History lessons : stories / Joan Connor.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Connor, Joan, 1954-

Language:

English

Genre:

Fiction.

Physical Description:

viii, 192 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, [2003]

Summary:

The stories in this award-winning collection all bear some relationship to history, personal or communal. Several are based on iconic American figures, from William Miller to Margaret Hamilton to Ray Charles. Others evince a feminist impulse to redeem from history women whose lives would otherwise go unremarked, such as Juana la Loca and Bridget Cleary. Still others explore the ways in which language constructs and deconstructs character -- Thomas Power James engaged in completing Charles Dickens's unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood; Branwell Bronte struggling to distinguish between personal history and his family's texts; and Gerard de Nerval warring against his incipient madness. All of the stories, whether realistic or experimental, witty or solemn, acknowledge how the past continually informs the present.

Contents:

Adam and Eve at the automat

The day the world declined to end

Let us now praise dead white men

The mystery of Thomas Power James

The year of no weather

I wouldn't do that if I were you

The poet's lobster

Juana La Loca

Stone man

The deposition of the prince of whales

The parrot man

Riding with Ray

Good people

This one fact

Branwell in Angria

Under the rainbow

Writing the war novel

The butterfly effect

Florida

Midlife Barbie

Victor learns to speak.

Notes:

"Winner of the Associated writing programs 2002 award in short fiction"--T.p. verso.

ISBN:

1558494189

OCLC:

52208736