The Collected Stories

For over three decades, Reynolds Price has been one of America's most distinguished writers, in a career that has been remarkable both for its virtuosity and for the variety of literary forms he has embraced. Now he shows himself as much a master of the story as he is of the novel, in a volume that presents fifty stories, including two early collections — The Names and Faces of Heroes and Permanent Errors — as well as more than two dozen new stories that have never been gathered together before.

In his introduction, Mr. Price explains how, after the publication of his first two collections, he wrote no new stories for almost twenty years. "But once I needed — for unknown reasons in a new and radically altered life — to return to the story, it opened before me like a new chance....A collection like this then," he adds, "...will show a writer's preoccupations in ways the novel severely rations (novels are partly made for that purpose — the release from self, long flights through the Other). John Keats's assertion that 'the excellence of every Art is its intensity' has served as a license and standard for me. From the start my stories were driven by heat — passion and mystery, often passion for the mystery I've found in particular rooms and spaces and the people they threaten or shelter — and my general aim is the transfer of a spell of keen witness, perceived by the reader as warranted in character and act."

There is, indeed, much for the reader to "witness" here of passion and mystery, of character and act. And the variety of stories — many of them set in Reynolds Price's native North Carolina, but a surprising number set in distant parts: Jerusalem in "An Early Christmas," the American Southwest in "Walking Lessons," and a number in Europe — will astonish even his most devoted readers. In short, The Collected Stories of Reynolds Price is as deeply rewarding a book as any he has yet published.

For over three decades, Reynolds Price has been one of America's most distinguished writers, in a career that has been remarkable both for its virtuosity and for the variety of literary forms he has embraced. Now he shows himself as much a master of the story as he is of the novel, in a volume that presents fifty stories, including two early collections — The Names and Faces of Heroes and Permanent Errors — as well as more than two dozen new stories that have never been gathered together before.

In his introduction, Mr. Price explains how, after the publication of his first two collections, he wrote no new stories for almost twenty years. "But once I needed — for unknown reasons in a new and radically altered life — to return to the story, it opened before me like a new chance....A collection like this then," he adds, "...will show a writer's preoccupations in ways the novel severely rations (novels are partly made for that purpose — the release from self, long flights through the Other). John Keats's assertion that 'the excellence of every Art is its intensity' has served as a license and standard for me. From the start my stories were driven by heat — passion and mystery, often passion for the mystery I've found in particular rooms and spaces and the people they threaten or shelter — and my general aim is the transfer of a spell of keen witness, perceived by the reader as warranted in character and act."

There is, indeed, much for the reader to "witness" here of passion and mystery, of character and act. And the variety of stories — many of them set in Reynolds Price's native North Carolina, but a surprising number set in distant parts: Jerusalem in "An Early Christmas," the American Southwest in "Walking Lessons," and a number in Europe — will astonish even his most devoted readers. In short, The Collected Stories of Reynolds Price is as deeply rewarding a book as any he has yet published.

Reynolds Price was born in Macon, North Carolina in 1933. Reared and educated in the public schools of his native state, he earned an A.B. summa cum laude from Duke University. In 1955 he traveled as a Rhodes Scholar to Merton College, Oxford University, to study English literature. After three years, and the B. Litt. degree, he returned to Duke where he continues to teach as James B. Duke Professor of English.

In 1962 his novel A Long and Happy Life appeared. It received the William Faulkner Award for a notable first novel and has never been out of print. Since, he has published other novels — Blue Calhoun (1992) was the ninth — and in 1986 his Kate Vaiden received the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has also published volumes of short stories, poems, plays, essays, translations from the Bible, a memoir Clear Pictures; and he has written for the screen, for television and the texts for songs. His television play Private Contentment was commissioned by American Playhouse and appeared in its premiere season. His trilogy of plays New Music premiered at the Cleveland Play House in 1989, and its three plays have been produced throughout the country as has a newer play Full Moon, his seventh.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and his books have appeared in sixteen languages.