Every year since 1918, the editors of the O. Henry Awards have selected the best of the previous year's short fiction. The 1998 anthology contains 20 prizewinning stories, three of which have been specially honored by jurors Andrea Barrett, Mary Gaitskill, and Rick Moody. It's a fascinating and diverse collection, more adventurous than its rival, Best American Short Stories , but like that series it provides an edifying look at the state of American short fiction. As it turns out, rumors of the form's death have been greatly exaggerated. For starters, we have first prize winner Lorrie Moore's "People Like That Are the Only People Here"--the harrowing but profoundly unsentimental story of a mother whose baby is diagnosed with cancer. Second prize goes to Stephen Millhauser's creepy little fable "The Knife Thrower," about a traveling showman whose performance mixes violence, eroticism, and art, and third to Canadian master Alice Munro's dry-eyed account of a young woman leaving her marriage, "The Children Stay." These stories have little in common but their reluctance to take either fiction or experience secondhand. They hold the world up to us, strange and new; they transgress.

By turns magical and troubling, the best short stories leave readers in a state much like that of the knife thrower's appalled but fascinated audience: "Long and loud we applauded, as she bowed and held aloft the glittering knife, assuring us, in that way, that she was wounded but well, or well-wounded; and we didn't know whether we were applauding her wellness or her wound, or the touch of the master, who had crossed the line, who had carried us, safely, it appeared, into the realm of forbidden things."

From Publishers Weekly
The 78th volume in the series (the second edited by Dark), this year's O. Henry collection is full of powerful performances, from the furiously ironic Lorrie Moore tale that opens the volume (the first-place story) to the heart-shattering Annie Proulx story that closes it. In "People Like That Are the Only People Here" (also in her current collection, Birds of America), Moore takes on an event nearly impossible to relate dispassionately (but she does), of a mother who sees her baby endangered by cancer. In "Brokeback Mountain" Proulx tells, with restraint and wrenching clarity, of two dirt-poor Wyoming ranch hands and the hard bargains they make to love each other. Other familiar authors work the veins they have already claimed. Steven Millhauser's second-prize entry, "The Knife Thrower" (the title of his latest collection), describes collusion between a performer and his voyeuristic audience in the best Poesque Millhauser style. Alice Munro's third-prize story, "The Children Stay" (in her collection, The Love of a Good Woman, forthcoming in November), describes a woman on an emotional precipice, capturing the moment a young mother walks out on her children. In "Satan: Highjacker of a Planet," Louise Erdrich gives us a girl drawn into religious and sexual passion. There are also gems here by less celebrated writers, such as Akhil Sharma's "Cosmopolitan," about a lonely Indian immigrant trying to adapt to love American style, and Maxine Swann's "Flower Children," in which parents in perpetual flower-childhood raise offspring. Many of the stories work common American themes: unhinged Protestantism, displacement and reinvention of self, and the wilderness, both physical and emotional. Some stories ramble, and others fall back on violence for effect. But the refreshing voices of Reginald McKnight, Peter Weltner, George Saunders and Thom Jones redress the balance. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This year's editions of two well-known fiction anthologies have some similarities but more differences. Three stories appear in both volumes, among them the first-prize winner in the Prize Stories (PS) volume: Lorrie Moore's harrowing, unsentimentalized account of a sick child, "People Like That Are the Only People Here." Each also includes a different Western by E. Annie Proulx. The other selections seem to reflect the particular tastes of the editors. Keillor states up front in his introduction to Best American Short Stories (BASS) that his choices cover "your basic age-old themes" and that he likes stories that tell him "something true about somebody's life." Those he has selected, though ranging widely in voice, character, and setting, are mostly character-driven, realistic tales of interactions between families, friends, or lovers. In PS, Dark, while not ignoring the themes favored by Keillor, has made room for more experimental fiction, including Steven Millhauser's surreal "The Knife Thrower" and Rick Bass's allegorical "The Myths of Bears." It's generally a riskier collection than BASS, though both volumes contain enough variety to offer readers something to love as well as hate. Recommended for most collections.AChristine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Idaho Lib., MoscowCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
This latest installment of the venerable O. Henry winners, edited by old-hand critic Dark (Prize Stories 1997, etc.), provides some pleasures amid few surprises. ``You are what some would call a serious reader,'' Dark assures us at the start. - The very fact that . . . you are interested in these twenty stories is proof enough.'' But it's not all work and no play, for many of the entries here manage to entertain as well as mean. The obsessive introspection that has nearly killed the short story as a popular art form is largely absent, and traditional narrative seems to be enjoying a comeback, if the pieces offered this time around serve as any guide. Lorrie Moore takes First Prize with ``People Like that Are the Only People Here,'' a mother's account of her baby's illness in which self- conscious irony (``The Tiny Tim Lounge is a little sitting area at the end of the Peed-Onk corridor'') verges on black humor while staying just within the boundary of good taste. Second Prize - winner Steven Millhauser's ``The Knife Thrower'' describes in almost gothic prose the Svengali-like effect of a carnival actor upon an audience of small-town folk (``We had heard that among his followers there were many, young women especially, who longed to be wounded by the master and to bear his scar proudly''). Alice Munro - s Third-Prize - winner, ``The Children Stay,'' is more in the contemporary mode: an almost disembodied recollection of a woman's adultery and then abandonment of her family that becomes finally more ponderous than meditative. Several backwoods pieces - Rick Bass's ``The Myth of Bears'' (Yukon trappers) and Annie Proulx's ``Brokeback Mountain'' (Wyoming ranchers) - manage to resuscitate old-fashioned realism with local color, but the best is Louise Erdrich's ``Satan: Hijacker of a Planet,'' a taut, extraordinarily eerie description of a country girl seduced by a charismatic revival preacher. Definitely worth picking through, even for readers who aren't all that serious. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Book Description
Established in 1918 as a memorial to O. Henry, this annual literary tradition has presented a remarkable offering of stories over its seventy-seven-year history. O. Henry first-prize winners have included Dorothy Parker, William Faulkner, Truman Capote, John Cheever, John Updike, and Cynthia Ozick, as well as some lesser-known writers such as Alison Baker and Cornelia Nixon. Many talented writers who were unknown when first chosen for an O. Henry Award later went on to become seminal voices of contemporary American fiction. Representative of the very best in contemporary American fiction, these are varied, full-bodied fictional creations brimming with life--proof of the continuing strength and variety of the American short story.

From the Inside Flap
Established in 1918 as a memorial to O. Henry, this annual literary tradition has presented a remarkable offering of stories over its seventy-seven-year history. O. Henry first-prize winners have included Dorothy Parker, William Faulkner, Truman Capote, John Cheever, John Updike, and Cynthia Ozick, as well as some lesser-known writers such as Alison Baker and Cornelia Nixon. Many talented writers who were unknown when first chosen for an O. Henry Award later went on to become seminal voices of contemporary American fiction. Representative of the very best in contemporary American fiction, these are varied, full-bodied fictional creations brimming with life--proof of the continuing strength and variety of the American short story.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Established in 1918 as a memorial to O. Henry, this annual literary tradition has presented a remarkable offering of stories over its seventy-seven-year history. O. Henry first-prize winners have included Dorothy Parker, William Faulkner, Truman Capote, John Cheever, John Updike, and Cynthia Ozick, as well as some lesser-known writers such as Alison Baker and Cornelia Nixon. Many talented writers who were unknown when first chosen for an O. Henry Award later went on to become seminal voices of contemporary American fiction. Representative of the very best in contemporary American fiction, these are varied, full-bodied fictional creations brimming with life—proof of the continuing strength and variety of the American short story.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

The 78th volume in the series (the second edited by Dark), this year's O. Henry collection is full of powerful performances, from the furiously ironic Lorrie Moore tale that opens the volume (the first-place story) to the heart-shattering Annie Proulx story that closes it. In "People Like That Are the Only People Here" (also in her current collection, Birds of America), Moore takes on an event nearly impossible to relate dispassionately (but she does), of a mother who sees her baby endangered by cancer. In "Brokeback Mountain" Proulx tells, with restraint and wrenching clarity, of two dirt-poor Wyoming ranch hands and the hard bargains they make to love each other. Other familiar authors work the veins they have already claimed. Steven Millhauser's second-prize entry, "The Knife Thrower" (the title of his latest collection), describes collusion between a performer and his voyeuristic audience in the best Poesque Millhauser style. Alice Munro's third-prize story, "The Children Stay" (in her collection, The Love of a Good Woman, forthcoming in November), describes a woman on an emotional precipice, capturing the moment a young mother walks out on her children. In "Satan: Highjacker of a Planet," Louise Erdrich gives us a girl drawn into religious and sexual passion. There are also gems here by less celebrated writers, such as Akhil Sharma's "Cosmopolitan," about a lonely Indian immigrant trying to adapt to love American style, and Maxine Swann's "Flower Children," in which parents in perpetual flower-childhood raise offspring. Many of the stories work common American themes: unhinged Protestantism, displacement and reinvention of self, and the wilderness, both physical and emotional. Some stories ramble, and others fall back on violence for effect. But the refreshing voices of Reginald McKnight, Peter Weltner, George Saunders and Thom Jones redress the balance. (Oct.)

Library Journal

This year's editions of two well-known fiction anthologies have some similarities but more differences. Three stories appear in both volumes, among them the first-prize winner in the Prize Stories (PS) volume: Lorrie Moore's harrowing, unsentimentalized account of a sick child, "People Like That Are the Only People Here." Each also includes a different Western by E. Annie Proulx. The other selections seem to reflect the particular tastes of the editors. Keillor states up front in his introduction to Best American Short Stories (BASS) that his choices cover "your basic age-old themes" and that he likes stories that tell him "something true about somebody's life." Those he has selected, though ranging widely in voice, character, and setting, are mostly character-driven, realistic tales of interactions between families, friends, or lovers. In PS, Dark, while not ignoring the themes favored by Keillor, has made room for more experimental fiction, including Steven Millhauser's surreal "The Knife Thrower" and Rick Bass's allegorical "The Myths of Bears." It's generally a riskier collection than BASS, though both volumes contain enough variety to offer readers something to love as well as hate. Recommended for most collections.--Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Idaho Lib., Moscow

Kirkus Reviews

This latest installment of the venerable O. Henry winners, edited by old-hand critic Dark (Prize Stories 1997, etc.), provides some pleasures amid few surprises. "You are what some would call a serious reader," Dark assures us at the start. "The very fact that you are interested in these twenty stories is proof enough." But it's not all work and no play, for many of the entries here manage to entertain as well as mean. The obsessive introspection that has nearly killed the short story as a popular art form is largely absent, and traditional narrative seems to be enjoying a comeback, if the pieces offered this time around serve as any guide.

Lorrie Moore takes First Prize with "People Like that Are the Only People Here," a mother's account of her baby's illness in which self- conscious irony ("The Tiny Tim Lounge is a little sitting area at the end of the Peed-Onk corridor") verges on black humor while staying just within the boundary of good taste. Second Prize-winner Steven Millhauser's "The Knife Thrower" describes in almost gothic prose the Svengali-like effect of a carnival actor upon an audience of small-town folk ("We had heard that among his followers there were many, young women especially, who longed to be wounded by the master and to bear his scar proudly"). Alice Munro's Third-Prize-winner, "The Children Stay," is more in the contemporary mode: an almost disembodied recollection of a woman's adultery and then abandonment of her family that becomes finally more ponderous than meditative. Several backwoods pieces, Rick Bass's "The Myth of Bears" (Yukon trappers) and Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain" (Wyoming ranchers), manage to resuscitate old-fashioned realism with local color, but the best is Louise Erdrich's "Satan: Hijacker of a Planet," a taut, extraordinarily eerie description of a country girl seduced by a charismatic revival preacher.

Definitely worth picking through, even for readers who aren't all that serious.