Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar Part 39

But the drink was a great help. The first bitter, ice-cold sip of it seemed to restore his calm, and the gla.s.s in his hand looked rea.s.suringly deep. He took another sip or two before daring to look at her again, and when he did it was a heartening sight. Her smile was almost completely free of tension, and soon they were chatting together as comfortably as happy lovers.

"Oh, isn't it nice just to sit down and unwind?" she said, allowing her head to sink back into the upholstery. "And isn't it lovely to think it's Friday night?"

"Sure is," he said, and instantly put his mouth in his drink to hide his shock. Friday night! That meant there would be two days before he could even begin to look for a job-two days of mild imprisonment in the house, or of dealing with tricycles and popsicles in the park, without a hope of escaping the burden of his secret. "Funny," he said. "I'd almost forgotten it was Friday."

"Oh, how can you forget?" She squirmed luxuriously deeper into the sofa. "I look forward to it all week. Pour me just a tiny bit more, darling, and then I must get back to the ch.o.r.es."

He poured a tiny bit more for her and a full gla.s.s for himself. His hand was shaking and he spilled a little of it, but she didn't seem to notice. Nor did she seem to notice that his replies grew more and more strained as she kept the conversation going. When she got back to the ch.o.r.es-basting the roast, drawing the children's baths, tidying up their room for the night-Walter sat alone and allowed his mind to slide into a heavy, gin-fuddled confusion. Only one persistent thought came through, a piece of self-advice that was as clear and cold as the drink that rose again and again to his lips: Hold on. No matter what she says, no matter what happens tonight or tomorrow or the next day, just hold on. Hold on.

But holding on grew less and less easy as the children's splas.h.i.+ng bath-noises floated into the room; it was more difficult still by the time they were brought in to say goodnight, carrying their teddy bears and dressed in clean pajamas, their faces s.h.i.+ning and smelling of soap. After that, it became impossible to stay seated on the sofa. He sprang up and began stalking around the floor, lighting one cigarette after another, listening to his wife's clear, modulated reading of the bedtime story in the next room ("You may go into the fields, or down the lane, but don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden . . .").

When she came out again, closing the children's door behind her, she found him standing like a tragic statue at the window, looking down into the darkening courtyard. "What's the matter, Walt?"

He turned on her with a false grin. "Nothing's the matter," he said in the echo-chamber voice, and the movie camera started rolling again. It came in for a close-up of his own tense face, then switched over to observe her movements as she hovered uncertainly at the coffee table.

"Well," she said. "I'm going to have one more cigarette and then I must get the dinner on the table." She sat down again-not leaning back this time, or smiling, for this was her busy, getting the-dinner-on the-table mood. "Have you got a match, Walt?"

"Sure." And he came toward her, probing in his pocket as if to bring forth something he had been saving to give her all day.

"G.o.d," she said. "Look at those matches. What happened to them?"

"These?" He stared down at the raddled, twisted matchbook as if it were a piece of incriminating evidence. "Must've been kind of tearing them up or something," he said. "Nervous habit."

"Thanks," she said, accepting the light from his trembling fingers, and then she began to look at him with wide, dead-serious eyes. "Walt, there is something wrong, isn't there?"

"Of course not. Why should there be anything wr-"

"Tell me the truth. Is it the job? Is it about-what you were afraid of last week? I mean, did anything happen today to make you think they might-Did Crowell say anything? Tell me." The faint lines on her face seemed to have deepened. She looked severe and competent and suddenly much older, not even very pretty any more-a woman used to dealing with emergencies, ready to take charge.

He began to walk slowly away toward an easy chair across the room, and the shape of his back was an eloquent statement of impending defeat. At the edge of the carpet he stopped and seemed to stiffen, a wounded man holding himself together; then he turned around and faced her with the suggestion of a melancholy smile.

"Well, darling-" he began. His right hand came up and touched the middle b.u.t.ton of his s.h.i.+rt, as if to unfasten it, and then with a great deflating sigh he collapsed backward into the chair, one foot sliding out on the carpet and the other curled beneath him. It was the most graceful thing he had done all day. "They got me," he said.

EDITOR'S NOTE.

Readers will notice the conspicuous absence, in this volume, of the distinguished work of Raymond Carver. The editor regrets that Raymond Carver's estate declined to allow his story "Elephant" to be included.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS.

MAX APPLE was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and received a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1970. He is the author of the story collections The Oranging of America, Free Agents, and The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories; two novels; two nonfiction books; and several screenplays. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.

RUSSELL BANKS, a Ma.s.sachusetts-born author, has published eleven novels, including Continental Drift, Cloudsplitter, and The Reserve, and five short story collections, including The New World, Success Stories, and The Angel on the Roof. He is the recipient of a John Dos Pa.s.sos Prize, an Ingram Merrill Award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, and a Guggenheim Fellows.h.i.+p. He lives in upstate New York.

DONALD BARTHELME (19311989) was born in Philadelphia but grew up in Houston. Originally a journalist, he moved to New York in 1961 and began writing fiction for publications such as The New Yorker. He published four novels and numerous volumes of short stories, of which Sixty Stories won the PEN/Faulkner Award. Barthelme was the recipient of many awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellows.h.i.+p. He spent the last decade of his life teaching at the University of Houston, where he helped found its Creative Writing Program.

RICHARD BAUSCH was born in Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1945. He has taught creative writing at several schools, including the University of Virginia, Beloit College, the University of Tennessee, Sewanee, and Bread Loaf, and is presently Moss Chair of Excellence in the Writing Program at the University of Memphis. He is the author of Peace, h.e.l.lo to the Cannibals, The Last Good Time, Mr. Field's Daughter, In the Night Season, Wives & Lovers, Something Is Out There, and many other books. His work has won two National Magazine Awards. Bausch is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellows.h.i.+p and a PEN/Malamud Award.

ANN BEATTIE has written seven novels and eight short story collections, and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, The Atlantic, McSweeney's, and The Best American Short Stories of the Century. She has received a PEN/Malamud Award, a Rea Award for the Short Story, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, four O. Henry Awards, and a Guggenheim Fellows.h.i.+p. Her most recent books include the novella Walks With Men and the collection The New Yorker Stories. Beattie currently teaches at the University of Virginia, where she is the Edgar Allan Poe Professor of English.

T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE has published more than twenty books of fiction and short stories, most recently The Women, When the Killing's Done, and Wild Child & Other Stories. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, The Atlantic, Playboy, and McSweeney's, and his many honors include five O. Henry Awards, a PEN/Malamud Award, a PEN/Faulkner Award, and a Guggenheim Fellows.h.i.+p. In 1978 he joined the faculty of the University of Southern California, where he currently serves as a Distinguished Professor of English.

GEORGE CHAMBERS is the author of story collections The Bonnyclabber, The Scourging of W.H.D. Wretched Hutchinson, The Last Man Standing, and Null Set, and with Raymond Federman is coauthor of The Twilight of the b.u.ms, a collection of short stories that was recently reprinted by Starcherone Press. His writing has appeared in December and elsewhere. He is a Professor of English at Bradley University.

JOHN CHEEVER (19121982) wrote numerous short stories and four novels. His first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, won a National Book Award, and in 1978 the collection The Stories of John Cheever became the only work of fiction to win the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and at Boston University. Two collections of his writing were released by the Library of America in 2009.

CHARLES D'AMBROSIO is the author of two short story collections, The Point (a Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award finalist) and The Dead Fish Museum, and Orphans, a collection of essays. In 2006 he received a Whiting Writers' Award and in 2008 he was awarded a Lannan Foundation Fellows.h.i.+p. He has taught creative writing for such renowned programs as the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. He is an a.s.sociate Professor of English at Portland State University.

NICHOLAS DELBANCO is a novelist and a writer of nonfiction whose books include What Remains, The Count of Concord, and Anywhere Out of the World. His twenty-fifth book, Lastingness: The Art of Old Age, was published in 2011. Delbanco's writing has earned him a Guggenheim Fellows.h.i.+p and two National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellows.h.i.+ps. He has served as the Chair of the Fiction Panel for the National Book Awards, and has taught at Bennington College, Skidmore College, and the University of Michigan, where he was director of the MFA Program and continues to serve as Director of the Hopwood Awards Program.

JUNOT DiAZ won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2008 for his debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Story, and The Paris Review, as well as in Best American Short Stories and PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. He teaches creative writing at the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology. He is a founding member of the Voices of Our Nations Arts Writing Workshop, which focuses on writers of color, and serves as the fiction editor for The Boston Review. In 2009 Diaz was a Millet Writing Fellow at Wesleyan University.

ANDRE DUBUS (19361999) was a short story writer hailing from Lake Charles, Louisiana. His story collections include Dancing After Hours, Adultery and Other Choices, The Last Worthless Evening, and Finding a Girl in America. His novella We Don't Live Here Anymore was made into a movie in 2004. During his lifetime he was awarded the PEN/Malamud Award, the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellows.h.i.+ps from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation.

STUART DYBEK is the acclaimed author of the story collections Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, I Sailed with Magellan, and The Coast of Chicago, and the poetry collections Bra.s.s Knuckles and Streets in Their Own Ink. He received his MFA from the University of Iowa in 1973 and is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Northwestern University. His many awards include a MacArthur Fellows.h.i.+p, the Rea Award for the Short Story, a PEN/Malamud Prize, a Lannan Award, and a Whiting Writers' Award.

DEBORAH EISENBERG is the author of four story collections: Transactions in a Foreign Currency, Under the 82nd Airborne, All Around Atlantis, and Twilight of the Superheroes. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award, a Rea Award for the Short Story, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, five O. Henry Awards, a Lannan Foundation Fellows.h.i.+p, a Guggenheim Fellows.h.i.+p, and a MacArthur Fellows.h.i.+p. She teaches fiction writing at the University of Virginia.

JEFFREY EUGENIDES was born in Detroit and attended Brown University and Stanford University. His first novel, The Virgin Suicides, was published in 1993 and later made into a film by Sofia Coppola. His second novel, Middles.e.x, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Amba.s.sador Book Award. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2008, he was editor of My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead, a collection of love stories which helped fund the free youth writing programs at 826 Chicago.

RICHARD FORD is the author of the story collections Rock Springs, Women with Men, and A Mult.i.tude of Sins, as well as six novels, among them The Sportswriter, Wildlife, Independence Day, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and, most recently, The Lay of the Land, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Ford is at work on a new novel and a collection of stories. He lives in Maine and New Orleans.

EDWARD P. JONES is a writer from Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. His novel, The Known World, won the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2004 and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2005. In 2006 he published his third book, All Aunt Hagar's Children, a collection of fourteen stories that are linked thematically to his first collection, Lost in the City, from 1992. He teaches creative writing at George Was.h.i.+ngton University. In 2010 he received the PEN/Malamud award.

JHUMPA LAHIRI is the author of three books: Interpreter of Maladies, a story collection and Pulitzer Prize winner; Unaccustomed Earth, a story collection; and The Namesake, a novel which was made into a movie in 2006. She is a Vice President of the PEN American Center and serves on the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. She lives in Brooklyn.

THOMAS MCGUANE's body of work includes novels, stories, screenplays, and essays. He finished his first novel, The Sporting Club, on a Wallace Stegner Fellows.h.i.+p, and was nominated for the National Book Award for his novel Ninety-Two in the Shade. His other books include The Bushwacked Piano, n.o.body's Angel, Nothing but Blue Skies, and Gallatin Canyon, a story collection, while his screenplays include Rancho Deluxe, The Missouri Breaks, and 92 in the Shade (which he also directed). His novel Driving on the Rim was released in October 2010.

JAMES ALAN MCPHERSON is a writer of short stories and essays. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his story collection Elbow Room in 1978, the first time it was awarded to an African American. He is also the recipient of both a Guggenheim Fellows.h.i.+p and a MacArthur Fellows.h.i.+p, and his writing has been selected for inclusion in Best American Essays and Best American Short Stories of the Century. McPherson was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995. He is a member of the permanent faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

ALICE MUNRO grew up in Wingham, Ontario, and attended the University of Western Ontario. She has published eleven story collections, including Dance of the Happy Shades; The Moons of Jupiter; Hates.h.i.+p, Friends.h.i.+p, Courts.h.i.+p, Loves.h.i.+p, Marriage; and, most recently, 2009's Too Much Happiness. She has also published a volume of selected stories as well as a novel, Lives of Girls and Women. She is the recipient of many honors, including a PEN/Malamud Award, an O. Henry Award, and a Man Booker International Prize. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and other publications, and her collections have been translated into numerous languages.

JOYCE CAROL OATES is the author of numerous works of fiction, including the recent novels The Gravedigger's Daughter and Little Bird of Heaven. In 2009 she received the Ivan Sandrof Award for Literature from the National Book Critics Circle and in 2010 the Deauville Literary Prize. Her most recent book is Sourland: Stories.

ZZ PACKER is the author of the short story collection Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her short story "Brownies" was selected for publication in Best American Short Stories 2000. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. In 2005, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellows.h.i.+p. She lives in California.

J. F. POWERS (19171999) wrote short stories and novels, often inspired by the calling of priesthood in the Catholic Church. Greatly admired by his peers, he published relatively little in his lifetime: only three books of short fiction and two novels. In 1963, his debut novel, Morte d'Urban, won the National Book Award. His stories were collected in 1999 in The Stories of J. F. Powers.

ANNIE PROULX is the author of Postcards, The s.h.i.+pping News, and several other books, including three volumes of Wyoming Stories. Her honors include a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The s.h.i.+pping News, a John Dos Pa.s.sos Prize, a PEN/Faulkner Award, two O. Henry Awards, and a Guggenheim Fellows.h.i.+p. Her short story "Brokeback Mountain" was adapted into an Academy Awardwinning major motion picture in 2005. She lives in Wyoming and Newfoundland.

LEWIS ROBINSON's writing has appeared in Sports Ill.u.s.trated, The Boston Globe, Tin House, Open City, and The Missouri Review. He has written a novel, Water Dogs, and a short story collection, Officer Friendly and Other Stories, which won the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. He lives and teaches in Portland, Maine.

JAMES SALTER has written novels, screenplays, and short fiction. His first novel, The Hunters, was based on his service as a fighter pilot in the Korean War. Four of his stories have appeared in the O. Henry Prize collections, and one was anthologized in Best American Short Stories in 1984. Dusk and Other Stories won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1989. His best known novels are Light Years, A Sport and a Pastime, and Solo Faces.

JIM SHEPARD is the author of six novels and four story collections. His stories are published regularly in such magazines as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, McSweeney's, Tin House, Zoetrope: All-Story, Playboy, and Vice, among others. "Minotaur" appears in his most recent book, You Think That's Bad: Stories. He lives in Williamstown, Ma.s.sachusetts.

ELIZABETH STROUT is the author of Olive Kitteridge, for which she received the Pulitzer Prize in 2009. Her first novel, Amy and Isabelle, was also short-listed for the Orange Prize and nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Redbook, and New Letters. She teaches at Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina.

EUDORA WELTY (19092001) was a novelist and short story writer from Mississippi. During the 1930s she was employed by the Works Progress Administration, and photographs she took during that period were later collected in two books. She published her first story collection, A Curtain of Green, in 1941, and in 1973 the last of her five novels, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Arts, and the French Legion of Honor. In 2004 the house she lived in for nearly eighty years was declared a National Historic Landmark.

TOBIAS WOLFF has written short stories, novels, and memoirs, and has edited several short fiction anthologies, including Best American Short Stories in 1994. Some of his best-known works include This Boy's Life, The Night in Question, and Our Story Begins. His fiction has received the PEN/Faulkner and other awards. He teaches literature and writing at Stanford University.

RICHARD YATES (19261992) was a novelist and short story writer from Yonkers, New York. Before his writing career took off, he worked as a journalist, ghostwriter, publicity writer, and professor. His first novel, Revolutionary Road, was nominated for the National Book Award in Fiction, and in 2008 it was adapted for the screen, directed by Sam Mendes. The film was nominated for the BAFTAs, Golden Globes, and Academy Awards. Yates's work includes six more novels-A Special Providence, Disturbing the Peace, The Easter Parade, A Good School, Young Hearts Crying, and Cold Spring Harbor-and two collections of short fiction-Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and Liars in Love.

PERMISSIONS.

"Business Talk" from Free Agents by Max Apple. Copyright 1984 by Max Apple. Published by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers and Max Apple.

"The Gully" from Success Stories by Russell Banks. Copyright 1986 by Russell Banks. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

"Me and Miss Mandible" by Donald Barthelme, originally published in Come Back, Dr. Caligari by Donald Barthelme, currently collected in Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme. Copyright 1964 by Donald Barthelme. Used with permission of The Wylie Agency.

"Unjust" from The Stories of Richard Bausch by Richard Bausch. Copyright 2003 by Richard Bausch. Published by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Story used by permission of Richard Bausch.

"The Working Girl" from What Was Mine by Ann Beattie. Copyright 1991 by Irony & Pity, Inc. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.

"Zapatos" from The River Was Whiskey by T. Coraghessan Boyle. Copyright 1989 by T. Coraghessan Boyle. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

"(I thought my father looked like FDR)" from The Bonnyclabber by George Chambers. Copyright 1972 by George Chambers. Published by December/Panache Press. Used by permission of the author.

"The World of Apples" from The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever. Copyright 1978 by John Cheever. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

"Drummond & Son" from The Dead Fish Museum by Charles D'Ambrosio. Copyright 2006 by Charles D'Ambrosio. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Story used by permission of the author.

"The Writers' Trade" from The Writers' Trade by Nicholas Delbanco. Copyright 1988, 1989, 1990 by Nicholas Delbanco. Published by William Morrow and Company, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Story used by permission of the author.

"Edison, New Jersey" from Drown by Junot Diaz. Copyright 1996 by Junot Diaz. Used by permission of Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

"Delivering" from Finding a Girl in America by Andre Dubus. Reprinted by permission of David R. G.o.dine, Publisher, Inc. Copyright 1980 by Andre Dubus.

"Sauerkraut Soup" from Childhood and Other Neighborhoods by Stuart Dybek. Copyright 1971, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1979, 1980 by Stuart Dybek. Published by Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Story used by permission of the author.

"The Flaw in the Design" from Twilight of the Superheroes by Deborah Eisenberg. Copyright 2006 by Deborah Eisenberg. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Story used by permission of the author.

"Great Experiment" by Jeffrey Eugenides is used by permission of the author.

"Under the Radar" from A Mult.i.tude of Sins by Richard Ford. Copyright 2001 by Richard Ford. Published by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Story used by permission of the author.

"The Store" from Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones. Copyright 1992 by Edward P. Jones. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

"Interpreter of Maladies" from Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. Copyright 1999 by Jhumpa Lahiri. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publis.h.i.+ng Company. All rights reserved.

"Cowboy" from Gallatin Canyon by Thomas McGuane. Copyright 2006 by Thomas McGuane. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Story used by permission of the author.

"A Solo Song: For Doc" from Hue and Cry by James Alan McPherson. Copyright 1969 by James Alan McPherson. Published by Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Inc. Story used by permission of the author.

"Some Women" from Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro. Copyright 2009 by Alice Munro. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. and McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

"High Lonesome" from High Lonesome by Joyce Carol Oates. Copyright 2006 by The Ontario Review, Inc. Published by Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Inc. Story used by permission of the author.

"Geese" from Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer. Copyright 2003 by ZZ Packer. Used by permission of Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

"The Valiant Woman" from The Stories of J. F. Powers by J. F. Powers, published by New York Review Cla.s.sics, 2000. Copyright 1974 by Accent; copyright renewed 1975 by J. F. Powers. Story used by permission of Powers Family Literary Property Trust.

"Job History" from Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx. Copyright 1999 by Dead Line Ltd. All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

"Officer Friendly" from Officer Friendly and Other Stories by Lewis Robinson. Copyright 2003 by Lewis Robinson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

"Foreign Sh.o.r.es" from Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter. Copyright 1988 by James Salter. Published by North Point Press. Story used by permission of the author.

"Minotaur" from You Think That's Bad by Jim Shepard. Copyright 2011 by Jim Shepard. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

"Pharmacy" from Olive Kitteredge by Elizabeth Strout. Copyright 2008 by Elizabeth Strout. Published by Random House, Inc. Story used by permission of The Friedrich Agency, LLC.

"Death of a Traveling Salesman" from A Curtain of Green and Other Stories by Eudora Welty. Copyright 1941 by Eudora Welty, renewed in 1969. Reprinted by the permission of Russell & Volkening, Inc. as agents for the author and by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publis.h.i.+ng Company.

"The Deposition" from Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories by Tobias Wolff. Copyright 2008 by Tobias Wolff. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

"A Glutton for Punishment," from the collection Eleven Kinds of Loneliness in The Collected Stories of Richard Yates. Copyright 1957, 1961, 1962, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1981, 2001 by The Estate of Richard Yates. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC and The Random House Group.

About the Editor.

RICHARD FORD is one of America's most lauded literary figures. Winner of both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Independence Day, Ford is also the author of The Sportswriter, The Lay of the Land, and the story collections Rock Springs and Women with Men. He is editor of several anthologies, including The Granta Book of the American Long Story and Best American Short Stories 1990. He lives in East Boothbay, Maine.

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