≡ PDF Free The Collected Short Stories Norton Paperback Fiction Jean Rhys Diana Athill 9780393306255 Books

The Collected Short Stories Norton Paperback Fiction Jean Rhys Diana Athill 9780393306255 Books

Download As PDF : The Collected Short Stories Norton Paperback Fiction Jean Rhys Diana Athill 9780393306255 Books

The Collected Short Stories Norton Paperback Fiction Jean Rhys Diana Athill 9780393306255 Books

Perhaps I may start with a brief quotation from the Introduction to this comprehensive collection written by Diana Athill, who befriended Jean in her old age:

"Fear, loneliness, cruelty, these became her subjects. She struggles to treat them defiantly, even jauntily, and learnt as she did so that this was a mistake. The essential thing was to treat them truthfully: to write in a 'voice' as near to natural speech as possible, and to tell things how they really were."

This truth, as perceived by Jean Rhys, may not feel like your truth, or any other 'truth', but the forensic details of observation and the restrained expression of intense emotions are the hallmarks of her style. These thirty-six stories are not tales told with clever deceptive endings. They do not strive for a final chuckle or a gasp of surprise. They are composed with disturbing clarity. They range from those published as "The Left Bank" in 1927 and set primarily in Paris, to some from her later years when she was an old lady surviving with great emotional difficulty in England. Ford Madox Ford, for a while her mentor and lover in the 1920's no doubt helped to enhance her 'impressionistic' style. Throughout her life, from West End chorus girl to the emotional fragility of her late years she appreciated, and sometimes unwisely relied upon, male admiration.
It is safe to say that anyone who appreciates deceptively unaffected writing will appreciate her work. Perhaps to the younger reader it may seem anachronistic but while social mores may alter the fundamentals remain, and these are what her writing is about. Some of the stories such as "In the Luxembourg Gardens" are charming, others like "I used to live here once" are desperately sad.


Tags : The Collected Short Stories (Norton Paperback Fiction) [Jean Rhys, Diana Athill] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <strong> Reading such stories as a group . . . can be overwhelming. Yet it is precisely this intense immersion in experience that is the essence of Rhys' art. The force of her stories lies in the fusion of elegant prose with an uncanny penetration of the darker reaches of the soul. ―<em>Washington Post Book World</em></strong> Jean Rhys was one of the twentieth century's foremost writers,Jean Rhys, Diana Athill,The Collected Short Stories (Norton Paperback Fiction),W. W. Norton & Company,0393306259,Short Stories (single author),Short stories.,Anthologies (multiple authors),FICTION Short Stories (single author),Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction Anthologies (multiple authors),Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945),Modern fiction,Short stories,FIC029000,Literature: Classics

The Collected Short Stories Norton Paperback Fiction Jean Rhys Diana Athill 9780393306255 Books Reviews

This writer ought to be read by a vast audience. Her stories are gripping accounts of lives lived on the edge of sanity or reason. The story "Let Them Call It Jazz" is worth the price alone. Read it and weep.
Drawing from mundane incidents, Rhys's stories are told with a tone that is unsentamental and often detached. Yet her eye for detail, and in particular, character is unmatched. From everyday events she is able to create striking and realistic character portraits as witnessed in among others "Tout Mountparnasse and a Lady," where the "lady" is to be both pitied and despised. While her stories and characters are often filled with a sense of crushing despair ("Sleep in Off Lady" is particularly depressing), I also felt that her sense of humor (though often dark) is much more evident here than in her novels. In short, a great introduction to an underappreciated author.
"I’ve thought about death a great deal. One day in the snow I felt so tired. I thought, 'Damn it, I’ll sit down. I can’t go on. I’m tired of living here in the snow and ice.' So I sat down on the ground. But it was so cold I got up." –Jean Rhys, from a Paris Review interview

"You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on."
—Samuel Beckett

=I'm on a Jean Rhys kick lately, reading everything I can get my hands on by and about her. This generous collection of short fiction spans Rhys's career, from her earliest known efforts to the last flickering light of her hard-won talent. They are the stories of a woman who was always something of an outsider, not only as a writer in the primarily male world of literature (especially back in the 30s and 40s), but, more importantly, as a human being. Rhys never really felt at home in the world and, as the above quote indicates, often felt inclined to leave it; yet, as she memorably notes in her story "Vienne", she lacked the courage to do so, "cheating" herself with that greatest illusion of all, hope.

Rhys drew much of her fiction from her own colorful life her days as a chorus girl, kept woman, alcoholic, wife of men of dubious character and, finally, eccentric and lonely old lady provide some of the backdrop to her tales. There are glitzy parties with foreign diplomats, the grubby life of London girls sharing depressing flats during the Blitz, childhood remembrances of and returns in adulthood to the West Indies where Rhys herself was born and raised. Through all the variety of her experiences, however, one thing remains constant her disgust and disdain in the face of the cold, judgmental hypocrisy of the vast majority of people in the world.

Sometimes she sees people as insects operating by blind instinct in some vast, impersonal hive; more often, she uses the metaphor of a machine, a machine that runs to no seeming purpose, each person a replaceable, expendable cog and Rhys herself a cog no more special than any other, except, perhaps, in being a self-conscious cog, a cog that is defective and worn-down, sure to be removed and discarded if anyone should happen to notice her. The weak, the unique, those who defiantly court ridicule and worse daring to make their own lives, herd and consequences be damned—those are the precious few who have Rhys's sympathy, those are the rare souls she champions.

No lover of society or humanity is Jean Rhys, at least not in the abstract, which lends her writing an unsentimental and thoroughly honest authenticity all too rare in serious "literary" writers, who often seem to feel a cultural responsibility to put an uplifting spin on things.

You don't read Jean Rhys to restore your faith in humanity or, for that matter, anything else. She's a downer, but a downer with style, who makes beautiful sentences out of despair. You might say the same for Beckett, except Beckett has a kind of gallows humor even at, especially at, his bleakest, which Rhys only occasionally displays.

Her later stories are spare, bleak, haunting affairs; a couple of them border on the supernatural, even on horror, as the veil between life and death becomes more transparent to Rhys. Sometimes they are not properly stories at all, but more like meditations, dark prose poems, one-act episodes that begin and simply stop without a real theme, much like life itself.

There are few writers who dare to put it down honest the way Jean Rhys does, who dare the reader to follow her into the cold gray country of existential exile that begins at the moment of our birth and grows ever more harrowing, despite the charming roadside attractions, as we continue on the one-way forced march that is our life until, at last, we reach the end, our grave. For this and for writing with the courage of her convictions, for not sugarcoating one single bitter pill, I love and respect Jean Rhys all the more. If I drank, I'd lift a drink up to the incorrigible old dame. Cheers, Jean! Well done!
Despite Rhys' near-constant theme of the "kept" woman who is now too old and paying her dues, she was a fabulous writer with a wonderful way of describing a woman's feelings. Highly recommended to anyone interested in great women writers of the last century.
If you like Jean Rhys, you should get this book. Seeing as she only wrote a few short novels, I found myself craving more Jean Rhys, and this is keeping me satisfied! I think the book itself is a bit unsightly, and it seems a little cheaply put together. Perhaps a hardcover copy would be nice. But in terms of the writing - it's pretty great.
Rhys is a most unusual writer. She takes the 'down' moments in one one's life and make a splash on them. Some stories are strong and some are weak. Some of the stories I'd read over and over and over again because I'm happy when I'm reading them . They are like drugs. They keep you high-always!
Perhaps I may start with a brief quotation from the Introduction to this comprehensive collection written by Diana Athill, who befriended Jean in her old age

"Fear, loneliness, cruelty, these became her subjects. She struggles to treat them defiantly, even jauntily, and learnt as she did so that this was a mistake. The essential thing was to treat them truthfully to write in a 'voice' as near to natural speech as possible, and to tell things how they really were."

This truth, as perceived by Jean Rhys, may not feel like your truth, or any other 'truth', but the forensic details of observation and the restrained expression of intense emotions are the hallmarks of her style. These thirty-six stories are not tales told with clever deceptive endings. They do not strive for a final chuckle or a gasp of surprise. They are composed with disturbing clarity. They range from those published as "The Left Bank" in 1927 and set primarily in Paris, to some from her later years when she was an old lady surviving with great emotional difficulty in England. Ford Madox Ford, for a while her mentor and lover in the 1920's no doubt helped to enhance her 'impressionistic' style. Throughout her life, from West End chorus girl to the emotional fragility of her late years she appreciated, and sometimes unwisely relied upon, male admiration.
It is safe to say that anyone who appreciates deceptively unaffected writing will appreciate her work. Perhaps to the younger reader it may seem anachronistic but while social mores may alter the fundamentals remain, and these are what her writing is about. Some of the stories such as "In the Luxembourg Gardens" are charming, others like "I used to live here once" are desperately sad.