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(More customer reviews)Although the selection of short stories in this anthology is excellent, presenting an array of some of the best classic and contemporary pieces of the genre, the number of typographical errors are INEXCUSABLE. This is the anthology I purchased for a short fiction class this past fall, and as a class we were increasingly astounded by each additional typo we confronted. In about half of the stories we read, we encountered at least one, and in some we noticed more than one, which was really distracting. In Conan Doyle's Red Headed League, for instance, Holmes "THOUGH as much" (as opposed to thought), and on the very next page, he "only wished to ask WHO he would get to the Strand" (as opposed to how). The fact that there was a misprint in my favorite story of those that we read - James Joyce's Araby--was the last straw for me. My professor encouraged us to write or e-mail the editors and complain, and one student did, only to receive an e-mail which defended them and declared that the errors don't really alter the content or overall effect of the stories. Ironically, instead of the monetary compensation my fellow student(unsurprisingly)requested, the person she contacted offered to send her a free book on English writing and usage. We all told her she should send an e-mail back to them, telling them to keep the book because the editors obviously needed it more than her.
It really is disgraceful, though. How could the editors possibly think that stupid errors like this don't crucially alter the story's effect on the reader? This is not the case. It is distracting and irritating, and destroys the effect for me. I can't imagine that James Joyce would have agreed with the comment that errors like this don't really damage the story. Every author whose story was massacred by these editors would shudder that their works of art were destroyed by carelessness. Isn't the editor's job to make positively sure these kinds of errors are not there? It's really hard to believe. I've never EVER encountered typographical errors in books I've read for school, and very few in the ones I have found mistakes in. Certainly no more than two! Don't buy this anthology...maybe wait for the next edition-- hopefully they will proofread a little more accurately. If the editors happen to read this-- please, this is one disappointed student who doesn't want monetary compensation--I just want another book, and I want it to be perfect!
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Short Fiction: Classic and Contemporary This book is an exceptionally wide-ranging alphabetically arranged collection of stories spanning all genres of short fiction. It includes myth, fairy tale, humor, western, detective, Magic Realism, gothic, fantasy, folktale, and film. This edition presents a wide variety of selections by writers from diverse backgrounds that represent a true cross-section of the population and represent a broader, more current selection of contemporary fiction. Features a variety of relatively new writers and some older writers whose work is gaining new audiences: T. C. Boyle, Alice Carey, Oscar Cesares, Charles Chetnutt, E. M Forster, Nikolai Leskov, Mary McCarthy, Jonathan Nolan, Dorothy Parker, Banana Yoshimoto, and Anzia Yezierska. Includes new works to the context readings essays or excerpts from non-fiction section: by Walter Benjamin, Raymond Carver, E.M. Forester, and Joyce Carol Oates, all great critics and theorists of narrative. Stresses women writers, writers of color, and gay and lesbian writers:includes works by Isabel Allande, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, Leslie Dick, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Mary Gaitskill, Susan Glaspell, Gish Jen, Mary Shelley, Leslie Marmon Silko, Susan Sontag, Jeanette Winterson, Sherman Alexie, Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Ernest J. Gaines, Dagoberto Gilb, Hanif Kureishi, Tomás Rivera, Salman Rushdie and more. For literature and film enthusiasts.
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