Kirkus Reviews QR Code
PRIZE STORIES 1963: The O. Henry Awards by Richard- Ed. Poirier

PRIZE STORIES 1963: The O. Henry Awards

By

Publisher: Doubleday

There are 14 stories in this collection and the contributors include Flannery O'Connor, William Saroyan, Terry Southern and Jessamyn West. According to the editor's categorization two stories are about academic life, two involve the relationship between Negro and white and two are concerned with the theatrical world. Terry Southern's The Road Out of Axotle is a weird and blase account of a journey out of Mexico City according to a mysterious map. Pontifex by Sylvia Berkman is a tenuous treatment of the relationship between father and daughter. The Education of a Queen- by Thalia Selz, is an all-knowing, effective recollection of a childhood during the 20's, and The Snake -- Ervin D. Krause, is a short, powerful story about brutality. It's a varied collection and serves to illustrate the editor's contention that recent writers have been ""...shifting attention from the general aspects of American life to some particular grouping in it.