Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar
Page 53
JAMES ALAN MCPHERSON is a writer of short stories and essays. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his story collection Elbow Room in 1978, the first time it was awarded to an African American. He is also the recipient of both a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship, and his writing has been selected for inclusion in Best American Essays and Best American Short Stories of the Century. McPherson was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995. He is a member of the permanent faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
ALICE MUNRO grew up in Wingham, Ontario, and attended the University of Western Ontario. She has published eleven story collections, including Dance of the Happy Shades; The Moons of Jupiter; Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage; and, most recently, 2009’s Too Much Happiness. She has also published a volume of selected stories as well as a novel, Lives of Girls and Women. She is the recipient of many honors, including a PEN/Malamud Award, an O. Henry Award, and a Man Booker International Prize. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and other publications, and her collections have been translated into numerous languages.
JOYCE CAROL OATES is the author of numerous works of fiction, including the recent novels The Gravedigger’s Daughter and Little Bird of Heaven. In 2009 she received the Ivan Sandrof Award for Literature from the National Book Critics Circle and in 2010 the Deauville Literary Prize. Her most recent book is Sourland: Stories.
ZZ PACKER is the author of the short story collection Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her short story “Brownies” was selected for publication in Best American Short Stories 2000. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. In 2005, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in California.
J. F. POWERS (1917–1999) wrote short stories and novels, often inspired by the calling of priesthood in the Catholic Church. Greatly admired by his peers, he published relatively little in his lifetime: only three books of short fiction and two novels. In 1963, his debut novel, Morte d’Urban, won the National Book Award. His stories were collected in 1999 in The Stories of J. F. Powers.
ANNIE PROULX is the author of Postcards, The Shipping News, and several other books, including three volumes of Wyoming Stories. Her honors include a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Shipping News, a John Dos Passos Prize, a PEN/Faulkner Award, two O. Henry Awards, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her short story “Brokeback Mountain” was adapted into an Academy Award–winning major motion picture in 2005. She lives in Wyoming and Newfoundland.
LEWIS ROBINSON’s writing has appeared in Sports Illustrated, The Boston Globe, Tin House, Open City, and The Missouri Review. He has written a novel, Water Dogs, and a short story collection, Officer Friendly and Other Stories, which won the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. He lives and teaches in Portland, Maine.
JAMES SALTER has written novels, screenplays, and short fiction. His first novel, The Hunters, was based on his service as a fighter pilot in the Korean War. Four of his stories have appeared in the O. Henry Prize collections, and one was anthologized in Best American Short Stories in 1984. Dusk and Other Stories won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1989. His best known novels are Light Years, A Sport and a Pastime, and Solo Faces.
JIM SHEPARD is the author of six novels and four story collections. His stories are published regularly in such magazines as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Zoetrope: All-Story, Playboy, and Vice, among others. “Minotaur” appears in his most recent book, You Think That’s Bad: Stories. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
ELIZABETH STROUT is the author of Olive Kitteridge, for which she received the Pulitzer Prize in 2009. Her first novel, Amy and Isabelle, was also short-listed for the Orange Prize and nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Redbook, and New Letters. She teaches at Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina.
EUDORA WELTY (1909–2001) was a novelist and short story writer from Mississippi. During the 1930s she was employed by the Works Progress Administration, and photographs she took during that period were later collected in two books. She published her first story collection, A Curtain of Green, in 1941, and in 1973 the last of her five novels, The Optimist’s Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Arts, and the French Legion of Honor. In 2004 the house she lived in for nearly eighty years was declared a National Historic Landmark.
TOBIAS WOLFF has written short stories, novels, and memoirs, and has edited several short fiction anthologies, including Best American Short Stories in 1994. Some of his best-known works include This Boy’s Life, The Night in Question, and Our Story Begins. His fiction has received the PEN/Faulkner and other awards. He teaches literature and writing at Stanford University.
RICHARD YATES (1926–1992) was a novelist and short story writer from Yonkers, New York. Before his writing career took off, he worked as a journalist, ghostwriter, publicity writer, and professor. His first novel, Revolutionary Road, was nominated for the National Book Award in Fiction, and in 2008 it was adapted for the screen, directed by Sam Mendes. The film was nominated for the BAFTAs, Golden Globes, and Academy Awards. Yates’s work includes six more novels—A Special Providence, Disturbing the Peace, The Easter Parade, A Good School, Young Hearts Crying, and Cold Spring Harbor—and two collections of short fiction—Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and Liars in Love.
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“Business Talk” from Free Agents by Max Apple. Copyright © 1984 by Max Apple. Published by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers and Max Apple.
“The Gully” from Success Stories by Russell Banks. Copyright © 1986 by Russell Banks. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
“Me and Miss Mandible” by Donald Barthelme, originally published in Come Back, Dr. Caligari by Donald Barthelme, currently collected in Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme. Copyright © 1964 by Donald Barthelme. Used with permission of The Wylie Agency.
“Unjust” from The Stories of Richard Bausch by Richard Bausch. Copyright © 2003 by Richard Bausch. Published by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Story used by permission of Richard Bausch.
“The Working Girl” from What Was Mine by Ann Beattie. Copyright © 1991 by Irony & Pity, Inc. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.
“Zapatos” from The River Was Whiskey by T. Coraghessan Boyle. Copyright © 1989 by T. Coraghessan Boyle. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
“(I thought my father looked like FDR)” from The Bonnyclabber by George Chambers. Copyright © 1972 by George Chambers. Published by December/Panache Press. Used by permission of the author.
“The World of Apples” from The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever. Copyright © 1978 by John Cheever. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
“Drummond & Son” from The Dead Fish Museum by Charles D’Ambrosio. Copyright © 2006 by Charles D’Ambrosio. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Story used by permission of the author.
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“Great Experiment” by Jeffrey Eugenides is used by permission of the author.
“Under the Radar” from A Multitude of Sins by Richard Ford. Copyright © 2001 by Richard Ford. Published by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Story used by permission of the author.
“The Store” from Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones. Copyright © 1992 by Edward P. Jones. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
“Interpreter of Maladies” from Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. Copyright © 1999 by Jhumpa Lahiri. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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“A Solo Song: For Doc” from Hue and Cry by James Alan McPherson. Copyright © 1969 by James Alan McPherson. Published by Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Inc. Story used by permission of the author.
“Some Women” from Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro. Copyright © 2009 by Alice Munro. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. and McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
“High Lonesome” from High Lonesome by Joyce Carol Oates. Copyright © 2006 by The Ontario Review, Inc. Published by Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Inc. Story used by permission of the author.
“Geese” from Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer. Copyright © 2003 by ZZ Packer. Used by permission of Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
“The Valiant Woman” from The Stories of J. F. Powers by J. F. Powers, published by New York Review Classics, 2000. Copyright © 1974 by Accent; copyright renewed 1975 by J. F. Powers. Story used by permission of Powers Family Literary Property Trust.
“Job History” from Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx. Copyright © 1999 by Dead Line Ltd. All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
“Officer Friendly” from Officer Friendly and Other Stories by Lewis Robinson. Copyright © 2003 by Lewis Robinson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
“Foreign Shores” from Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter. Copyright © 1988 by James Salter. Published by North Point Press. Story used by permission of the author.
“Minotaur” from You Think That’s Bad by Jim Shepard. Copyright © 2011 by Jim Shepard. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
“Pharmacy” from Olive Kitteredge by Elizabeth Strout. Copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth Strout. Published by Random House, Inc. Story used by permission of The Friedrich Agency, LLC.
“Death of a Traveling Salesman” from A Curtain of Green and Other Stories by Eudora Welty. Copyright © 1941 by Eudora Welty, renewed in 1969. Reprinted by the permission of Russell & Volkening, Inc. as agents for the author and by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
“The Deposition” from Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories by Tobias Wolff. Copyright © 2008 by Tobias Wolff. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
“A Glutton for Punishment,” from the collection Eleven Kinds of Loneliness in The Collected Stories of Richard Yates. Copyright © 1957, 1961, 1962, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1981, 2001 by The Estate of Richard Yates. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC and The Random House Group.
About the Editor
RICHARD FORD is one of America’s most lauded literary figures. Winner of both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Independence Day, Ford is also the author of The Sportswriter, The Lay of the Land, and the story collections Rock Springs and Women with Men. He is editor of several anthologies, including The Granta Book of the American Long Story and Best American Short Stories 1990. He lives in East Boothbay, Maine.
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About 826michigan
All author proceeds from Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work will go directly to fund the free youth writing, tutoring, and publishing programs offered by 826michigan.
Since the birth of 826 National in 2002, our goal has been to assist students ages six through eighteen with their writing skills while helping teachers get their classes passionate about writing. We do this with a vast team of volunteers who donate their time so we can give as much one-on-one attention as possible to the students whose writing needs it. Our mission is based on the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention, and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success.
Through volunteer support, each of the eight 826 chapters—in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Seattle, Boston, and Washington, D.C.—provides after-school tutoring, class field trips, writing workshops, and in-school programs, all completely free of charge. 826 centers are especially committed to supporting teachers, offering services and resources for English language learners, and publishing student work. Each of the 826 chapters works to produce professional-quality publications written entirely by young people, to forge relationships with teachers in order to create innovative workshops and lesson plans, to inspire students to write and appreciate the written word, and to rally thousands of enthusiastic volunteers to make it all happen. All of our programs are challenging and fun, and ultimately strengthen each student’s power to express ideas effectively, creatively, confidently, and in his or her own individual voice. By offering all of our programming for free, we aim to serve families who cannot afford to pay for the level of personalized instruction their children receive through 826 chapters.
At 826michigan, our tutors work one-on-one with more than 2,000 young people each year. Projects range from a hardcover bound-and-illustrated book of bedtime stories by Ypsilanti second through fifth grade students (Don’t Stay Up So Late) to college essay writing boot camp for high schoolers to the publication of dozens of poems on placards inside Ann Arbor Transit Authority buses, all written by 11- to 15-year-olds. Donations—large and small—comprise most all of our funding. 826michigan also operates Liberty Street Robot Supply & Repair, whose proceeds cover many of our organization’s basic costs.
To learn more or get involved,
please visit www.826michigan.org.
ALSO BY RICHARD FORD
The Lay of the Land
A Multitude of Sins
Women with Men
Independence Day
Wildlife
Rock Springs
The Sportswriter
The Ultimate Good Luck
A Piece of My Heart
Copyright
An extension of this copyright page appears on pages 603–607.
BLUE COLLAR, WHITE COLLAR, NO COLLAR. Copyright © 2011 by 826Michigan, Inc. Introduction copyright © 2011 by Richard Ford. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-06-202041-3
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062087119
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