   
|
|
|
|
|
|
CLASSIC AMERICAN Short Stories Vol.I
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Unlike the other arts, American literature has been a powerful, influential and leading aspect of American culture. By turns sedate and mercurial and possessing a moral mind set of various social
values, the American short story reveals in its pages the psyche of a growing, sprawling nation whose sense of destiny has always been larger than life. Here are stories that will make you smile, make you frown, and leave you pondering the mystery that surrounds the soul of a great nation.
Selections in Volume I: A JOURNEY by Edith Wharton - A woman tries to conceal the death of her husband on a train trip. IMPULSE by Conrad Aiken - After a lifetime of pushing the envelope, a man pushes it a little too far. ONLY THE DEAD KNOW BROOKLYN by Thomas Wolfe - A lonely man with a map tries to understand a little piece of the earth. A CHRISTIAN EDUCATION by Robert Penn Warren - A troubled farmer recounts the death of a retarded boy. PAUL'S CASE by Willa Cather - A youth decides to put his life of fantasy and that of the real world on a collision course. THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER by Stephen Vincent Benét - This beautiful, rip roaring tall-tale embraces all that is good in American life.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
AUDIO EXCERPT:
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
Previous Selection Page • Next Page
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Superbly narrated by Charlton Griffin and enhanced with both music and sound effects, Classic American Short Stories: Volume 1 is an unabridged, three cassette, 4 hour and 28 minute audiobook presentation that showcases some of the finest masters of the short story format ever to grace American literature. Included are Edith Wharton's A Journey; Conrad Aiken's Impulse; Robert Penn Warren's A Christian Education; Willa Cather's Paul's Case; and Stephen Vincent Benet's The Devil And Daniel Webster. With its flawless technical recording values and masterful presentation, This first volume in the Audio Connoisseur Classic American Short Stories series will leave the listener eagerly awaiting a second volume!
James Cox
Midwest Book Review
This splendid collection could hardly be bettered. The stories, almost all from the first half of the twentieth century, are indeed classics, but not overexposed. Most are fictions both of character and of place, and as the places include New Hampshire, New York City, the West, the Midwest, and Deep South, a lot is required of the reader. Charlton Griffin is dazzlingly good, with regional accents, with the change in timbre from a boy's voice to a woman's and a man's, and most of all with his nuanced understanding of how to deliver the narrative from writer to reader without getting himself in the way. Kudos to all involved in this terrific production, and let's hope for many volumes to come.
Beth Gutcheon
AudioFile Magazine
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|