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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN num: 9780226751283
ISBN number: 0226751287
Label: University Of Chicago Press
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 784
Printing Date: December 01, 2000
Publishing house: University Of Chicago Press
Sale Popularity Level: 493073
Studio: University Of Chicago Press
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Product Description:
Featuring sixty-three stories spanning five decades, this superb collection-including 'Girls in Their Summer Dresses,' 'Sailour Off the Bremen,' and 'The Eighty-Yard Run'-clearly illustrates why Shaw is considered one of America's finest short-story writers.
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Rated by buyers 
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Hemingway, F. Scott and others always seem to collect the awards and accolades whenever someone talks about a good American writer for the ages. Weirdly I've never finished a Hemingway novel and the only F. Scott story that I made it through was his short story "Dayrimple Goes Wrong".
Anyway, for my money the great American writer of the 20th century is Irwin Shaw. Shaw's writing speaks to me on a simple level; he doesn't spend pages and pages trying to convince the reader how cute or clever or complicated he can be. The guy just writes.
I read Rich Man Poor Man in high school and later did a race in France. It was quite a personal thrill to stand on the beaches at St. Tropez after reading so much about it in Shaw's text.
This book contains many of his short stories over a fifty year career. Some were dogs, some were decent and some were great. The great made up for anything substandard.
When it's pouring down rain and I'm inside and dry I still say "Rich man's weather" to anyone or everyone. Nobody knows what the hell it means and I can't even remember which book of Shaw's that line is from, but I still feel it, say it.
Rated by buyers -
In reading Irwin Shaw's Five Decades, a huge book of sixty-three of his best tales, in 756 pages of small type, written between the Great Depression years and his death, the only thing that an impartial reader can come away with is Shaw's consistent excellence in the field. Although having gotten his start, and made his name in the pages of The New Yorker magazine, I can tell you his tales hold up better socially and artistically than far more lauded New Yorker writers like O'Hara, J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, Alice Adams, John Updike, or Ann Beattie. The earliest tales, especially, with only the omission of a few definitive words that reference their era, could have been written yesterday, and are almost as minimalist as they are realist. And there is little fat in Shaw's tales- they are lean with the rat-a-tat-tat staccato of their sentence's construction, and their poetry comes not from a strained contrivance of clichés, but the juxtaposition (often jarring) of the most common of things, phrases, and moments. Even though most of the stories, especially the early ones, are set in a New York City milieu, and reflect the accents and slang thereof, Shaw powerfully captures the realistic dialogue of the masses like few other writers ever have- perhaps, of published short story writers I've read, only Russia's Anton Chekhov comes close, and even he tended to lean a bit more on allegory rather than the offhanded poesy that comes in real spoken dialogue, and can best be pared down by the good ear of a good writer. Not even Eugene O'Neill, at his best, could capture the American idiom as well, and perhaps only Clifford Odets did- and it's worth noting Shaw started out as a playwright....The stories are so well-wrought with the trimness of necessity, and possess a grit and realism that Ernest Hemingway could never equal, even in the best of his hit and miss tales- and are just as poetic, if not more, and certainly more consistently poetic, with the poetry of concision in the construction, not the mere phrasing. Again, look how inherently straightforward sentences like, `He couldn't remember having had a nicer day,', `Michael watched her walk, thinking, what a pretty girl, what nice legs,', and `You must be very careful in a strange city,' seem, yet how poetic they become by their mere placement. Shaw does this over and over again in these tales, which is a feat that writers like John O'Hara, or J.D. Salinger, his contemporaries, at their best, could never do with any consistency. Yes, some of his later tales are too long, but never ungodly in length, and they never become as airy as the lesser tales of many far more lauded writers in the Pantheon do. I urge any reader who wants to be entertained or enlightened, and also learn a good deal of what America in the last century was like, to seek out the short stories of Irwin Shaw. There's no better place to start than with these Five Decades to get the whole century.
Rated by buyers -
Irwin Shaw was one of the best writers of short stories in the history of American literature. ( He was, incidentally, my father's classmate and acquaintance). His work has unfortunately not received enough attention in the 20+ years since his death. His clarity and the unobtrusiveness of his way of storytelling are examples of the best sort of writing.
The University of Chicago press should be thanked for making this collection of his stories so easily available. Some, especially earlier productions like Girls in Their Summer Dresses and The Monument, will ( or should ) be read as long as American literature remains a serious subject.
Rated by buyers -
A poor man's Cheever, Irwin Shaw was a man of his times, and his writing reflects the issues faced by the "common man" from the 1930s through the 1970s. He reminds us that not everybody in America was rich and ennui-infected. "The Eighty-Yard Run" is his classic study of the effects of the Depression on one man's marriage and his sense of self. "Sailour Off the Bremen" depicts a brutal act of vengence committed under the guise of political activism, "The Passion of Lance Corporal Hawkins" shows us an equally violent incident in the birth of Israel, "Main Currents of American Thought" looks at a hack writer in the age of radio, and "Act of Faith" is an optimistic if cautious affirmation of American values. "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses," with its breezy prediction of a new husband's sad and faithless future, was said to have been John F. Kennedy's favorite short story. Shaw's words have a masculine beauty to them, while his plots are precise and honed.
Rated by buyers -
I whole-heartedly agree with the very first reviewer of this book - Irwin Shaw was one of the best (if not THE best) American storyteller(s) of the 20th century. Beautiful prose, great characters, lots of emotion - his books just seem to sparkle with life.
This wonderful collection of short stories - written between the 1930's and the 1980's - will leave you with even deeper admiration of his writing skills if all you've ever read of Mr. Shaw is "Rich Man, Poor Man" (which is an equally great novel).
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