Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Contexts
- Chapter 1 Transatlantic Print Culture and the Emergence of Short Narratives
- Chapter 2 The Short Story and the Early Magazine
- Chapter 3 The Short Story Fad
- Chapter 4 The Best of the Best
- Chapter 5 The Story of a Semester
- Chapter 6 The Short Story in the Age of the Internet
- Part II Histories
- Part III People and Places
- Part IV Theories
- Notes
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to…
- References
Chapter 4 - The Best of the Best
Anthologies, Prizes, and the Short Story Canon
from Part I - Contexts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2023
Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Contexts
- Chapter 1 Transatlantic Print Culture and the Emergence of Short Narratives
- Chapter 2 The Short Story and the Early Magazine
- Chapter 3 The Short Story Fad
- Chapter 4 The Best of the Best
- Chapter 5 The Story of a Semester
- Chapter 6 The Short Story in the Age of the Internet
- Part II Histories
- Part III People and Places
- Part IV Theories
- Notes
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to…
- References
Summary
This chapter examines the literary institutions that helped American short fiction to flourish in the twentieth century and maintain its visibility today. These institutions, from the Best American Short Stories and the New Yorker, to the Pushcart Prize and the National Book Award, form a kind of patchwork canon of American short fiction, a record of the writers most celebrated in their moment and most remembered since. Despite the persistent notion, espoused by artists and scholars alike, that the short story is “the art form best suited for the description” of a diverse and “heterogeneous culture,” these institutions also testify to the fact that the genre has, until very recently, underrepresented women and overlooked racialized writers. This chapter documents the writers that these organizations have consecrated, examining how that patchwork canon has often failed to live up to the ideals of cultural pluralism at the heart of the American short story tradition.
Keywords
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- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story , pp. 62 - 79Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023
References
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