As someone who entered the first grade of elementary school in 1970, I was one of the later sets of kids in the U.S. (in my case, in Peabody, MA) to work with the "Dick and Jane (and Spot the Dog)" series of first readers (though my parents had already taught me how to read when I was four, using a mix of Dr. Seuss and other similar books, as Fairbanks, Alaska winters are fierce), so I simply was amused by the pictures of the kids and their rambunctious pooch. (Apparently, the introduction of a black family in the last edition, 1965, of the books was not taken well in some quarters... surprise!) The publisher was Scott, Foresman, who with the introduction of We Look and See and Fun with Dick and Jane in 1930 began to dominate the market for beginning readers' texts, and in my New England public school experience in the '70s, we had Scott, Foresman texts for reading/literature up through 9th Grade...whether the better readers, who would progress through Visions, Vistas and Cavalcades in 4th through 6th grades (in Connecticut, for me and those classmates) or those who struggled, who had a series with the same title for every grade, Open Highways. (At a tag sale one summer when I was about to turn 9yo, I bought a copy of the Open Highways volume for either 6th or 8th graders and read and enjoyed it.) In my junior high and 9th grade English classes, in public school in New Hampshire, I have a dimmer recollection of the titles--but clearly remember reading some of the stories, and also remember the texts being further Scott, Foresman volumes, as was the American Literature anthology we used at the Honolulu private school I would attend for my last three "graded" years (I believe the English Literature volume we used in 11th grade for the other semester, and the lit text we all used in 10th grade at that school, were from other publishers). The closest any other publisher came to such domination in an area of study in my young experience was the continuing use of Addison-Wesley mathematics textbooks in most of the same grades in the same array of states.
So, in 1952, the first edition of this Scott, Foresman text for college American Literature courses was published (and perhaps eventually some Advanced Placement exam-prep courses in the last grades, or elite classes in some heavily preparatory schools, with later editions), Eugene Current-Garcia and Walt Patrick's American Short Stories. A fat bug-crusher at 633 plus 52 pages of examples of US literature and annotations, it was unlikely that most courses at most institutions would get through the entire volume in classroom discussion, but it was there for those who would.
And it was an impressive and thoughtfully-assembled volume, at least touching on most of the major currents of short fiction published in the States from 1820 to publication, and while presenting stories from both male and female writers from a variety of schools, managed not to deviate too much (in this initial volume) from relatively "safe" canons of white, usually relatively well-off writers (possibly canons it was helping to establish), albeit such probably unfortunate choices as Joel Chandler Harris and rather better ones such as William Saroyan and Katherine Anne Porter are able to present characters of less economic stability and security in their selected work. The later editions, increasingly attempts were made to be more inclusive as well as adding new writers, and new views...amusingly, to me, the fifth, sixth and final seventh editions each offer a different entry by Ursula K. Le Guin, the fifth, from 1990 (and Current-Garcia's co-editor for these later editions was Bert Hitchcock) offers Le Guin's "Nine Lives" (along with stories by Louise Erdrich, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Richard Wright, and a few other writers not present in the first volume, some of whom could've been--1952 was a bit early for others who hadn't published yet), the sixth edition, 1996, gives us Le Guin's "Mazes", along with stories by Sandra Cisneros, Gish Jen, and Langston Hughes; the seventh edition, 2001, features Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", as well as a new final section:
- Section Five (1980-present): Contemporary Diversity
- · Boxes · Raymond Carver · ss The New Yorker February 24 1986
- · Shiloh · Bobbie Ann Mason · ss The New Yorker October 20 1980
- · Nineteen Fifty-Five · Alice Walker · ss Ms. March 1981
- · Hunters in the Snow · Tobias Wolff · ss TriQuarterly #48, Spring 1980
- · The Things They Carried · Tim O’Brien · ss Esquire August 1986
- · Gryphon · Charles Baxter · ss Epoch 1985
- · The Reach · Stephen King · ss Yankee November 1981, as “Do the Dead Sing?”
- · The Race of the Patient Motorcyclists · Lydia Davis · ss (r)
- · De Rerum Natura · T. Coraghessan Boyle · ss 1976
- · Cheers · Jayne Anne Phillips · ss Black Tickets by Jayne Anne Phillips, Delacorte Press, 1979
- · Pet Fly · Walter Mosley · nv The New Yorker December 13 1999
- · Fleur · Louise Erdrich · ss Esquire August 1986
- · The Cariboo Café · Helena María Viramontes · ss The Moths and Other Stories by Helena María Viramontes, Arte Publico Press, 1985
- · Ciudad Juárez · Elizabeth Tallent · ss Mississippi Review v18 #1, 1989
- · Birthmates · Gish Jen · ss Ploughshares Winter 1994/1995
- · This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona · Sherman Alexie · ss Esquire June 1993
- · This Blessed House · Jhumpa Lahiri · ss (r)
Trump would presumably choose to be annoyed by this. Current-Garcia died in 1995, so presumably had little if anything to say about too many of the additions or revisions of the last edition, but apparently remained an active partner through the pre-publication of the sixth, and perhaps worked on the initial expansion/revision of the seventh. It's amusing to note that as Scott, Foresman had been absorbed by other publishers by the time of the fifth edition, the sixth was published by none other than Addison-Wesley, itself swallowed up by similar mergers soon afterward, and the seventh was offered by Longmans US.
For the #1952Club, please see Kaggsy's blog here;
For more prompt Wednesday Short Stories entries, please see Patti Abbott's blog here.
