Fling and Other Stories
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Writing in a new and different mode, John Hersey, who has enriched us with such memorable novels as A Bell for Adanoand The Wall, now gives us his first collection of short stories. A superb and witty storyteller, he invents a variety of voices…
A boy remembers his childhood summer on the North China sea and the typhoon that punished the fire-and-brimstone preacher for the sin of pride.
A scullery maid tells of the time she took her master’s prize catch with her on a blind date.
An apprentice on a lobster trawler is an uncomfortable witness to the humiliation of his captain—known to be the best lobstering skipper out of either Menemsha or New Bedford…
In the title story, Venus, an insouciant septuagenarian, recaptures in a dazzling tone-perfect recitation the world of the rich and spoiled Lost Generation as she and her “Michelangelic” husband are adventuring in Willa Cather land and indulge in what turns out to be their last fling…
In these beautifully crafted stories Hersey proves himself to be a master of the form, and his eleven tales will delight all who love a good short story.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Although this is Pulitzer Prize-winner Hersey's 24th Knopf book, it is his first collection of short fiction. Deft and sure-footed as ever, Hersey demonstrates in these 11 stories that he is, in any format, a master storyteller. Two of the pieces were published in the Atlantic in 1957 and 1950; the rest have appeared in the last three years in such magazines as Paris Review and Grand Street . Among the astonishing voices that narrate these tales is that of Venus, in the title story, an aged socialite who yearns for lost worlds of careless richness. There is Miss Peg, heroine of ``Peggety's Parcel of Shortcomings,'' a pastry cook whose romantic night on the town with a sailor is encumbered by a large raw salmon done up in newspaper. In ``Affinities'' we meet Samson Honniger, who is charged with stealing a dog. The dog merely followed him, he explains to his long-suffering bail bondsman, ``Timothy understood me, and I understood Timothy. The moment we met. . . . His eyes reminded me of my grandmother's.'' Hersey's narrative skill is abundantly evident throughout this assortment of tales. If there is an occasional rather old-fashioned feeling to some of the stories, it is due to Hersey's solid, precise prose, the kind that's meant to last.
