The Collected Stories of Diane Willia..., Diane Williams
The Collected Stories of Diane Willia..., Diane Williams
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The Collected Stories of Diane Williams

Author: Diane Williams

Narrator: Emily Durante

Unabridged: 9 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/02/2018

Categories: Fiction, Short Stories


Synopsis

The Collected Stories of Diane Williams brings together over three hundred new and previously published short fictions—distilled works of "unsettling brilliance" (Vanity Fair) that have rewritten the rules of the American short story.

From Ben Marcus's introduction to The Collected Stories of Diane Williams:

"Diane Williams has spent her long, prolific career concocting fictions of perfect strangeness, most of them no more than a page long. She's a hero of the form: the sudden fiction, the flash fiction, whatever it's being called these days by the genre naming conglomerate. The stories are short. They defy logic. They thumb their nose at conventional sense, or even unconventional sense. But if sense is in short supply in these texts, that leaves more room for splendor and sorrow and insight."

Note: Due to licensing conflicts, a small selection of stories from this collection that appeared previously in the collection Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine (McSweeney's, 2016) do not appear in this audio recording.

About Diane Williams

Diane Williams is the founder and editor of the distinguished literary annual NOON, the archive of which, as well as Williams's personal literary archive, was acquired in 2014 by the Lilly Library. She is the author of ten previous volumes of short fiction. She lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Chr*s on May 21, 2019

Diane Williams is the inverse of David Foster Wallace and an extension of Amy Hempel and I dislike them all for the same reason: reading intelligent people writing deliberately obtusely for the sake of looking smart is actually dumb as bricks. There's like 5 stories I liked here out of the 300 or so......more

Goodreads review by Adam on January 10, 2023

"Long Stories," a shelf of anthologies I'm erratically working through. ---------------------------- "This is About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time and Fate" and "Some Sexual Success Stories Plus Other Stories in which God Might Choose to Appear" Too austere to truly delight yet too nutty......more

Goodreads review by Guttersnipe on October 25, 2018

Yes, I longed for this book and here it is! I am so glad of it. All the stories, in one sturdy book. I’ve been reading Williams for many years now and it has always seemed to me that they are best read this way, in order. The early stories give a reader a little more to go on, then more and more one......more

Goodreads review by Christopher on November 18, 2022

These stories aren't for everyone, or even anyone, really. You may love or hate these works, but either way you can't deny that Williams has always been an uncompromising prose artist, totally committed to her unique vision and voice. Personally, I found this massive collection intensely peculiar, fu......more

Goodreads review by Morgan on August 09, 2018

Flash fiction is a difficult genre to master, but Diane Williams is arguably the best contemporary author of the form. From the first story, you’ll be drawn to her characters and her ability to capture a fully realized moment in the span of one to two pages. Some of her stories are ironic, others jo......more