The Paris Review Book of People with Problems

by The Paris Review

Overview

The Paris Review asks: who hasn't survived a tax audit, a snowstorm, a break-up, or presided over a murder?

The next addictively clever Paris Review anthology is not a self-help manual; rather it is a wicked elaboration on the human effort to overcome—and instigate—trouble. Throughout these pages you will find men plagued with guilt, women burdened by history, scientists bound by passion, mothers fogged with delusion, and lovers vexed with jealousy. In the theme that encompasses every life, no protagonist—or reader!—is exempt.

Includes contributions from Stephin Merritt, Joanna Scott, Annie Proulx, Ben Okri, Wells Tower, Julie Orringer, Rick Bass

Snow by James Lasdun, Malinda McCollum, Norman Rush, Denis Johnson, Mary Robison, Charles Baxter, Miranda July, Richard Stern, Elizabeth Gilbert, Frederick Busch, and Charlie Smith.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312422417
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	08/01/2005
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

The Paris Review was founded in 1953 and has published early and important work by Philip Roth, V. S. Naipaul, Jeffrey Eugenides, A. S. Byatt, T. C. Boyle, William T. Vollmann, and many other writers who have given us the great literature of the past half century. Some of the magazine's greatest hits have been collected by Picador in The Paris Review Book of People with Problems as well as The Paris Review Book for Planes, Trains, Elevators, and Waiting Rooms and The Paris Review Book of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, Travels, the Art of Writing, and Everything Else in the World Since 1953.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Stephin Merritt

A Borderline Case by Joanna Scott

The Wamsutter Wolf by Annie Proulx

The Dream Vendor's August by Ben Okri

The Brown Coast by Wells Tower

When She Is Old and I Am Famous by Julie Orringer

The Hermit's Story by Rick Bass

Snow by James Lasdun

The Fifth Wall by Malinda McCollum

Instruments of Seduction by Norman Rush

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

Likely Lake by Mary Robison

Westland by Charles Baxter

Birthmark by Miranda July

Audit by Richard Stern

The Famous Torn and Restored Lit Cigarette Trick by Elizabeth Gilbert

Widow Water by Frederick Busch

Crystal River by Charlie Smith

Contributors

Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

"It is said that all literature is ultimately about people in trouble—in short, people with problems. Hence this collection of 17 short stories about protagonists in fixes, exemplary tales that first appeared in the Paris Review." - Booklist

From the Publisher

All fiction concerns people with problems-without them, after all, where's the plot?-but the characters in these 17 stories, originally published in the Paris Review between 1974 and 2004, have been dealt particularly bad hands. Some, like the junkie mother in Malinda McCollum's "The Fifth Wall," have screwed up their lives pretty thoroughly, while others appear to be merely drifting along, like the therapist in Charles Baxter's "Westland." The tone shifts from story to story: Joanna Scott traces the beginnings of a psychoanalyst's obsession with a patient in the neutral language of a case history, while Elizabeth Gilbert continually ups the farcical stakes as she spins a yarn about a violent nightclub owner, his magician daughter and their rabbit. Other contributors include Denis Johnson, Mary Robison, Rick Bass and Norman Rush. Charlie Smith's tale of drunken buddies who hook up with a naked woman on a canoeing trip is the only real misstep, coming off like a parody of stories of rural dysfunction. But this is overall a strong anthology of tales of trouble. (July) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly