Books, Arts & Manners: All Must Have Prizes

Prize Stories 1988, edited by William Abrahams (Doubleday, 312 pp„ $17.95)

‘This volume is the 68th in the O. Henry Memorial Award series,” the publisher tells us; as usual, William Abrahams, co-or sole editor for the past 24 years, has done a creditable job. The 158 magazines he consulted are listed in the back, and there are no glaring omissions. Mr. Abrahams has included selections from most of the writers of some reputation who regularly write stories, to wit: Raymond Carver, Alice Adams, Andre Dubus, Joyce Carol Oates, Joy Williams, Bobbie Ann Mason, Ann Beattie, John Sayles, and John Updike; there are also seven by less-wellknown names, and four by writers previously unpublished. The magazines in which the stories first appeared include, among the old guard, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, and The Southern Review; among the newer, Quarterly and Grand Street. Taken together, therefore, the selections cover the range and type of stories considered at present by American editors and critics to have literary merit.

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Brock Baker

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Prize Stories 1988, edited by William Abrahams (Doubleday, 312 pp„ $17.95)

‘This volume is the 68th in the O. Henry Memorial Award series,” the publisher tells us; as usual, William Abrahams, co-or sole editor for the past 24 years, has done a creditable job. The 158 magazines he consulted are listed in the back, and there are no glaring omissions. Mr. Abrahams has included selections from most of the writers of some reputation who regularly write stories, to wit: Raymond Carver, Alice Adams, Andre Dubus, Joyce Carol Oates, Joy Williams, Bobbie Ann Mason, Ann Beattie, John Sayles, and John Updike; there are also seven by less-wellknown names, and four by writers previously unpublished. The magazines in which the stories first appeared include, among the old guard, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, and The Southern Review; among the newer, Quarterly and Grand Street. Taken together, therefore, the selections cover the range and type of stories considered at present by American editors and critics to have literary merit.