Although unnamed, he is assumed to be Nick Adams, a character Hemingway made to represent himself. He has an injured knee and visits a hospital daily for rehabilitation. There the "machines" are used to speed the healing, with the doctors making much of the miraculous new technology. They show pictures to the wounded of injuries like theirs healed by the machines, but the war-hardened soldiers are portrayed as skeptical, and perhaps justifiably so.As the narrator walks through the streets with fellow soldiers, the townspeople hate them openly because they are officers. Their oasis from this treatment is Cafe Cova, where the waitresses are very patriotic.When the fellow soldiers admire the protagonist's medal, they learn that he is American, ipso facto not having to face the same struggles in order to achieve the medal, and no longer view him as an equal, but still recognize him as a friend against the outsiders. The protagonist accepts this, since he feels that they have done far more to earn their medals than he has. Later on, a major who is friends with the narrator, in an angry fit tells Nick he should get married but that his hopes and dreams will always be dashed, it being only a way to set one up for hurt. It is later revealed that the major's wife had suddenly and unexpectedly died of pneumonia. The major is depicted as far more grievously wounded, with a hand withered to the size of a baby's hand, and Hemingway memorably describes the withered hand being manipulated by a machine which the major dismisses as a "damn thing." But the major seems even more deeply wounded by the loss of his wife.

    Here the protagonist is Anson Hunter, a well-to-do young New Yorker, who would seem to have the whole world ahead of him and the streets paved in gold.By his early twenties, he has found his ideal woman as well: the exquisite -- and very rich -- Paula Legendre. On the surface, Paula would not seem to be the type of girl that would exert such a pull on Anson. Anson seems to have a lot of oats to sow, and Fitzgerald describes Paula as being "conservative and rather proper." But he is, nonetheless, obsessed by her, not because she represents the money he wants -- after all, he already has enough of his own -- but because she represents the social system that justifies his existence. In his world, responsible older men (like his uncle Robert) hold the reins of government and business; chaste and proper women (like Paula and her mother) maintain the rules of propriety and etiquette; and, until they get old enough to assume the mantle of responsible older manhood, playboys like Anson play. That is all Anson thinks he is doing right now. Just as he sees in himself the undeveloped kernel of a future leader, he sees in Paula the kernel of a future society matron. He thinks they would make a good pair.What he doesn't realize, however, is that his virtually unlimited wealth has within it the power to corrupt him, and it's already doing a good job. His first problem is that he sees himself as superior. He carries himself that way; Fitzgerald says that ". . . He had a confident charm and a certain brusque style, and the upper-class men who passed him on the street knew without being told that he was a rich boy and had gone to one of the best schools. . . . Anson accepted without reservation the world of high finance and high extravagance, of divorce and dissipation, of snobbery and of privilege."Anson doesn't see any reason why, being young and rich, he has to play by anyone else's rules. If he wants to drink himself under the table, why shouldn't he have the right to do that? And regardless of where or with whom he happens to be when he acts drunkenly, or obscenely, or boorishly, why should he apologize for his behavior? He's rich, and the rich make the rules, don't they? People should just accept his natural superiority, regardless of how he behaves.It would seem very difficult to sympathize with a character who holds these beliefs and acts upon them so wholeheartedly; but we do, because we sense that he is headed for a fall. His first mistake lies in his inability to commit himself to Paula. Fate gave Anson every opportunity to take Paula as his own. In doing so, he would be asserting his adulthood; he would be taking his place alongside the other well-to-do movers and shakers of New York. But, true to his status as a tragic hero, he constantly tries to defy fate. The role ordained for him is to be a wealthy, responsible scion of business, a lord of some suburban manor, the benefactor of deserving charities; for far too long, he refuses. Anson doesn't want to grow up. He gets a job, "entering a brokerage house, joining half a dozen clubs, [and] dancing late." Even as he moves up the corporate ladder, there is still that part of him that is unable to give up the schoolboy carousing, the indifference toward the responsibilities that fate has laid upon his shoulders as the wages of being rich.His second mistake is in self-righteously condemning his aunt Edna for having an affair. Anson, of all people, ought to be the last person to condemn anyone for moral lapses, and certainly not lapses of the heart; Anson's heart is far more lapsed than Edna and Cary's. He himself had just broken up with Dolly Karger, whom he dated all the while knowing she meant nothing to him, and her careless behavior merely mirrored his own. He has no right to threaten to expose Edna and Cary, and he is thus directly responsible for Cary's suicide. But "Anson never blamed himself for his part in the affair [because he believed] the situation which brought it about had not been of his making." But there, of course, he is wrong.His third mistake lies in the belief that when he is ready, Paula will be waiting. He is disturbed when he hears she has married someone else, but, as we have pointed out, Anson lives in a world characterized by "divorce and dissipation", and he seems to feel Paula will come around on his timetable. What this basically amounts to is a belief that fate is on his side; it must be, because he was born rich. But the overriding lesson of Anson's life is that of those to whom much is given, much is asked. Anson does not seem to realize that payback is a lifelong process.The rich boy --The bridal party --The last of the belles.

    Set in Mississippi during the Civil War and Reconstruction, THE UNVANQUISHED focuses on the Sartoris family, who, with their code of personal responsibility and courage, stand for the best of the Old South's traditions.

    There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime - Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find. O'Connor published her first story, "The Geranium," in 1946, while she was working on her master's degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically, this collection shows that her last story, "Judgement Day" - sent to her publisher shortly before her death - is a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of "The Geranium." Taken together, these stories reveal a lively, penetrating talent that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by O'Connor's longtime editor and friend, Robert Giroux.Contents:The geranium -- The barber -- Wildcat -- The crop -- The turkey -- The train -- The peeler -- The heart of the park -- A stoke of good fortune -- Enoch and the gorilla -- A good man is hard to find -- A late encounter with the enemy -- The life you save may be your own -- The river -- A circle in the fire -- The displaced person -- A temple of the Holy Ghost -- The artificial nigger -- Good country people -- You can't be any poorer than dead -- Greenleaf -- A view of the woods -- The enduring chill -- The comforts of home -- Everything that rises must converge -- The partridge festival -- The lame shall enter first -- Why do the heathen rage? -- Revelation -- Parker's back -- Judgement Day.

    D. Salinger, originally published in the January 31, 1948 issue of The New Yorker. It was anthologized in 1949's 55 Short Stories from The New Yorker, as well as in Salinger's 1953 collection, Nine Stories.

    During the years when her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald was working on Tender is the Night—which many critics consider his masterpiece—Zelda Fitzgerald was preparing her own story. The novel strangely parallels events from her husband’s life, throwing a fascinating light on Scott Fitzgerald and his work. In its own right, it is a vivid and moving story—centered upon the confessional of a famous glamour girl of the affluent 1920s and an aspiring ballerina—that captures the spirit of an era.

    Ranging from the gothic South to the chic East Coast, from rural children to aging urban sophisticates, all the unforgettable places and people of Capote’s oeuvre are here, in stories as elegant as they are heartfelt, as haunting as they are compassionate. Reading them reminds us of the miraculous gifts of a beloved American original.

    Set in the Old Natchez Trace region, the stories dip in and out of history and range from virgin wilderness to a bar in New Orleans. In each story, Miss Welty sustains the high level of performance that, throughout her distinguished career, has won her numerous literary awards. "Miss Welty runs a photofinish with the finest prose artists of her time" (Time).

    Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Edith Wharton (1862-1937).Wharton's works available in Penguin Classics are Ethan Frome, The Age of Innocence, The Custom of the Country and The House of Mirth.

    Here, they are collected along with 19 other stories in a beautifully redesigned collection that represents the best short work of an American master.As Warner Berthoff writes in his introduction to this volume, "It is hard to think of a major novelist or storyteller who is not also a first-rate entertainer . . . a master, according to choice, of high comedy, of one or another robust species of expressive humour, or of some special variety of the preposterous, the grotesque, the absurd. And Melville, certainly, is no exception. A kind of vigorous supervisory humour is his natural idiom as a writer, and one particular attraction of his shorter work is the fresh further display it offers of this prime element in his literary character."The town-ho's story --Bartleby, the scrivener : a story of Wall-Street --Cock-a-doodle-doo! or, The crowing of the noble cock Beneventano --The encantadas or Enchanted Isles --The two temples --Poor man's pudding and rich man's crumbs --The happy failure : a story of the river Hudson --The lightning-rod man --The fiddler --The paradise of bachelors and the tartarus of maids --The bell-tower --Benito Cereno --Jimmy Rose --I and my chimney --The 'Gees --The apple-tree table, or Original spiritual manifestations --The piazza --The Marquis de Grandvin --Three "Jack Gentian sketches" --John Marr --Daniel Orme --Billy Budd, sailor.

    Written as a play in story form, this novel traces the story of a man ignorant of his own sterility, a wife who commits adultery to give her husband a child, the father of that child, and the outsider whose actions affect them all.

    In 1983 Little, Brown and Company's posthumous publication of this book electrified the literary world with a force that still resounds across two decades. A collection of stories that depict the world of Pancake's native rural West Virginia with astonishing power and grace, The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake has remained continuously in print and is a perennial favorite among aspiring writers, participants in creative writing programs, and students of contemporary American fiction. "Trilobites", the first of Pancake's stories to be published in The Atlantic, elicited an extraordinary immediate response from readers and continues to be widely anthologized.

    11 stories: The AwakeningBeyond the BayouMa'ame PelagieDesiree's BabyA Respectable WomanThe KissA Pair of Silk StockingsThe LocketA ReflectionAt the 'Cadian BallThe Storm

    Included here is Crown-Fire, Country Full of Swedes, The Windfall, Horse Thief, Yellow Girl and Kneel to the Rising Sun.

    Fortunately, "Buk" left plenty of unpublished manuscript behind that, judging from this culling from it, is of a piece with the published stuff. That is, it consists of quasi-autobiographical poems and stories. The poems' lines are only one to six words long, and the stories' sentences aren't much longer. Poems and stories relay the adventures and attitudes, at all stages of his life, of loafer and lumpen intellectual Henry Chinaski. They are occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, occasionally laughable because Henry and his women and pals are such a bunch of slobs, and occasionally as boring as Henry and company claim their lives are. And, to tell the truth, they are effortlessly, magnetically readable, especially if you are susceptible to their bargain-basement existentialist charm. Plenty are. Ray Olson