Bloom's major short story writers

This book offers a representative selection of the best criticism so far devoted to the writings of the Argentine master, Jorge Luis Borges. It begins with the editor's introduction, originally published in 1969, but presenting a view of both the strength and limitations of Borges' achievement that still seems valid today. The volume then reprints, in chronological order of publication, a major sequence of what can be called Borgesian receptions. - Editor's note. Borges is a great theorist of poetic influence; he has taught us to read Browning as a precursor of Kafka, and in the spirit of this teaching we may see Borges himself as another Childe Roland coming to the Dark Tower, while consciously not desiring to accomplish the Quest. - Harold Bloom, on back cover.

Looks at such major aspects of the author's life as family, Judaism, love and sex, writing, illness, and despair, and argues that, when reinserted in Kafka's letters and diaries, deleted segments lift the mask of "sainthood" frequently attached to him. "Franz Kafka was the poet of his own disorder. Throughout his life he struggled with a pervasive sense of shame and guilt that left traces in his daily existence -- in his many letters, in his extensive diaries, and especially in his fiction. This stimulating book investigates some of the sources of Kafka's personal anguish and its complex reflections in his imaginary world. In his query, Saul Friedländer probes major aspects of Kafka's life (family, Judaism, love and sex, writing, illness, and despair) that until now have been skewed by posthumous censorship. Contrary to Kafka's dying request that all his papers be burned, Max Brod, Kafka's closest friend and literary executor, edited and published the author's novels and other works soon after his death in 1924. Friedländer shows that, when reinserted in Kafka's letters and diaries, deleted segments lift the mask of "sainthood" frequently attached to the writer and thus restore previously hidden aspects of his individuality." -- Publisher's description.

"Texas troubadour, convicted embezzler, and adopted New Yorker William Sidney Porter--better known as O. Henry--was one of the world's great storytellers. A master of cunning plots and a gifted humorist, he is best known today for his beloved tale "The Gift of the Magi." But O. Henry's palette of moods and methods was as expansive as his exuberant imagination. This Library of America volume offers a fresh look at the full range of his literary genius. Here are 101 stories, including such favorites as "The Ransom of Red Chief," "The Last of the Troubadours," and "The Cop and the Anthem," alongside lesser-known and previously uncollected stories, including three early tales published here for the first time. With full annotation and a newly researched chronology of Porter's life and career, this is a definitive edition for modern readers of a major American writer."--Publisher's description.

Overview: The radiant world of Eudora Welty's art is charged by a poignant and familiar beauty, and here in a stunning book of her photographs is a dazzling record of this writer's unique and special vision. It is unusual-remarkable-for a major writer also to be an accomplished photographer. Eudora Welty is one of the very few whose great talent has been expressed in both photographs and fiction. This book brings together in one volume about 250 representative photographs from the few thousand that she took during the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. Although her camera's view finder compresses much, like the frame in which she conceives her fiction, it finds elements that convey her deep compassion and her artist's sensibilities. From the confines of her native Mississippi these photographs unfold the world of Eudora Welty's art, reaching, extending, and exploring. In the Deep South of Depression times, when she began writing, she discovered the place into which she had been born and which would always be her subject. From here, as these photographs show, she approached and risked the outside world. From rural Mississippi to New Orleans, Charleston, New York City, and Yaddo, and then to Ireland, England, and the Continent Welty widened her vision and expanded her art. These photographs reveal that both in her fiction and in the pictures she took it has always been in place, in the special qualities of what is local, that she found her impulse. "I was smitten by the identity of place wherever I was," she said in 1989, "from Mississippi on---I still am." The legions of appreciators of Welty's photographs see in them the feelings and vision that are the hallmarks of her great literary art in such novels as Losing Battles and The Optimist's Daughter, in her memoir One Writer's Beginnings, and in her volumes of short stories. This serves as a definitive book of Welty's photographs, compromising pictures from her personal collection, from the repository of Welty materials at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and from One Time, One Place, an album of her Depression-era photographs published in 1972. Included are Mississippi scenes and people, emblems of folk life, carnival signs and performers, photographs taken in Charleston, New Orleans, Mexico, New York City, Ireland, Paris, Nice, Italy, Wales, and Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and a significant group of Welty's portraits of family members and friends.