Contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Contents
  5. Author’s Note
  6. Introduction
  7. 1: Ten Things That Art Can Do
  8. 2: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
  9. 3: Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
  10. 4: Honoré de Balzac, Cousin Bette
  11. 5: George Eliot, Middlemarch
  12. 6: George Gissing, New Grub Street
  13. 7: The Collected Stories of Mavis Gallant
  14. 8: Roberto Bolaño, 2666
  15. 9: Complimentary Toilet Paper: Some Thoughts on Character and Language—Michael Jeffrey Lee, George Saunders, John Cheever, Denis Johnson
  16. 10: Edward St. Aubyn, The Patrick Melrose Novels
  17. 11: Paul Bowles, The Stories of Paul Bowles and The Spider’s House
  18. 12: Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky: A London Trilogy; The Slaves of Solitude; Hangover Square: A Story of Darkest Earl’s Court
  19. 13: Isaac Babel
  20. 14: Lolita, Just the Dirty Parts: On the Erotic and Pornographic
  21. 15: Gitta Sereny, Cries Unheard
  22. 16: Andrea Canobbio, Three Light-Years
  23. 17: Diane Arbus: Revelations
  24. 18: Helen Levitt, Crosstown
  25. 19: Mark Strand, Mr. and Mrs. Baby
  26. 20: Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle
  27. 21: Elizabeth Taylor, Complete Short Stories
  28. 22: Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
  29. 23: Jane Austen
  30. 24: Charles Baxter, Believers
  31. 25: Deborah Levy, Swimming Home
  32. 26: Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women
  33. 27: Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach
  34. 28: Rebecca West
  35. 29: Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
  36. 30: On Clarity
  37. 31: Reiner Stach, Is That Kafka? 99 Finds
  38. 32: What Makes a Short Story?
  39. 33: In Praise of Stanley Elkin
  40. Permissions
  41. About the Author
  42. Also by Francine Prose
  43. Copyright
  44. About the Publisher