The Ravenstones

“The slaughter hasn’t started yet.”

Thus begins a short story by Lee Abbott, called “One of Star Wars, One of Doom”, published in 2001.

Is that a great beginning or what? There’s no way one turns away from such an opening – a sense of real foreboding and mystery. And the use of the present tense makes what comes next more immediate, even frightening. One can guess at what’s going on, what’s about to happen, but the answers only become clear at the end.

I found the story in The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, (Seventh Edition, published in 2006) and it is the very first one selected. I came across the book in my neighbourhood little library, where I’ve found many other worthy tomes (see my post of Mar 16, 2024).

This copy of the book was a “used” one, likely purchased for a university course.

First, some facts about the book itself:

• It’s 1734 pages long and weighs three pounds (so it’s not coming along on any travels!).
• The collection contains 140 stories by 116 authors.
• In this edition, 38 of the stories and 20 of the authors are newly added.
• Chronologically speaking, the first story is written by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Young Goodman Brown, 1835); the last – a pair – (in 2005) are by Richard Bausch (Byron the Lyon) and Alice Hoffman (The Wedding of Snow and Ice).
• The authors with the most stories selected (3) are Anton Chekhov, William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. Seventeen others get two listings, including one Canadian. (Margaret Atwood gets only one, but she is also included in a section on literary criticism.)
• Four very long short stories (can a short story be long or should a new category exist?) are included: Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener and Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, 60 pages each in the case of the first two.
• The year with the most selections (five) is 1985.
• Twenty-eight (28) essays on the art and craft of writing are also included.

Lee Abbott gets pride of place in this book for one reason only. Alphabetically speaking, he came first. The last to appear, in case you’re wondering, is Richard Wright. And I must note that the names of ten authors in this compendium start with a W, including Woolf, (Carlos) Williams and (Penn) Warren. Only letters C and D have more listings.

The book’s cover art, by the way, is by Edward Hopper (1882-1967), one of my favorite American artists. It’s called “Compartment C, Car 293” and created in 1938. The oil painting, depicting a woman sitting alone in a train compartment, reading a book, captures Hopper’s characteristic themes of solitude and introspection in modern life. I think it’s a highly appropriate choice.

According to Wikipedia and ChatGPT, the work was part of IBM’s corporate collection but, in 1979, donated to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., (one of the Smithsonian Institution’s 21 galleries and well known to me from my time with the Canadian Embassy in the mid -1970’s).

Although it’s a terrific collection of stories, I could still quarrel with the list. Where, for example, are Graham Greene and W. Somerset Maugham? Both favorites of mine.

Penguin Edition, (in four volumes, 1963)

And how about Daphne du Maurier, Mavis Gallant and Carol Shields?

Toronto: Random House Canada, 1985

Doubtless, a Canadian or UK-centred anthology would have made different choices. But these are mere quibbles. I suspect the editors worked long and hard to winnow the list down to a number that would not overwhelm the publisher. In sum, we have a host of terrific authors to delight us – John Cheever, Joyce Carol Oates, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, to name but a few of the more famous ones included.

I plan to read every story over the next year, a real challenge considering all my other reading and writing projects. All being well, it should amount to completing a new story every three days. I’ll keep you posted on my progress and thoughts.