Back in 2002, TOR Books published this Big Fat volume of American Fantasy stories. I completely missed it. But John O’Neill of BLACK GATE reviewed The American Fantasy Tradition here and I immediately picked up a copy. Over 600 pages of wonderful stories! Yes, you could quibble about including Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” which has been reprinted countless times. The same for Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” and Henry James’s “The Jolly Corner.” But Brian Thomsen does include plenty of contemporary fantasy stories like Manly Wade Wellman’s “The Valley Was Still” and L. Frank Baum’s “The Enchanted Buffalo.” There’s a lot of value between these covers! Inexpensive copies can be found online. Highly recommended! GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
this changed everything, poem by Gerald Blair
Foreword by Brian M. Thomsen
Introduction: An Approach to an American Fantasy Tradition, by Brian M. Thomsen
“Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving (The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, June 23, 1819)
“Feathertop: A Moralized Legend,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne (The International Magazine, February and March 1852)
“Uncle Remus,” (excerpts) by Joel Chandler Harris (1880)
“The Saga of Pecos Bill,” by Edward O’Reilly (Century Magazine, October, 1923)
“Rosy’s Journey,” by Louisa May Alcott (1886)
“The Yellow Sign,” by Robert W. Chambers (The King in Yellow, 1895)
“The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” by H. P. Lovecraft (1936)
“O Ugly Bird!,” by Manly Wade Wellman (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1951)
“The Fool,” by David Drake (Whispers VI, July 1987)
“Narrow Valley,” by R. A. Lafferty (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1966)
“Jackalope,” by Alan Dean Foster (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1989)
“The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson (The New Yorker, June 26, 1948)
“Children of the Corn,” by Stephen King (Penthouse, March 1977)
“Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight,” by Ursula K. Le Guin (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1987)
“The Jolly Corner,” by Henry James (The English Review, December 1908)
“A Ghost Story,” by Mark Twain (Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old, 1875)
“The Other Lodgers,” by Ambrose Bierce (Cosmopolitan, August 1907)
“Ma’ame Pelagie,” by Kate Chopin (1893)
“The Devil and Daniel Webster,” by Stephen Vincent Benét (The Saturday Evening Post, October 24, 1936)
“The Valley Was Still,” by Manly Wade Wellman (Weird Tales, August 1939)
“The Howling Man,” by Charles Beaumont (Rogue, November 1959)
“Twenty-Three,” by Avram Davidson (Asimov’s Science Fiction, July 1995)
“We Are the Dead,” by Henry Kuttner (Weird Tales, April 1937)
“Where the Summer Ends,” by Karl Edward Wagner (Dark Forces, August 1980)
“Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa,” by W. P. Kinsella (Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa, 1980)
“Hatrack River,” by Orson Scott Card (Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, August 1986)
“The Hero of the Night,” by Bradley Denton (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 1988)
“The Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” by Harlan Ellison (Bad Moon Rising, April 1973)
“The Griffin and the Minor Canon,” by Frank R. Stockton (1885)
“The Enchanted Buffalo,” by L. Frank Baum (The Delineator, May 1905)
“The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (New England Magazine, January 1892)
“The Moving Finger,” by Edith Wharton (Harper’s, March 1901)
“Slow Sculpture,” by Theodore Sturgeon (Galaxy Magazine, February 1970)
“The Coin Collector,” by Jack Finney (The Saturday Evening Post, January 30, 1960)
“Prey,” by Richard Matheson (Playboy, April 1969)
“The Geezenstacks,” by Fredric Brown (Weird Tales, September 1943)
“Paladin of the Lost Hour,” by Harlan Ellison (Universe 15, August 1985)
“The Black Ferris,” by Ray Bradbury (Weird Tales, May 1948)
“Bed & Breakfast,” by Gene Wolfe (Dante’s Disciples, February 1996)
“Dead Run,” by Greg Bear (Omni, April 1985)
“Her Pilgrim Soul,” by Alan Brennert (Her Pilgrim Soul and Other Stories, December 1990)
“Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut,” by Stephen King (Redbook, May 1984)
“Among the Handlers or, The Mark 16 Hands-On Assembly of Jesus Risen, Formerly Snake-O-Rama,” by Michael Bishop (Dante’s Disciples, February 1996)
Select Critical Bibliography, by Brian M. Thomsen
I’m familiar with about 2/3rds of these. My favorite being Lafferty’s Narrow Valley. A lot of bang for your buck here.
Steve, I’ve seen copies of THE AMERICAN FANTASY TRADITION online for $3! Great value!
Thanks for reviewing this anthology, George. It is an amazing collection of fantasy stories, and so many authors I have never read.
Prashant, THE AMERICAN FANTASY TRADITION is a terrific anthology. And, inexpensive copies are available online.
This is, like David Hartwell’s similar bug-crushers, or Peter Straub’s (some of his guest-edited issues of CONJUCTIONS, some of his Library of America two-volume sets) an attempt to limn the range of fantasy and related fiction in the past century or so, and it is a fine and necessarily incomplete sort of survey. Even the Stephen King selection is one of his best short stories, something Hartwell didn’t manage in his inclusions in the likes of THE DARK DESCENT.
As such, this book makes a fine counterpoint with the two 1975 anthologies I deal with this week, too hurriedly and that in part because of all the things I have to do and am not quite getting done these days. But in the fullness of time…I hope to do better. In the quickness of time. We shall see.
Prashant, unfortunately, might not find it feasible to pay the thrity bucks plus for postage he would probably have to invest for his $3 copy of the book if he was to order it from most online sellers, thanks to what they’ve done to postal rates. But perhaps one of the libraries there might take it up…and certainly most of its contents are happily available elsewhere.
Todd, I was impressed by the variety and quality of the stories in THE AMERICAN FANTASY TRADITION. Brian Thomsen included several “literary” stories, but also took some chances with more obscure works.
When an editor makes as conscientious an effort to actually represent fantasy as well as Thomsen does here, mixing chestnuts with worthy new fiction and not slighting work published in different contexts because of ignorant bias…and even if there re a lot of stories I’d take ahead of the Foster or the Card or the Stockton…it’s worth noting.
Todd, I suspect Brian Thomsen (and other editors of anthologies like THE AMERICAN FANTASY TRADITION) reprint “chestnuts” that are in the Public Domain to keep the costs down.
I suspect it’s a bit deeper than that, George, or they could produce those all-PD print on demand cheapjack items that liter Amazon…and not all chestnuts are in the public domain. There are reasons to dig out “The Yellow Wallpaper” as well as, say, the much less famous Chopin story included here, or the Bierce. While “Narrow Valley” is about as close to a widely-reprinted chestnut as Lafferty gets…and with some justice, it’s a great story…though he wrote others as good and many others nearly so.
I was going to say I don’t usually read fantasy, but I see I have read a number of these already, so maybe…
It’s a pretty rare reader who never reads fantasy…fairly common for a reader to read fantasy and not realize they do, and far too common for some readers to loudly bawl they don’t read fantasy because the fantasy they read is Really Good Literature Instead.
Jeff, “fantasy” is an elastic term for Brian Thomsen. You’ll find a lot of diverse stories in this fine anthology.
I’ll disagree here to the extent that I don’t see too much here that steps outside any reasonable definition of fantasy. “The Yellow Wallpaper” might come closest, as it might be the account of a delusional person’s experience, but even there that’s part of the point of the story in several ways.
Or, of course, “The Lottery”…which offended so many NEW YORKER readers in part because it wasn’t a fantasticated story at all. All it required was sufficiently vicious groupthink. Really, editors and Ms. Jackson, how dare you…cancel my subscription.
Has every appearance of a textbook for a begging fantasy class at the local community college.
Rick, I suspect you’re right. THE AMERICAN FANTASY TRADITION would make a useful College textbook for a class on Fantasy.
As you might’ve gathered, I got no problem with that, myself. John O’Brien likewise thought it was could easily be used thus.
obviously that was “beginning” which the autocorrect changed on me.
Looking over the titles and the authors – almost 20 of them I know as SF writers, so I probably know these stories toosince many of them appeared in the mags.
Rather OT:
Just remembered that I met Karl Edward Wagner (and many other authors and peoplefrom the publishing business) at Seacon1984 in Brighton – those were the days!
Wolf, Karl Edward Wagner was a tragic figure. He was bursting with Talent, but his demons brought him down.
All my emails to AOL customers are bouncing! I don’t know why anyone would del with those crooks in the first place!