
Classic American Short Stories, Volume 1
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Narrated by:
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Charlton Griffin
Unlike the other arts, American literature has been a powerful, influential, and leading aspect of American culture. By turns sedate and mercurial and possessing a moral mind set of various social values, the American short story reveals in its pages the psyche of a growing, sprawling nation whose sense of destiny has always been larger than life. Here are seven masterpieces that will make you smile, make you frown, and leave you pondering the mystery that surrounds the soul of a great nation.
Selections in Volume 1:
"A Journey" by Edith Wharton - A woman tries to conceal the death of her husband on a train trip.
"Impulse" by Conrad Aiken � After a lifetime of pushing his luck, a man pushes it a little too far.
"Only the Dead Know Brooklyn" by Thomas Wolfe � A lonely man with a map tries to understand a little piece of the earth.
"A Christian Education" by Robert Penn Warren � A troubled farmer recalls the life and death of a retarded boy.
"Barn Burning" by William Faulkner � In prose as fully mature and beautiful as anything he ever wrote, this is one of the most searing indictments of revenge ever put on paper.
"Paul's Case" by Willa Cather � A youth decides to put his life of fantasy and that of the real world on a collision course.
"The Devil and Daniel Webster" by Stephen Vincent Benét � This beautiful, riproaring tall-tale embraces all that is good in American life.
©Public domain; 1950 Conrad Aiken; 1935 Thomas Wolfe; 1945 Robert Penn Warren; 1939 William Faulkner; 1936 Stephen Vincent Benét (P)2004 Audio ConnoisseurListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
"Charlton Griffin is dazzlingly good, with regional accents, with the change in timbre from a boy's voice to a woman's and a man's, and most of all with his nuanced understanding of how to deliver the narrative from writer to reader without getting himself in the way." (AudioFile)
"With its flawless technical recording values and masterful presentation, this first volume in the Audio Connoisseur Classic American Short Stories series will leave the listener eagerly awaiting a second volume!" (Midwest Book Review)
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I would like it better without the music.
Distracting music spoils the listening experience
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I was introduced to Conrad Aiken for the first time. What an amazing short story writer. The story sent me down a rabbit hole of modernist literary criticism, and into the biography of Aiken himself. The story was criticized by some at the time it was written for being immoral. How times have changed.
The only story I had heard of was "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and perhaps I have read it before, but Griffin brings it to life in such a way that I would recommend it to anyone and everyone. It is funny and brilliant.
The Willa Cather story I've now listened to twice. I'm surprised it's not more famous. It's a long short story, almost a novella.
Some say this is "over produced," but I found the format refreshing. Story breaks have a little music or sound effects, and I found them charming. The story on the train is accompanied by quiet train sounds. I listen to audible as I fall asleep and turned the volume down just a notch, so that the music didn't disturb me. The only problem is that the stories were so good and so riveting that I did keep myself awake long enough to complete them (and then I listened to them again the next day, getting even more out of them).
I hope there are more in this series by Griffin or another amazing narrator.
One of my favorite audible purchases - OUTSTANDING
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Any additional comments?
Some reviewers apparently want to read classic American literature, but not encounter death. Suggestion, stay away from that Shakespeare guy; the stage is strewn with dead bodies at the end of many of his plays. But he's English, and that doesn't count. American optimism should triumph over European pessimism, n'est pas? So I would recommend Moby Dick, the great American novel of the sea where captain Ahab seeks to kill a whale. Oh oh! There's a death going to happen there. Better skip that one. We would be on safer ground to focus on a classic American humorist, say like Mark Twain. His short story, "The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg" is a real gem; the inquest scene is a real howler... but ... oh oh, the story ends darkly -- maybe even on a downer. Injun Joe dies at the end of "Tom Sawyer" and people die in "Huckleberry Finn" including Huck's father. O my Lord!It's a pity, but death is a part of life; and literature seeks to reflect that reality. The stories in this collection reflect all that is in life, warts and all. "The Devil and Daniel Webster" approaches mythic proportions. The collection suffers only the omission of "A Man Without a Country" by Edward Everett Hale, and I would recommend this short story to the disappointed reviewers as a fabled study in 19th century American patriotism -- except that, dear me, the protagonist dies at the end.
Don't want to read about death? Read Mickey Mouse
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Not bad
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Classic stories; amazing performance
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Hard to listen when you don't know who wrote it
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Beautifully performed!
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great stories survive overcooked narration, barely
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brilliant reading
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Mixed bag
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