Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work

By Richard Ford

Edited byRichard Ford and featuring stories by Russell Banks, Alice Munro, Tobias Wolff,Jhumpa Lahiri, JohnCheever, and many others, Blue Collar,White Collar, No Collar is a profound and groundbreaking anthologyexploring resonant themes of employment, service, and daily obligations asunique windows into our culture, our society, and our very humanity. With ashare of proceeds going to assist the literacynonprofit 826Michigan, this unforgettable collection of short fiction from manyof contemporary literature’s most powerful authors limns the diverse meanings of work in American culture today, even as itlooks to the future of the American workforce and its capacity to succeedcreatively tomorrow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Apr 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9780062087119

Richard Ford

Richard Ford (Jackson, Mississippi, 1944) es Premio Princesa de Asturias de las Letras 2016 y ha publicado las novelas Un trozo de mi corazón, La última oportunidad, Incendios, Canadáy la serie protagonizada por Frank Bascombe: El periodista deportivo, El Día de la Independencia (premios Pulitzer y PEN/Faulkner), Acción de Gracias, Francamente, Frank y Sé mía; cuatro libros de narraciones, Rock Springs, De mujeres con hombres, Pecados sin cuento y Lamento lo ocurrido, y los volúmenes memorialísticos Mi madre, Flores en las grietas y Entre ellos, editados todos en Anagrama y que le han confirmado como uno de los mejores escritores norteamericanos de su generación: «El mejor escritor en activo de este país» (Raymond Carver); «Un crítico norteamericano ha dicho que Ford se inscribía en la tradición de Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck... Se está convirtiendo tranquilamente en el mejor escritor norteamericano» (Bernard Géniès, Le Nouvel Observateur); «Richard Ford nos habla de un mundo que nos pertenece, como una canción de Tom Waits o –sirva como paradigma iconográfico– el film de Wim Wenders Paris-Texas» (J. Ernesto Ayala-Dip, El País).

Reviews for Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Two elements make for a powerful collection of short stories. First, you need an editor with literary intelligence, the piercing eye that sees to the heart of a tale regardless of its provenance, and the wisdom to know that writers sometimes fail and that often even their less-than-perfect stories are but rough diamonds. Second you need a criterion, an overarching theme, something that pulls the collection together into a whole even before a book cover is slapped on it. Here the burning literary intelligence of Richard Ford, editor to this fine collection, more than meets the first condition. And the theme of work, in all its varieties, satisfies the second.There are more than thirty stories in this collection and virtually all of them are excellent in their way. Some are exemplars of the kind of story that is tightly associated with a particular author, such as Richard Yates’ “A Glutton for Punishment” or Junot Díaz’ “Edison, New Jersey” or Ford’s own “Under the Radar”. Some are just stunning tours de force, such as Joyce Carol Oates’ “High Lonesome” or ZZ Packer’s “Geese” or James Alan McPherson’s “A Solo Song: For Doc”. And some I just plain liked, such as Richard Bausch’s “Unjust” or John Cheever’s “The World of Apples” or Edward P. Jones’ “The Store” or Thomas McGuane’s “Cowboy” or Elizabeth Strout’s “Pharmacy”.The truth is that I liked a great many of these stories. And perhaps you will too.