Some selections simply can't be improved on, Oates admits, and she happily includes such time-honored works as Irving's Rip Van Winkle and Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart. But alongside these often-anthologized tales, Oates introduces such little-known stories as Mark Twain's Cannibalism in the
Cars, a work that reveals a darker side to his humor. From Melville come the juxtaposed tales The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids, of which Oates says, only Melville could have fashioned out of 'real' events...such harrowing and dreamlike allegorical fiction. The reader will
also delight in the range of authors found here, from Charles W. Chesnutt, Jean Toomer, and Sarah Orne Jewett, to William Carlos Williams, Kate Chopin, and Langston Hughes, to Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King.
Cars, a work that reveals a darker side to his humor. From Melville come the juxtaposed tales The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids, of which Oates says, only Melville could have fashioned out of 'real' events...such harrowing and dreamlike allegorical fiction. The reader will
also delight in the range of authors found here, from Charles W. Chesnutt, Jean Toomer, and Sarah Orne Jewett, to William Carlos Williams, Kate Chopin, and Langston Hughes, to Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King.