Awards
Winner of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize
Synopses & Reviews
A beautiful collection of short stories that explores blacks and whites today,
Elbow Room is alive with warmth and humor. Bold and very real, these twelve stories examine a world we all know but find difficult to define.
Whether a story dashes the bravado of young street toughs or pierces through the self-deception of a failed preacher, challenges the audacity of a killer or explodes the jealousy of two lovers, James Alan McPherson has created an array of haunting images and memorable characters in an unsurpassed collection of honest, masterful fiction.
Review
"Artful and highly serious." Newsweek
Synopsis
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About the Author
James Alan McPherson is the author of Hue and Cry, Railroad, and Elbow Room, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1978. His essays and short stories have appeared in numerous periodicals including The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Newsday, Plough-shares, The Iowa Review, and Double-Take and anthologies such as volumes of The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Essays, and O. Henry Prize Stories. McPherson has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Prize Fellows Award. He is currently a professor of English at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in Iowa City.
Table of Contents
Why I like country music -- The story of the dead man -- The silver bullet -- The faithful -- Problems of art -- The story of the scar -- I am an American -- Widows and orphans -- A loaf of bread -- Just enough for the city -- A sense of story -- Elbow room.