The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Park City: New & Selected Stories by Ann Beattie
Brian Evenson

Ann Beattie. Park City: New & Selected Stories. Knopf, 1998. 478 pp. $25.00.

Ann Beattie’s collection of new and selected stories, Park City, gathers together thirty-six stories spanning Beattie’s career. Each of Beattie’s previous collections is liberally represented (from four stories from her first book, Distortions, to eight new uncollected stories), giving the reader the sense of both where Beattie has been and where she’s going.
While it is true that the more recent stories tend to be more developed, the characters and emotions fuller, the writing sometimes more subtle, they’re also less interested in cutting new ground. Beattie’s earlier stories take more formal risks. In the earlier work the endings are more tenuous and risky, there are more (and more severe) disjunctions between sections, the characters themselves seeming more severe and less capable of communication. Even as late as the very fine novella “Windy Day at the Reservoir,” Beattie is willing to try something that questions the necessity of unity in the story. There is a certain urgency, too, to the finest of Beattie’s earlier stories, such as “The Burning House,” that one is hard-pressed to discover in the eight new unpublished stories. There are, nonetheless, consolations: in one or two of the previously unpublished pieces, such as “Going Home with Uccello,” Beattie couples the concerns of her early work with a virtuoso style that recalls William Trevor.
Remarkable as well is the degree to which Beattie’s concerns have remained constant over the years. The agents of these stories are often similar: often divorced or on their way to divorce, not quite sure of life or of themselves. The writing is always crisp and careful. Relationships have always been central, a story’s scope tightly focused on the ordinary desperation of middle-class lives.
As a survey of Ann Beattie’s work, Park City is an honest retrospective of Beattie both at her best and at her not-quite best. [Brian Evenson]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Park City: New & Selected Stories by Ann Beattie Brian Evenson Ann Beattie. Park City: New & Selected Stories. Knopf, 1998. 478 pp. $25.00. Ann Beattie’s collection of new and selected stories, Park City, gathers together thirty-six stories spanning Beattie’s career. Each of Beattie’s previous collections is liberally represented (from four stories from her first book, Distortions, to eight new uncollected stories), giving the reader the sense of both where Beattie has been and where she’s going. While it is true that the more recent stories tend to be more developed, the characters and emotions fuller, the writing sometimes more subtle, they’re also less interested in cutting new ground. Beattie’s earlier stories take more formal risks. In the earlier work the endings are more tenuous and risky, there are more (and more severe) disjunctions between sections, the characters themselves seeming more severe and less capable of communication. Even as late as the very fine novella “Windy Day at the Reservoir,” Beattie is willing to try something that questions the necessity of unity in the story. There is a certain urgency, too, to the finest of Beattie’s earlier stories, such as “The Burning House,” that one is hard-pressed to discover in the eight new unpublished stories. There are, nonetheless, consolations: in one or two of the previously unpublished pieces, such as “Going Home with Uccello,” Beattie couples the concerns of her early work with a virtuoso style that recalls William Trevor. Remarkable as well is the degree to which Beattie’s concerns have remained constant over the years. The agents of these stories are often similar: often divorced or on their way to divorce, not quite sure of life or of themselves. The writing is always crisp and careful. Relationships have always been central, a story’s scope tightly focused on the ordinary desperation of middle-class lives. As a survey of Ann Beattie’s work, Park City is an honest retrospective of Beattie both at her best and at her not-quite best. [Brian Evenson]

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