Stories by Achebe, Kingsley Amis, Susan Hill, Rhys, Updike, etc. 15 men. 5 women - one "married to a philosopher", one "Married to the Shakespearian scholar Stanley Wells", and another "married to Professor R.D. Smith".
In the introduction Sharrock points out that the short story started in France, Russia and America before coming to England. Even then, the stories had excessive detail - "The revolution came when it was seen that the short story must aim at a goal wholly different from that of the novel" (p.vi). "The peculiar, the eccentric, the lonely, the downright mad: these, with children and old people, make up a great part of the population of the modern short story ... the spare form of the short story cannot concern itself with the vast complexity of the modern social world; it is a form for the pre-social and the post-social" (p.viii).
I liked George Mackay Brown, Liz Taylor, William Trevor. Disliked Morley Callaghan. Sentences I liked included -
- Both Peter and his father knew they would over-discuss this subject: they exploited to the utmost the few topics for conversation that now remained to them - Frank Tuohy
- studying the sea as a man through the smoke of a good pipe might look at the face of a friend - Benedict Kelly
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