The Stories Of J.F. Powers

(Paperback, Main)

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Hailed by Frank O'Connor as one of "the greatest living storytellers," J. F. Powers, who died in 1999, stands with Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Raymond Carver among the authors who have given the short story an unmistakably American cast. In three slim collections of perfectly crafted stories, published over a period of some thirty years and brought together here in a single volume for the first time, Powers wrote about many things: baseball and jazz, race riots and lynchings, the Great Depression, and the flight to the suburbs. His greatest subject, however-and one that was uniquely his-was the life of priests in Chicago and the Midwest. Powers's thoroughly human priests, who include do-gooders, gladhanders, wheeler-dealers, petty tyrants, and even the odd saint, struggle to keep up with the Joneses in a country unabashedly devoted to consumption. These beautifully written, deeply sympathetic, and very funny stories are an unforgettable record of the precarious balancing act that is American life.

Reviews

"Powers is a genuine original. Read himfor the pleasures he bestows of ear and eye, but read him too for the supreme trustworthiness of his vision, a trust earned by impeccable craft, and by a balance perfectly struck between a cutting irony and a beleaguered faith." Mary Gordon

"In these stories, there is a lovely, travelling hesitancy, an obliquity, so that they seem to creep up on the reader.The strongest of them are surely among the finest written by an American." James Wood,The New Yorker

"To read the first story (The Lords Day) in this collection is to put down the book with the sense of having read as great a short story as any ever written, and I mean by anybody: by Cheever, Sherwood Anderson, Checkov. What ease they have is in the style: there are no easy morals here, no edifying lessons, but their vigor and correctness make them delightful to read. And while theyre terribly funny laughoutloud funny, in spots theyre also complex and deeply serious." Donna Tartt,Harpers

"Powers particular blend of trenchancy and bleak wit.Powers short pieces remain more effective than his novels. His was a gift of understatement and speed, and at his best his narrative economy is breathtaking.It is a pleasure to see [them] reissuedin a single volume. For a collection that spans three decades,The Stories ofJ.F.Powersisnt especially long, but the work is striking, impelled by a vision that has been cleansed by deep intelligence and powerful subject matter." Erin McGraw,The Georgia Review

Author Bio

J. F. Powers (1917-1999) was born in Jacksonville, Illinois, and studied at Northwestern University while holding a variety of jobs in Chicago and working on his writing. He published his first stories in The Catholic Worker and, as a pacifist, spent thirteen months in prison during World War II. Powers was the author of three collections of short stories and two novels-Morte D'Urban, which won the National Book Award, and Wheat That Springeth Green-all of which have been reissued by New York Review Books. He lived in Ireland and the United States and taught for many years at St John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota. Denis Donoghue is University Professor at NYU, where he holds the Henry James Chair of English and American Letters. He is the author of The Practice of Reading, Words Alone: The Poet T.S. Eliot, and, most recently, The American Classics. (October 2006)