Awards
Winner of the Associated Writers Program Award for Short Fiction
Synopses & Reviews
In one of the ten unblinkingly truthful stories that make up
Harmony of the World, an elderly Polish piano teacher scolds a morose pupil, "Pain always seems new when you have it." It is Charles Baxter's genius to make his characters' everyday sufferings and occasional fragile joys seem utterly unprecedented, even as he reminds us, gently and with a sly comic twist, that everything they feel is only the collateral damage of being human.
Whether he is writing about the players in a rickety bisexual love triangle or a woman visiting her husband in a nursing home, probing the psychic mainspring of a grimly obsessive weight lifter or sifting through the layers of resentment, need, and pity in a friendship that has gone on a few decades too long, Baxter enchants us with the elegant balance of his prose and the unexpectedness of his insights. Long admired and now once more available in paperback, Harmony of the World is a masterpiece of lucidity and compassion.
Review
"Marvelously inventive, carefully wrought, these are compelling stories with incisive moments." St. Petersburg Times
Review
"A remarkable storyteller....His narratives can be as plausible as they are utterly amazing." The Nation
Review
"Mr. Baxter's stories are intelligent, original, gracefully written, always moving, frequently funny and that rarest of compliments wise." The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
In these ten stories, Charles Baxter shows his genius in making his characters' everyday sufferings--and occasional fragile joys--seem utterly unprecedented, even as he reminds us, gently and with a sly comic twist, that everything they feel is only the collateral damage of being human. Whether he is writing about the players in a rickety bisexual love triangle or a woman visiting her husband in a nursing home, probing the psychic mainspring of a grimly obsessive weight lifter or sifting through the layers of resentment, need, and pity in a friendship that has gone on a few decades too long, Baxter enchants us with the elegant balance of his prose and the unexpectedness of his insights. Long admired and now once more available in paperback, Harmony of the World is a masterpiece of lucidity and compassion.
Synopsis
From the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story and "one of our most gifted writers" (Chicago Tribune)--these ten stories show make everyday experiences seem utterly unprecedented, even as Baxter reminds us, gently and with a sly comic twist, that everything they feel is only the collateral damage of being human. Whether he is writing about the players in a rickety bisexual love triangle or a woman visiting her husband in a nursing home, probing the psychic mainspring of a grimly obsessive weight lifter or sifting through the layers of resentment, need, and pity in a friendship that has gone on a few decades too long, Baxter enchants us with the elegant balance of his prose and the unexpectedness of his insights. Harmony of the World is a masterpiece of lucidity and compassion.
About the Author
Charles Baxter is the author of two novels, First Light and Shadow Play, and three other collections of stories, Through the Safety Net, A Relative Stranger, and, most recently, a collection called Believers. He lives in Ann Arbor and teaches at the University of Michigan.
Table of Contents
Gershwin's Second Prelude 1
Xavier Speaking 17
The Model 36
Horace and Margaret's Fifty-second 44
The Cliff 59
A Short Course in Nietzschean Ethics 63
The Would-be Father 79
Weights 95
Harmony of the World 111
The Crank 136
Exclusive Essay
Read an exclusive essay by Charles Baxter