World Famous Comics: My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro
My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro
From: Harper Publisher: Harper Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Harper Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 608 Publication Date: January 01, 2008 Release Date: January 08, 2008
Product Description: "When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name...
It is perhaps only in reading a love story (or in writing one) that we can simultaneously partake of the ecstasy and agony of being in love without paying a crippling emotional price. I offer this book, then, as a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery. Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. Let everybody else suffer."--Jeffrey Eugenides, from the introduction to My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead
All proceeds from My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead will go directly to fund the free youth writing programs offered by 826 Chicago. 826 Chicago is part of the network of seven writing centers across the United States affiliated with 826 National, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.
Amazon.com Review: Book Description
"When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name . . . .
It is perhaps only in reading a love story (or in writing one) that we can simultaneously partake of the ecstasy and agony of being in love without paying a crippling emotional price. I offer this book, then, as a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery. Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. Let everybody else suffer."—Jeffrey Eugenides, from the introduction to My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead
All proceeds from My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead will go directly to fund the free youth writing programs offered by 826 Chicago. 826 Chicago is part of the network of seven writing centers across the United States affiliated with 826 National, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.
A Q&A with Jeffrey Eugenides
The author of bestsellers The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides talks about his turn as editor of My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead, with Andrea Hoag, a book critic in Lawrence, Kansas, whose reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Film Comment, and Kirkus Reviews.
Q: What was the process of elimination like? Can you discuss which stories you decided to leave out?
A: The story I miss most is "Brokeback Mountain" by Annie Proulx. I picked it, but we weren't able to the secure the rights to reprint it, even though the anthology supports a charitable cause. The UK edition lacks James Joyce's "The Dead" for similar reasons. (Happily, "The Dead" is in public domain in the U.S.) The first thing you confront when you compile an anthology like this, however, is the painful obligation to exclude wonderful work. Lots and lots of it. The only way I could sleep at night was to remind myself it was all for a good cause. How did I choose? The way people choose their mates: for intelligence, beauty, humor, and a sense that they'll be around for the long haul.
Q: You say in your introduction that "sober middle-age had made me less susceptible to [Nabokovs] lush lyricism." In a way, editing this collection brought you back into the proverbial fold where he was concerned. Why do you feel that he is "much better than everybody else "?
A: In all honesty, I was never out of the fold. Nabokov has always been and remains one of my favorite writers. He's able to juggle ten balls where most people can juggle three or four. "Spring in Fialta" works on so many levels: as an affecting tale of thwarted love; a reinactment of the literary process by which we fall victim to, and memorialize, our loves; and a philosophical rumination on time and fate. The sentences are perfect, the emotion deep, the intellectual scintillation nearly blinding. Pure bliss, in other words.
Q: Ive been building up an imaginary shrine in my home dedicated to the cult of Lorrie Moore and I almost wept when I read the line from "How to Be An Other Woman" that goes "he laughs, smooth, beautiful, and tenor, making you feel warm inside of your bones. And it hits you; maybe it all boils down to this: people will do anything, anything, for a really nice laugh...." I truly believe that. Dont you think most people--smart, thinking people--would do just about anything for someone with a nice laugh?
A: I'm glad you like the Lorrie Moore Story. Lorrie herself doesn't. She wrote it when she was twenty-four, and neither my own appreciation of the story, nor my assurances that many people insisted I include it, were enough to dissuade her from detesting her own "immature" work. This is a sign of a great writer, by the way. But "How to be An Other Woman" remains a great story. In addition, since a lot of the stories in the anthology share a traditional narrative structure, the Moore story comes as a nice shift in tone and strategy. I was conscious of that, too, in putting the book together, the DJ aspect of the whole thing, moving from fast numbers to slow dances and back again.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about the charity the proceeds for this book will go to?
A: 826CHI is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Their services are structured around the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention, and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success. 826CHI provides after-school tutoring, class field trips to our location, writing workshops, and in-schools programs--all free of charge--for students, classes, and schools in Chicago. All of the programs are challenging and enjoyable, and ultimately strengthen each students power to express ideas effectively, creatively, confidently, and in his or her individual voice. Driving the mission home are more than 500 volunteers--the professional writers, teachers and artists, to name a few, who staff each and every program enables 826 CHI to serve 5,000 students annually with a small, efficient staff of four and an operating budget of about $282,550.
Unique collection! (no chessiness here!) "Two unexceptional people, for no demonstrable reasons, being exceptionally in love..." the intro essay of Jeffrey Eugenides is very good and memorable in itself in dissecting the great short stories about love.
The other exceptional thing in this collection is its decision to include real classic classics (centuries old), and some recent (Miranda July, et al). And I think all the contemportary authors agreed to have their stories included--albeit they are key stories in their own collections that are still 'active' in the storeshelves--because proceeds from this book all go to charity--the Valencia project by Dave Eggers. In the end, the resulting variety, makes this a truly unique collection.
But in every collection of course, not everything will be sparklingly brilliant. For example. Harold Brodkey is the only one with two stories in the collection, showing that the editor likes him, but both are not compelling. You forget about them after finishing.
Yours, What we talk about, Dirty Wedding, are fantastic.
I only gave four also because of the general gloominess of the collection--in most of the endings and the general feeling and flow of prose.
If you loved this, consider also NOTHING BUT YOU (Love Stories from the New Yorker) edited by Roger Angell. That book is five stars to me, just for the variety of the collection (there's humor, tragedy, even commentary).
4.5 out of 5: Interesting Mix of Stories My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead is a compilation of short stories selected by Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Middlesex. Above all, Eugenides' collection is thoughtful; these stories span the globe and the centuries, creating a diverse and provocative reading experience. Unlike many story compilations, there are no `dogs' mixed up in this one. Each story is a gem in its own right. But readers should approach My Mistress's Sparrow with caution. Although the ostensible theme of this compilation is love, there's very little here that conforms to our idea of sweet, romantic love. Rather, these stories capture the underbelly of love: the agony of unrequited passion, the uncertainty of moral ambiguity, and the detritus of failed relationships. This collection was released right around Valentine's Day. I feel sorry for the poor suckers who gifted this to their sweethearts, hoping to make a good (and romantic) impression.
My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead Love at it's most fragile exsistence. The stories pull you in, build you up and then defeat you for the most part. Good reading when you want a short story to distract you from your everyday life.
Enjoy the classics and the literary talents of the moment in this beautiful volume Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides (MIDDLESEX) edited a Valentine's Day 2008 collection of love stories entitled MY MISTRESS'S SPARROW IS DEAD (the title is derived from the work of Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus). The book's cover features an anatomical heart, indicating that this is not your standard Valentine's Day mush. The editor describes the collection as such: "A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims -- these are lucky eventualities but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name."
Stories by classic authors such as Anton Chekhov, Vladimir Nabokov, and William Trevor are included, but the collection also includes works by literary talents of the moment like Miranda July and and Lorrie Moore. Love topics include adultery ("How to Be an Other Woman" and "Lovers of Their Time"), forbidden love ("The Moon in Its Flight" and "Spring in Fialta"), and celebrated, ambiguous stories of love such as Chekhov's "The Lady with the Little Dog." There are a total of 27 stories in all - plenty of material to cure any reader's broken heart or fend off thoughts of an affair.
All proceeds from of the sale of this book fund the free youth writing programs offered by 826 Chicago.
Just "okay" I got this book from my public library, and have read several of the stories so far. I had already read most of the classics (e.g., "A Rose for Emily," "Lady with the Pet Dog," etc.), so I've been reading the others. I haven't found one so far that I've liked. Based on the preface, I understand that this is not a "happily-ever-after" type collection, and I'm fine with that. But some of these stories paint such a cynical picture of human beings that it seems almost perverse. I mean, in one of the stories, the protagonist is a pot-smoking, drug-dealing teen who masturbates in the basement and then starts having sex regularly with his 14-year old cousin (who, by the way, used to make porn movies for money and thought nothing of it). I'm sorry, but I'd like to be able to identify with SOME aspect of the hero and heroine, and in many of the stories so far, I just can't.
If you want a REALLY excellent collection of short stories that will hold your attention without making you feel as if humankind totally sucks, try Tobias Wolfe's new collection entitled Our Story Begins.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Not Available Comics
Trevor
The author of bestsellers The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides talks about his turn as editor of My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead, with Andrea Hoag, a book critic in Lawrence, Kansas, whose reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Film Comment, and Kirkus Reviews. 
