The Happy Marriage: And Other Stories

Ronald Verlin Cassill

jan. 1966 · Purdue University Press

Om den här e-boken

"These seven stories discover something of what lies beneath the ordinary surfaces of decent people," says George P. Elliott in his introduction to this volume. "Mr. Cassill's characters are for the most part," he continues, "white respectable Middle-Western Protestants, and their way of life is lethal enough. But his heresy is to treat them as possible human beings who in fact do go on living as we live - dreadfully troubled but possible, human, living." Cassill obviously incorporates in his best work all the uncommon qualities listed by Elliott, plus quite a few more: psychological precision, sociological understanding and philosophical thrust, not to mention a command of organic form in the short story and a remarkable range of flexible styles.

Om författaren

A prolific writer, Cassill has authored over 20 novels, including Clem Anderson (1961), The President (1964), The Goss Women (1974), Hoyt's Child (1976), Labors of Love (1980), and After Goliath (1985). In addition, his story collections include The Father (1965) and The Happy Marriage (1967), and in 1989 the University of Arkansas Press published his 650-page Collected Stories. Cassill's own life demonstrates extraordinary achievement emerging from an ordinary life of writing and teaching. Born in 1919 in Cedar Falls, Iowa, he studied art, but after Army service in the South Pacific during World War II, he turned his attention toward writing and publishing fiction. He has taught writing and literature at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, Purdue, Columbia, Harvard, and most recently as professor emeritus of English at Brown. He currently resides in Providence, Rhode Island. Besides writing fiction, he has published a teaching text, Writing Fiction, and edited both the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction and the Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction. His honors include Fulbright, Rockefeller, and Guggenheim fellowships.