Product Description

The seventy-ninth anniversary of this annual collection of short stories "widely regarded as the nation's most prestigious awards for short fiction." (The Atlantic Monthly).

Edited and with an introduction by Larry Dark
1999 Top-Prize Selection Jury: Sherman Alexie, Stephen King, Lorrie Moore

Established in 1918 as a memorial to O.Henry, this esteemed annual collection has presented a remarkable collection of stories over the years. Recently, Series Editor Larry Dark has incorporated some exciting changes: a magazine award, the eligibility of stories from Canadian magazines, a list of fifty Honorable Mention stories, an expanded listing of publications consulted, and a celebrity author top-prize jury.

Representing the very best in contemporary American and Canadian fiction, Prize Stories 1999: The O.Henry Awards is a superb collection of twenty inventive, full-bodied short stories brimming with life--proof of the continuing strength and variety of the genre.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1408998 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-14
• Released on: 1999-09-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Amazon.com Review
Some readers anxiously monitor each year's O. Henry anthology like doctors taking vital signs at a bedside, looking for clues to the current state of the American short story. Good news: the patient is alive and well--it's officially time to stop monitoring her pulse. Chosen by this year's prize jury (Sherman Alexie, Lorrie Moore, and, oddly enough, Stephen King), the three top winners are a satisfying mix of psychological realism and mild formal innovation. Best of all, they are as different from one another as chalk from cheese. Those looking for "trends" may come away disappointed, but anyone in search of a good solid read will find plenty to choose from here.

The year's first-prize pick is Peter Baida's "A Nurse's Story," a quiet, moving tale that manages to skirt sentimentality by possessing that rare literary gift, perfect pitch. "A good death. That's what everyone wants," longtime nurse Mary McDonald tells us, but Baida's story serves instead as a tribute to a good life--and all the other lives it ripples out to affect. The second-prize winner is a more unsettling and ambitious fiction, Cary Holladay's "Merry-Go-Sorry." Ostensibly about the rape and murder of three little boys, it somehow encompasses putative satanism, teenage alienation, hopeless love, grief, affliction, mystery, and everything else that makes us all human. The word merry-go-sorry "means a story with good news and bad," the accused killer's mother tells us, "joy and sorrow mixed together..." Holladay's story is indeed a merry-go-sorry, and in its juxtaposition of despair and hope it reminds us that, as in the wake of an Arkansas storm, sometimes "what's beautiful happens by accident." Rounding out the three prizewinners is a story by Alice Munro, a writer who deserves every prize extant and maybe a few not even thought of yet. Her "Save the Reaper" loosely reworks Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," but instead of a savage Southern parable, she produces what Lorrie Moore calls "a kind of pagan prayer," shot through with love, loss, mourning, and death.

Standouts from the rest of this collection include the splendid rodeo fiction "The Mud Below," by Annie Proulx, George Saunders's bizarre, tragic, and sidesplitting "Sea Oak," and something everyone either really really loves or really really hates, David Foster Wallace's footnote-enhanced "The Depressed Person." (This reviewer thinks it's funny, sad, and brilliant in an unrestrained and very Wallacean way.) As always, there are a few stories here that the clients in Saunders's male strip bar might rate "Stinker," but overall the miss-to-hit ratio is surprisingly low. Another year, another lively--and impressively vital--anthology. --Mary Park

From Publishers Weekly
Introducing this distinguished annual collection, series editor Dark notes "the inherent subjectivity of the reading experience," an important caveat whenever an anthology pulls together stories under a "Best of the Year" heading. This year's judges, Sherman Alexie, Stephen King and Lorrie Moore, provide short essays for the three stories winning top honors. Of the 17 other tales, most earn their place here by virtue of innovation, emotional impact, or masterful imaginative leaps. Certain selections are bone-chilling, like Michael Chabon's "Son of the Wolfman," a pull-no-punches examination of a horrifying plight, pregnancy-by-rape; and Annie Proulx's "The Mud Below," a fiercely literary western tale of a bull rider. Others are eye-catching. though not always top-notch, like David Foster Wallace's "The Depressed Person," a logorrheic examination of privilege and depression (complete with maniacal footnotes), or "Cataract," Pam Houston's tough-talk river adventure. A rare story by Chaim Potok, about a troubled adolescent, gratifies, as do T. Coraghessan Boyle's "The Underground Gardens," in which an Italian immigrant's need to dig in the earth becomes all-encompassing, and Michael Cunningham's time-lapse portrait of a beautiful, self-involved young man observed by his despairing sibling. The first-, second- and third-prize winners (Peter Baida's "A Nurse's Story," Cary Holladay's "Merry-Go-Sorry" and Alice Munro's "Save the Reaper," respectively) are rich ground for debate among serious short-fiction readers: exactly how does Baida's melancholy, hopeful tale of a dying woman's courageous work organizing fellow nurses come to be ranked above all the others, including a gem by Jhumpa Lahiri and those short-listed at the book's end? But this discussion is integral to the pleasure of reading such a collection. It is somewhat disappointing that the anthology's Magazine Award again went to the obvious powerhouse, the New Yorker, when the Gettysburg Review, with two sharp stories, seemed a worthy contender. Overall, the collection is not only a keystone for readers, but, with its useful listing of magazines consulted (including addresses), a motivating force for writers. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
A pretty sad collection that serves to show why fewer and fewer people bother with what passes for literary fiction these days. As usual, most everything here is from the quarterlies or The New Yorker, and everyone seems to be taking themselves very seriously indeed. The First Prize went to Peter Baida for A Nurses Story, an account of a small-town nurse and union-organizer thats written as straight-faced social realism of the Howard Fast school. The Second Prize entry is Cary Holladays Merry-Go- Sorry, a gripping but ultimately rather vapid portrayal of the murder of three boys by an Arkansas pedophile. Alice Munro came in third for Save the Reaper, a pale retelling of Flannery OConnors A Good Man is Hard to Find (an annoying old woman leads her family on a wild-goose chase that ends disastrously). The piece manages to mimic OConnors grotesqueries without sharing in the first glimmer of her grace. The rest of the collection is a mixed bag. David Foster Wallace is on hand with a long footnote attached to some sort of story (The Depressed Person). T.C. Boyle offers a vaguely dreamlike portrait of a Sicilian immigrant who comes to California at the turn of the century and sets about creating a rather strange new Eden for his sweetheart (The Underground Gardens). Gerald Reilly (Nixon Under the Bodhi Tree) provides an amusing glimpse of what happens when an actor gets too much into the character of his part, and Pinckney Benedict (Miracle Boy) reminds us just how perverse small boys can be in the face of the crippled or weak. Once again, the least ambitious entries are the best: Annie Proulx (The Mud Below) gives an interesting account of life among Oklahoma bronco-busters, while Kina Davenport (Fork Used in Eating Reverend Baker) takes us through the whirlwind of political strife in Fiji. A few good moments, but generally disappointing. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Surprisingly Strong Year for the O'Henry Awards
I tend to prefer the Best American series, but this year O'Henry is far more surprising and varied. I'm not sure what grudge is being held by the Kirkus Reviewer above (I suspect that he/she is some sort of failed MFA candidate?) BUT there's clearly strong work here. Larry Dark shows a much surer hand here than he has in previously edited volumes. He's still obviously got a thing for the "quirky" and strange--it's no surprise that he's also editor of "The Literary Ghost" since there's a kind of gothic sensibility at work in many of the chosen stories, but there's also a greater variety here than you'll find in this year's Best American. My personal favorites include Sheila Schwartz's stunning "Afterbirth;" Cory Halliday's "Merry-Go-Sorry," which performs some wonderful technical feats with its multiple narration; and of course Alice Munro's story. There are weak spots, of course:the Pam Houston story (mentioned by a previous reader;) and Annie Proulx's story, which just seems to me to be an awfully cliched rendering of the Western persona. Nevertheless, all in all, a very respectable collection.

High highs and low lows make for a rocky ride
First of all, I haven't read all the stories in this collection. That having been said, I was surprised by how uneven this volume is. "Mister Brother" by Michael Cunningham was a happy find for me, as was "Sea Oak," a hilarious story by George Saunders (Civilwarland in Bad Decline, Pastoralia). Many readers will be familiar with Jumpha Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies," which is a good story, but one wonders if it's really necessary to reprint it when Lahiri's book by the same name is so ubiquitous. DF Wallace's "The Depressed Person" will piss off or delight readers to an even greater degree than most of his other fiction. An amazing story, but one that makes your skin crawl. Finally, I am dumbfounded as to how Robert Schirmer's "Burning" made it into this publication. It's definitely an apprentice piece and one worth skipping.

i might be a bit generous with the stars
I've found the O. Henry Awards series to be a pretty uneven collection of stories, but still one i eagerly await each year, because in each volume you find several good stories, and one or two gems. The 1999 collection is no exception. Sure I found most of the stories to be trite and dull, but hidden amongst the poorer work were really good stories by W.D. Wetherell, Michael Chabon, Charlotte Forbes, and Annie Proulx. And the second place story, Cary Holladay's 'Merry-Go-Sorry' is a great story that deserves to be anthologized many, many in the years to come. And Stephen King and Lorrie Moore's introduction were eloquently written, and a joy to read in their own right.