"I Am Your Brother": Short Story Studies - Paperback

by Charles E. May (Author)

"I Am Your Brother": Short Story Studies is a study of the short story as a genre, written both for academic and general readers. After establishing the origins of the short story in myth, the book examines issues of genre and history, discusses the difference between the short story and the novel, and analyzes the importance of obsession, mystery, and metaphoric motivation in the form. Chapters also are devoted to mythic perception in the short fiction of John Steinbeck and Bernard Malamud, love and separateness in the short stories of Eudora Welty, and the birth of the modern short story by Anton Chekhov. The final two chapters are extended discussions of the short stories of Raymond Carver and Alice Munro.

Author Biography

Charles E. May is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Long Beach. He is the author/editor of eight books on the short story, including Short Story Theories, New Short Story Theories, Edgar Allan Poe: A Study of the Short Fiction, and Reality of Artifice: The Short Story. He is also the author of more than 300 essays and reviews on the short story and has lectured on the form at academic conferences in Norway, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Italy, France, Canada, and the United States. He was a Fulbright Senior Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin and University College, Dublin, where he taught American short fiction. He writes a blog on Reading the Short Story at may-on-the-short-story.blogspot.com