Ever since the publication of The Harmony of the World in 1984, Charles Baxter has slowly gained a reputation as one of America's finest short-story writers. Each subsequent collection--Through the Safety Net, A Relative Stranger, and Believers--was further confirmation of his mastery: his gift for capturing the immediate moment, for revealing the unexpected in the ordinary, for showing how the smallest shock can pierce the heart of an intimacy. Gryphon brings together the best of Baxter's previous collections with seven new stories, giving us the most complete portrait of his achievement.
Baxter once described himself as "a Midwestern writer in a postmodern age": at home in a terrain best known for its blandness, one that does not give up its secrets easily, whose residents don't always talk about what's on their mind, and where something out of the quotidian--some stress, the appearance of a stranger, or a knock on the window--may be all...
Description:
Ever since the publication of The Harmony of the World in 1984, Charles Baxter has slowly gained a reputation as one of America's finest short-story writers. Each subsequent collection--Through the Safety Net, A Relative Stranger, and Believers--was further confirmation of his mastery: his gift for capturing the immediate moment, for revealing the unexpected in the ordinary, for showing how the smallest shock can pierce the heart of an intimacy. Gryphon brings together the best of Baxter's previous collections with seven new stories, giving us the most complete portrait of his achievement.
Baxter once described himself as "a Midwestern writer in a postmodern age": at home in a terrain best known for its blandness, one that does not give up its secrets easily, whose residents don't always talk about what's on their mind, and where something out of the quotidian--some stress, the appearance of a stranger, or a knock on the window--may be all...