Stone, Robert

Fun with Problems: Stories

New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. First Printing. Hardcover. “Hampton County locked them down in a nineteenth-century brick fortress of a jail, a penitential fantasy of red brick keeps and crenellations,” writes Robert Stone in the opening sentence of this short
story collection’s ‘title track,’ “Fun with Problems.” Robert Stone, to the initiated, is something of a genius—a variously forgotten, hitherto unheralded American master of prose fiction as a form. While testaments to this can be found (take 2020’s “Child of Light,” Madison Smart Bell’s excellent biography of Stone, for example [See TMB Item #5039], most fiction readers remain unaware of Stone’s oeuvre. A solution presents itself in this here collection, however—a perfect, low-cost, time-respective way in which the reader can familiarize themselves with Stone’s sweeping genius. After doing so, the reader can justify approaching Stone’s more ambitious works, like “Outerbridge Reach,” [TMB Item #5011] “Bay of Souls” [TMB Item #5057] and “Damascus Gate,” [TMB Item #5011] — the latter of which lauded Neo-Transcendentalist, Annie Dillard called “a narrative of good and evil written in letters of fire.” [ISBN: 978-0-618-38625-3]. Hardcover in unclipped dust-jacket: First American Edition, although not noted as such on copyright page; First Printing, as indicated by number sequence thereon. Book in very fine condition with only slightest shelf-wear to fine-edges of front, back covers; interior spotless save previous owner’s signature near topmost fine-edge of FFEP. Dust-jacket in equally very fine condition with only correspondingly minute shelf-wear to fine-edges & corners of front, back covers. Very Fine / Very Fine. [Item #5138]

Price: $20.00