Beautifully rendered and psychologically astute tales of life, family, and art from a true American master
âThe Sunday Painter,â a surprisingly comic tale, is the account of an amateur artist whose obsession with distilling his work to its most basic formâlightâleads to a mental breakdown. âThe First Day of Schoolâ is a moving and intimately observed portrait of the courage summoned by an African American family in the early days of integration. In âThe Covenant,â a thirteen-year-old boy is confronted with his own mortality and instinctually redirects his anger and confusion elsewhereâthe first lesson of adulthood. Beneath the deceptively anecdotal narration of âThe Swimmers at Pallikulaâ lie deep truths about the absurdity of life and death and the eternal struggle for self-knowledge.As the editor of The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, a founder of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP), and a longtime teacher at the University of Iowa, Purdue University, and Brown University, R. V. Cassill influenced generations of American authors. In The Happy Marriage and Other Stories, this expert craftsman is at his most varied and vital.
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