Insights (2005)

PREFACE

The themes of the short stories selected in the anthology Insights include ethnic conflict, gender bias, violence, man-woman relationship. the central character in conflict with established social values, personal trauma, spiritual quest, etc. American novelist Henry James (1843-1916) made very wise comments about fiction writing, and these observations have influenced a number of short-story writers like James Joyce, Katherine Masefield, John Updike, John Cheever and others. Henry James writes: "A novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life: that to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression. But there will be no intensity at all, and therefore no value, unless there is freedom to feel and say. The tracing of a line to be followed, of a tone to be taken, of a form to be filled out, is a limitation of that freedom and a suppression of the very thing that we are most curious about." The stories of Insights reveal "intensity of impression", and "freedom to feel and say". Henry James' extraordinary short story "The Beast in the Jungle", and James Joyce's "Dubliners" are full of these sublime characteristics.

Insights features stories of a great variety. Several of the authors included in Insights reveal in their short stories the impact of John Collier's "Bottle Party" (1939), Elizabeth Bowen's "The Demon Lover" (1941), Saki's "Tobermory" (1911), Isak Dinesen's "The Sailor-Boy's Tale" (1942), E. B. White's "The Door" (1939), E. M. Forster's "The Celestial Omnibus" (1908), Nadine Gordimer's "Termitary" (1974), Hemingway's "In Another Country" (1927), Margaret Atwood's "Significant Moments in the Life of My Mother" (1983), Faulkner's "A