Short stories by William Goyen
Charles William Goyen was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, editor, and teacher. Major themes in his work included home and family, place, time, sexuality, isolation, and memory. Publishing a wide range of work, including novels like The Fair Sister and plays like The Diamond Rattler, his style of writing has not been easily categorized, and during his career, he eschewed labels of genre placed on his works. However, his style has been compared to the likes of Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and Gabriel García Márquez. In addition to writing, Goyen also spent many years teaching at the New School of Social Research, Columbia University, Princeton University, the University of Houston, and Brown University. He passed in 1983.
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Listing 3 stories.
Feeling unloved by her sisters, a woman elopes to Houston only for her marriage to swiftly fall apart and her cat to abandon her. However, an unexpected development allows her to reconcile with her sisters and finally be at peace.
A small town devolves into fear and confusion as a man sits atop a flagpole for forty days straight with no food or explanation.
An old woman recalls the younger siblings she has raised under her selfless Christian beliefs and actions. Despite her good deeds, she has been stricken with an illness and a lonely life and faces reality.