Bobbie Ann Mason burst onto the American literary scene during a renaissance of short fiction that Raymond Carver called a ‘literary phenomenon.’ Anne Tyler hailed Mason as ‘a full-fledged master of the short story.’ Mason’s work, charged with a spirit of exploration, garnered both popular and critical acclaim.
This reader collects outstanding examples of Mason’s award-winning work from throughout her writing career and provides a unique look at the development of one of the country’s finest writers. Patchwork contains short stories first published in the New Yorker and other leading periodicals; chapters from Mason’s acclaimed novels, including In Country, An Atomic Romance, and The Girl in the Blue Beret; and riveting excerpts from Mason’s eclectic nonfiction. Some examples of Mason’s recent explorations in flash fiction appear here in print for the first time.
Mason’s writing glows with a nuanced understanding of the struggles and pathos of American life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. George Saunders writes in his introduction, ‘Bobbie Ann Mason is a strange and beautiful writer…. Her stories exist to gently touch on, and praise, even mourn, what it feels like to be alive in this moment.’ Patchwork conveys Mason’s extraordinary talent and range as a writer.
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Preface by Jonathan Allison
Introduction by George Saunders
A Note to the Reader about This Reader
1. First Stories
2. War
3. Love Lives
4. Beginnings
5. Family History
6. Nancy Culpepper
7. More Love Lives
8. Whimsy
9. Fiction and History
10. Literary Meanderings
11. Atomic Fact and Fiction
12. Zigzagging
13. Another War
14. Zanies
15. Dancing
16. Flash Fiction
17. The Hot Seat: Interviews
Copyrights and Permissions
About the Author
Об авторе
Bobbie Ann Mason is best known for Shiloh and Other Stories and the novels In Country and The Girl in the Blue Béret. Her many awards include the PEN/Hemingway Award; the Arts and Letters Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the Southern Book Critics Circle Award; and the Kentucky Book Award. Her memoir, Clear Springs, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.