The Stories of J.F. Powers

“Powers is a genuine original. Read him…for the pleasures he bestows of ear and eye, but read him too for the supreme trustworthiness of his vision, a trust earned by impeccable craft, and by a balance perfectly struck between a cutting irony and a beleaguered faith.” — Mary Gordon

“In these stories, there is a lovely, travelling hesitancy, an obliquity, so that they seem to creep up on the reader….The strongest of them are surely among the finest written by an American.” — James Wood, The New Yorker

“To read the first story (“The Lord’s Day”) in this collection is to put down the book with the sense of having read as great a short story as any ever written, and I mean by anybody: by Cheever, Sherwood Anderson, Checkov. What ease they have is in the style: there are no easy morals here, no edifying lessons, but their vigor and correctness make them delightful to read. And while they’re terribly funny — laugh—out—loud funny, in spots — they’re also complex and deeply serious.” — Donna Tartt, Harper’s

“Power’s particular blend of trenchancy and bleak wit….Powers’ short pieces remain more effective than his novels. His was a gift of understatement and speed, and at his best his narrative economy is breathtaking….It is a pleasure to see [them] reissued…in a single volume. For a collection that spans three decades, The Stories of J.F. Powers isn’t especially long, but the work is striking, impelled by a vision that has been cleansed by deep intelligence and powerful subject matter.” — Erin McGraw, The Georgia Review

J. F. Powers (1917-1999) was born in Jacksonville, Illinois, and studied at Northwestern University while holding a variety of jobs in Chicago and working on his writing. He published his first stories in The Catholic Worker and, as a pacifist, spent thirteen months in prison during World War II. Powers was the author of three collections of short stories and two novels-Morte D’Urban, which won the National Book Award, and Wheat That Springeth Green-all of which have been reissued by New York Review Books. He lived in Ireland and the United States and taught for many years at St John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota.

Denis Donoghue is University Professor at NYU, where he holds the Henry James Chair of English and American Letters. He is the author of The Practice of Reading, Words Alone- The Poet T.S.Eliot, and, most recently, The American Classics. (October 2006)

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