SHORT FICTION
Classic and Contemporary

I am very pleased to be editing this sixth edition of Short Fiction: Classic and Contemporary. I began work on this book in its fifth edition and tried to continue the breadth and depth that Charles Bohner brought to the first four editions before his death. I have designed this edition to build upon the many changes I brought to the previous edition. The number and variety of stories remains large. The balance between classic stories and more contemporary stories remains more or less the same. The fifth edition's new features, such as the table-of-contents features “A Writer in Depth,”“Context,” and “Hypertext Fiction,” and the end-of-selection feature “Responses,” all remain in this sixth edition.

Friends and colleagues from other colleges kindly responded to my requests for evaluation of the text, and I have responded to their suggestions. Though he remains in the anthology with one story, Tomás Rivera is no longer featured in an “A Writer in Depth” section, but Raymond Carver and Joyce Carol Oates are now featured in “A Writer in Depth” sections. Several writers have been removed from the anthology and replaced by a variety of relatively new writers and by some older writers whose work is gaining new audiences: T. Coraghessan Boyle, Alice Carey, Oscar Casares, Charles W. Chesnutt, Philip K. Dick, E. M Forster, William Gibson, Sarah Orne Jewett, Jonathan Nolan, Banana Yoshimoto, and Anzia Yezierska. I have expanded the “Context: Writers on Writing” section with nonfiction essays by Walter Benjamin, Raymond Carver, E. M. Forster, and Joyce Carol Oates, all great critics and theorists of narrative.

The most significant change for this sixth edition is the addition of the section “Approaching Short Fiction Through Film.” In this section, I have tried to recognize that many college students have more experience with narrative art by viewing films than by reading fiction. I do not view this addition as acquiescing in any way to the belief that today's college students are poor or reluctant readers. I suppose many are; but I suppose many have always been so. Instead, my view is that college students have had great opportunities through film to “read” narrative; to understand the principles of character, conflict, setting, point of view, language, and tone; and to confront the political, social, psychological, and historical messages of narrative. Certainly many people read films poorly or superficially. But many also read films in very sophisticated ways. The section “Approaching Short Fiction Through Film” attempts to build upon the cinematic literacy of today's students. I hope it provides some means for students and teachers to begin considering how to translate the skills and knowledge of reading fictional film into reading prose fiction.

In addition to the new “Approaching Short Fiction Through Film” section, I have added after many of the stories a feature called “Focus on Film,” which offers opportunities for consideration and for writing about a work of short fiction that has been made into a film. For this reason, I have replaced Joseph Conrad's “The Secret Sharer” with his much anthologized story “The Heart of Darkness.” In addition, I have brought back James Joyce's “The Dead” from the second and third editions of this anthology. Similarly, some stories new to this edition have been made into films-those by Raymond Carver, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, Jonathan Nolan, and Anzia Yezierska. I am aware that some of the films are hard to locate-for instance, Yezierska's silent film Hungry Hearts from the 1920s-still, I believe it is important to offer these opportunities for thoughtful consideration of narrative art in prose and film. Some people who use this text have large libraries nearby, and everyone has the Internet and a large network of sources for purchasing new and used DVDs and videotapes.

I would like to thank my editors at Prentice Hall/Pearson Education for their support of this project. I also thank the following reviewers for their helpful comments: William A. Davis, College of Notre Dame of Maryland; Angela M. Thompson, University of Oregon; Clay Reynolds, University of Texas at Dallas; Darlene Harbour Unrue, University of Nevada-Las Vegas; Cynthia Maxson, Rio Salado College; Russell Greer, Texas Women's University; Diane Williams, College of Lake County, Illinois; and Allison P. Boyle, Texas Tech University. I thank my colleagues at Austin Community College for directing me to stories. In addition to those I thanked in the previous edition, I thank, this time, Dori Wagner, Anne Marie Thomas, Lee Moore, and Michael Sirmons. My wife Colleen helps in thousands of ways every clay. Finally, my thanks always go to the students at Austin Community College and elsewhere, who are, really, the only reason this book exists. This is what I wrote in the preface to the fifth edition. It still stands: This volume is inspired by my students, past and present. Everyone-professional educators, parents, newspaper pundits-has a pet theory about, a generational nickname for, and an all-too-wise criticism of you students. But this is what I have seen and continue to see: many young adults, and some older ones, too, struggling in and with a culture that expects you to go to college and make the grades and at the same time requires you to meet all your expenses for rent, automobiles, insurance, books, tuition, medical care, and food. On top of that, we've raised you in a culture that entertains you with violence, entices you with erotic images, freely offers you illegal drugs and alcohol, and defines your success by the size of your paycheck. Then we harshly judge you if you happen to acquire a handgun, STD, drug and alcohol addiction, or a suspicion of the value of the liberal arts. Nor, in this land of liberty and individualism, do you have to live very long to find yourself demonized because you are somehow different. I dedicate my work here to you because I admire your hard work, your dedication to the long process of higher education, and your ability to shift through the stories our culture gives you and to create your own life, your own life story-one that nurtures and sustains you. I wish you happy and profitable reading and writing.

I welcome any comments and suggestions you may have about the book.