Born in 1919, William Abrahams published four successful novels and a number of poems before finding his true calling as an editor. He presided over the O. Henry Awards for more than 30 years starting in 1965. Abrahams also worked as the west coast editor of Atlantic Monthly Press and collaborated on nonfiction books with his partner, Peter Stansky. He passed away in 1998.
These 20 works were selected from stories offered in over 300 magazines/journals, with first prize going to Ernest J. Finney's ``Peacocks,'' second prize to Joyce Carol Oates's ``House Hunting,'' and third prize to Harriet Doerr's ``Edie: A Life.'' The other 17 stories are unranked. Except for Doerr's superior piece, the stories are mostly below average, even Oates's. Like some other so-called ``prize'' collections issued in the past several years, this one appears to have been chosen by a loosely formed ``national committee'' with limited taste and judgment. Commendably, for the first time mini-biographies of the authors are included, but so are intrusive comments by some authors on how, when, where, and why they wrote their stories. Overall assessment: Generally a shoddy collection and certainly not up to previous O. Henry Prize Stories. -- Glenn O. Carey, Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond
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