In Brief: Short Takes on the Personal

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Overview

In their previous collection Judith Kitchen and Mary Paumier Jones coined the term "short" for those creative nonfiction pieces — literary rather than informational, and characteristically short — that are attracting our finest writers. Now, with a more introspective focus, this new collection emphasizes the personal as "a way of seeing the world, of expressing an interior life. It is intimate without being maudlin, it is private without being secret." From Harriet Doerr's recollection of a halcyon time to Josephine Jacobsen's reverie on memory, In Brief offers vivid glimpses into the ways experience can be shaped in language that is fresh and inventive. The seventy-two authors here include the known — John McPhee, Cythia Ozick, James Salter — as well as remarkable new writers. Essays (all under 2000 words) range from Frank McCourt's search for his father in the pubs of Limerick to William Maxwell's thoughts about growing old; from Charles Baxter's early experience of reading to Brady Udall's confession as a liar. Patricia Hampl recalls meals at her grandmother's house, while Jane Brox contemplates the meaning of bread. In each piece, imagination becomes a way to explore reality. The real world we are fortunate enough to live in is revealed as endlessly rich and deep.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Noting the proliferation of creative nonfiction pieces less than 2000 words long--ranging from "fragment to finished essay, anecdote to memoir, story, meditation, hypothesis"--editors Kitchen and Jones follow up their 1996 In Short with another collection of pithy and tantalizing pieces. Studded with contributions from such accomplished writers as Kathleen Norris, John McPhee, Jamaica Kincaid and Rick Bass, these 73 mostly original offerings include some excerpts from longer works. Often employing the techniques of fiction, the pieces are linked by themes of family or romantic love, place or philosophy, recurring motifs, even theories of writing. In "Low Tide at Four," Harriet Doerr muses about a day in August, 1939, when she "exerted the full force of [her] will, commanding the sun to hold back the wave long enough for [her] to paint and frame low tide." William Maxwell sees his "ninetieth birthday approaching out of the corner of one eye," as much a natural phenomenon as the sea, which brings both joy and anguish as he realizes he has "lost touch with the place that stories and novels come from." In "Waking Dreams," Edwidge Danticat compares her fictional characters with their sometimes real life inspirations, recognizing that "writers always betray someone at some point." Offering autobiographical revelations, flashes of insight and lots of good writing, this is a solid meal for readers on the fly. (June) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

This refreshing and enjoyable collection of brief personal essays is a delight. Editors Kitchen and Jones have followed up In Short: A Collection of Brief Nonfiction (LJ 7/96) with a similar collection of essays in which a single voice conveys an individual experience. Many of the essays involve nature. Several authors of the New West are included: Rick Bass, Cynthia Ozick, Kathleen Norris, and Mary Clearman Blew. Other recognizable names include Frank McCourt, William Maxwell, John McPhee, Andre Dubus, and Edwidge Danticat. The quality of the writing is excellent. Diana Hume Georges On Seat Belts, Cocaine Addiction, and the Germ Theory is a humorous account of an overbearing mother and an allegedly promiscuous divorced daughter. Kelly Simons Frank Sinatras Gum tells about a teenager who, after chewing a piece of the crooners discarded gum, decides both the gum and the guy are unsugary. For the affordable price, this collection should be purchased by every libraryit is ideal for literature students and writing groups. [Editor Jones is an LJ reviewer.Ed.]Joyce Sparrow, Oldsmar Lib., St. Petersburg, FL

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Kirkus Reviews

An anthology of sleek, mostly savvy, short bits of creative nonfiction that focus on the theme of the personal. One might justifiably feel that the trend toward such "micro" essays panders to attention spans that have been eclipsed by television and the endless barrage of advertisements and sound-bytes which we now experience as normal. But, then again, there is something so delicious about a quick literary nugget that you can gulp down in those five or six minutes of transitional time between "getting things done," which so often serves as our free time these days. The best of these shorts (there are 72 in the collection) represent the compression of a wide range of human emotion and experience into a single object—a sort of self-reflexive literary fetishization. N. Scott Momaday's "The Indian Dog," for example, accesses fierceness of spirit and human longing with the description of a five-dollar dog that refuses to stay with his new master. Ariel Dorfman manages to evoke the multitude of complex emotions experienced by Argentinean refugees sheltering in their embassy during the military takeover in Chile with the image of a blanket thrown over the wall by an unseen person who is shot before he or she can climb to safety. David Shields condenses desire into the longing for a boy-scout belt; Kelly Simon resolves an encounter with fame by chewing a piece of gum left behind by Frank Sinatra. The new style of this short prose writing is perhaps best reflected by the degree to which pieces such as the chapter from Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes (in which he searches the pubs of Limerick for his drunken father), seem out of place. McCourt's conversational, narrative style seems to cheatthe spirit of mosaic which characterizes many of the shorter shorts. Shorts are coming into their own as a literary genre resistance is futile!

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780393319071
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 6/28/1999
Edition description: 1 ED
Pages: 256
Sales rank: 322,944
Product dimensions: 5.60 (w) x 8.30 (h) x 0.80 (d)

Meet the Author

Mary Paumier Jones lives in Rochester. Jones, who teaches creative nonfiction, has a degree in library science.

Judith Kitchen, poet, novelist, and essayist, lives in Port Townsend, Washington, where she and her husband have established a low-residency writing program. She is poetry reviewer of The Georgia Review.

	Introduction	15
	Low Tide at Four	23
	Rhapsody in Green	27
	Late July, 4:40 A.M.	31
	Gulleywasher	35
	Good Workers	39
	One Liar's Beginnings	43
	from The Bend for Home	46
	Accident, June 1948	48
	from Angela's Ashes	50
	Remembering, I Was Not There	54
	Very Narrow	59
	Adjustments	63
	Nearing 90	65
	Dealing with the Discovery of Death Inside an Embassy in October of 1973, in Santiago de Chile	69
	A Missing Star	74
	Parnassus	78
	In Between	80
	A Sense of Water	82
	Fury and Grace	85
	Swimming with Canoes	88
	Train of Thought	92
	Swan's Way, 1998	95
	Dream Houses	100
	Waking Dreams	104
	A Sense of Wonder	107
	All Over Again	111
	Messages	114
	e-mail	116
	Infectious Reading	119
	Come Eat	123
	Bread	128
	Clip from a Winter Diary	132
	Missing	134
	At Last, Her Laundry's Done	136
	Asparagus	140
	Existing Things	143
	The McKenzie River	146
	How to Tell One Bird from the Next	151
	Garden of Envy	155
	At Herring Cove	159
	The Host	162
	Crabs Dig Holes According to the Size of Their Shells	163
	Bobcats	167
	The Indian Dog	169
	Desire	171
	One Afternoon	173
	Frank Sinatra's Gum	176
	Considering the Lilies	180
	On Seat Belts, Cocaine Addiction, and the Germ Theory of Disease	186
	The End of Summer	191
	Fallout	193
	Deep in the Art of Texas	195
	Prison Man Considers Turkey	198
	The Left-Handed Sweeney and Vacation	202
	from "On the Street"	205
	Stuck with Strangers	209
	Western Union	214
	107 Miles West of Fargo	218
	Sink or Swim	220
	January 13	224
	Calving Heifers in a March Blizzard	226
	Man of Letters	230
	The Deck	234
	from "Dirt Roads"	236
	Twigs	242
	Artifacts	244
	Two Hearts	249
	Thread	251
	Storm Warnings	258
	This Is Your Day	261
	The Weather of Distance	264
	The Brilliance	266
	Artifacts of Memory	270
	Biographical Notes	273
	Permissions	286

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In Brief: Short Takes on the Personal

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