“I’ve never heard anything like that. The last line comes out of nowhere.”

beattie2This line from a conversation between a seventy-seven year-old poet and an IRS agent about a poem by James Wright in the short story “Yancey” is vintage Ann Beattie: it’s an astute comment in an unusual situation by characters who come to each other from unanticipated angles, and who … Read More

“No one was coming toward the house yet, but things wouldn’t stay the way they were much longer.”

Beattie croppedWhen Ann Beattie met John Updike, he said “You figured out how to write an entirely different kind of story.” Her stories were “the” stories my English department discussed in the 1980s because they were so  revolutionary.  T. Coraghessan Boyle wrote in the New York Times, “Her stories are … Read More