American Gothic Tales

New
Paperback
1996
$24.23

$24.23

Quantity

20 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 560
Publisher: G P Putnam's Sons
Published: 05 Dec 1996
ISBN 10: 0452274893
ISBN 13: 9780452274891

Media Reviews

In compiling 40 short stories that represent the 200-year history of 'gothic' fiction in America, from Washington Irving's classic The Legend of Sleepy Hollow to Stephen King's The Reach, Oates employs an eclectic and elastic definition of the genre... Oates's taste in the quality of stories is always impeccable. The pieces also all share a certain darkness. Entries range from Edgar Allen Poe's sadistic The Black Cat to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic psychological horror story The Yellow Wallpaper. Shirley Jackson, Anne Rice and Katherine Dunn are also represented. Among the more idiosyncratic selections are Herman Melville's The Tartarus of Maids; Don DeLillo's beautiful tale of astronauts floating above the earth in Human Moments in World War III; and Paul Bowles's strange and powerful Allal, about a Moroccan orphan boy who so identifies with a snake that they mysteriously change bodies-and meet gory fates. --Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

In addition to many prize-winning and bestselling novels, including We Were the Mulvaneys, Black Water, Because It Is Bitter and Because It Is My Heart, and Broke Heart Blues, Joyce Carol Oates is the author of a number of works of gothic fiction including Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque, a World Fantasy Award nominee; and Zombie, winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best Horror Novel, awarded by the Horror Writers' Association. In 1994, Oates received the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award in Horror Fiction. She is the editor of American Gothic Tales. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.