno Fable | William Saroyan (The New Yorker 1976) 293 | Breed | John Sayles (Atlantic Monthly Jul 1976) 317 | Your Place Is Empty | Anne Tyler (The New Yorker 1976) 338 | Anthropology: What Is Lost in Rotation | William S. Wilson (Antæus 1976) 351 | Biographical Notes | [Misc.] (bg) 355 | The Yearbook of the American Short Story, January 1 to December 31, 1976 | [Misc.] (bi)

The Stories Chosen for This Year's Anthology