Legal General Dressing Up for the Carnival: Short Stories Author: Carol Shields Hardcover Usually ships in 24 hours Delivery is subject to warehouse availability. Shipping delays may occur if we receive more orders than stock. Our Price: $32.95 Our Sale Price: $9.99 Savings: $22.96 (70%) Ordering is 100% secure . Spend $39 or more at chapters.indigo.ca and your order ships free!. ( Details ) Dimensions: 256 Pages, 5.5 x 8.5 in | Canadian Author | ISBN: 0679310215 Published: February 2000 | Published by Random House Canada Our customers who bought this item also bought: The Blind Assassin (2000) Book ~ Margaret Atwood P is for Peril (2001) Book ~ Sue Grafton Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of... (1999) Book ~ Jared Diamond chapters.indigo Review From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Stone Diaries , Larry's Party and Happenstance comes this hilarious collection about the hoops we all jump through in this absurd existence we call life. Dressing Up for the Carnival features several 'snapshots' of characters who, in one way or another, shield themselves from what they fear most. Among the many wonderfully drawn characters in Carol Shields' collection is a conservative YMCA director who cajoles his very prim and proper wife into spending their annual holiday soaking up the sun among nudists. Ultimately, these stories remark on the ever-changing, ever-painful and sometimes extremely enjoyable qualities of human love. From the Publisher This new collection from Carol Shields distills her wisdom, elegance, insouciant sense of humour and eroticism into twenty-two wonderful narratives. The title story sets the stage: a Shakespearean prologue in which the narrative flame jumps from character to character, each of them dressed up and putting their best foot forward, conscious of costuming themselves for the daily carnival of life. A surprising treasure box of contrasts, Dressing Up for the Carnival ranges from the bittersweet sexuality of "Eros" to the straight-faced whimsy of "Flatties." Story after story reveals marriage in all its initial intoxication, erratic striving and defeated place-holding: Shields is brilliant at describing the psychological pacts men and women make with each other, often unwittingly. The love stories here are not so much about coming together as about the long haul, where the elastic gets stretched between lovers until it either breaks or snaps them back into each other’s arms. Every page of Dressing Up for the Carnival beautifully displays Shields’ deft articulation of character. There’s the man of substance who traded love for comfort and lies in his bath "his throat full of unconfessed longings"; the proper YMCA director who takes his yearly vacation at a nudist retreat (and absolutely insists that his modest wife follow his example); and the female academic on the run from her mother who falls briefly in love with a professor who still lives with his. Playful, graceful, acutely observed and generous of spirit, these stories are Carol Shields at her most accomplished and appealing. About the Author Carol Shields is the author of Larry’s Party and The Stone Diaries , which won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and the Governor General’s Award. Her other novels and short-story collections include The Republic of Love, Happenstance, Swann, The Orange Fish, Various Miracles, The Box Garden and Small Ceremonies , all available from Vintage Canada. Shields lives in Winnipeg. Author Interviews Q. Why, after the most successful novels you’ve written, have you returned to the short story with your new collection A. I’ve always loved short stories and the curious bent directions they elect. It’s been rather a joy to see how the form has changed since we studied Poe at school; we were told that the story had to have one central point toward which all the narrative flowed. Well, that narrowness has been exploded in our century. An idea will come to me, sometimes through a scrap of conversation or through an experience I’m lucky enough to witness — and the short story seems the ideal form to direct it toward. The idea may be too slim for a novel, too playful to sustain over a long trajectory, but it nags at me until I find a home for it. I love to find a way to match the form with the material or, in other words, to construct a container that is, at once, both story and vessel. I’m not aware of any overriding theme for my stories, though I notice they are often about the stability or instability of personal identity. I feel lighter when I write stories, more like a tap dancer moving along and just touching the tops off my own thoughts. Q. A recent article in Harper’s magazine ("The quiet renaissance of American short fiction") suggests, as you have yourself, that today’s short fiction can be more experimental and more varied than the short fiction of Poe’s era or even Hemingway’s. Do you believe there has been a "renaissance" of short fiction in the 1990s? A. I’m never sure whether more people are reading short stories, but I know more people are writing them. The creative writing programs in Canada and the US have given the short story — since it formats so well for workshops — a great deal of attention, even as markets for stories have shrunk. The postmodern discussion has created plenty of theoretical fog, but it has opened up certain forms to a kind of playfulness in language and in structure. That old narrative line of ascending action -- what some feminists call the ejaculatory mode of storytelling — does not work particularly well for women writers; they have had to find other patterns. I love stories that sprawl, that include little side-stories, that go off on random journeys and that end, sometimes, not with a dying fall or a resolution, but a sudden jetting-off into space. A good story is one that I am happy to be inside of. Sometimes its surfaces are enough. Q. It seems that more short story collections are being published, and finding more readers now. What do you mean when you say the markets for stories have shrunk? A. I am happy to hear that more short story collections are being published and sold and read. That’s good news. But the traditional "slots" were in magazines, and these have become more and more rare. The New Yorker used to publish two every week, and that was more frequently than any other publisher. STORY magazine has just announced that they are closing, and they were such a force for so long. I’m not sure how often Saturday Night does a story, but I can actually remember when Maclean’s published fiction. Chatelaine always, at one time, had a fiction piece. It would be interesting to track just when this change came. The situation is very different in England. The BBC has bought five of the stories from my book, and several others have been sold to magazines. Women’s magazines actually publish rather on-edge fiction here and in Ireland. Q. If the exposure for the story through the media is diminishing, what might account for the increase in readership for short story collections? I think it’s fair to say if the short story "slots" are fewer so too are the slots for fiction of any sort. Why then does the novel maintain its position of fiction of choice over the short story? A. I think about these things all the time, beginning with the question of why people read fiction at all. Because our own lives aren’t big enough, wide enough, varied enough for us. Through fiction we expand our existence, which is always going to be confining. My friends tell me they love to "get lost" in a novel, and I understand part of that. One becomes thoroughly acquainted with certain characters in a novel. Other people tell me that they think of short fiction as a form of poetry that "knocks" on their consciousness, surprises them, and often — if a story satisfies — answers some questions they weren’t even aware of asking. Q. Very few writers choose to write exclusively in the short story genre. Why do you think that is? A. I’ve sometimes had students writing short stories, and I really feel they should be writing novels. There is something novelistic about the texture of their prose, more space around it, more thickness. I’ve also read novels — most recently the Booker Prize winner, Disgrace — that are really so spare and open that they seem closer to being short stories. Tips for your Reading Group Q. Why, after the most successful novels you’ve written, have you returned to the short story with your new collection A. I’ve always loved short stories and the curious bent directions they elect. It’s been rather a joy to see how the form has changed since we studied Poe at school; we were told that the story had to have one central point toward which all the narrative flowed. Well, that narrowness has been exploded in our century. An idea will come to me, sometimes through a scrap of conversation or through an experience I’m lucky enough to witness — and the short story seems the ideal form to direct it toward. The idea may be too slim for a novel, too playful to sustain over a long trajectory, but it nags at me until I find a home for it. I love to find a way to match the form with the material or, in other words, to construct a container that is, at once, both story and vessel. I’m not aware of any overriding theme for my stories, though I notice they are often about the stability or instability of personal identity. I feel lighter when I write stories, more like a tap dancer moving along and just touching the tops off my own thoughts. Q. A recent article in Harper’s magazine ("The quiet renaissance of American short fiction") suggests, as you have yourself, that today’s short fiction can be more experimental and more varied than the short fiction of Poe’s era or even Hemingway’s. Do you believe there has been a "renaissance" of short fiction in the 1990s? A. I’m never sure whether more people are reading short stories, but I know more people are writing them. The creative writing programs in Canada and the US have given the short story — since it formats so well for workshops — a great deal of attention, even as markets for stories have shrunk. The postmodern discussion has created plenty of theoretical fog, but it has opened up certain forms to a kind of playfulness in language and in structure. That old narrative line of ascending action -- what some feminists call the ejaculatory mode of storytelling — does not work particularly well for women writers; they have had to find other patterns. I love stories that sprawl, that include little side-stories, that go off on random journeys and that end, sometimes, not with a dying fall or a resolution, but a sudden jetting-off into space. A good story is one that I am happy to be inside of. Sometimes its surfaces are enough. Q. It seems that more short story collections are being published, and finding more readers now. What do you mean when you say the markets for stories have shrunk? A. I am happy to hear that more short story collections are being published and sold and read. That’s good news. But the traditional "slots" were in magazines, and these have become more and more rare. The New Yorker used to publish two every week, and that was more frequently than any other publisher. STORY magazine has just announced that they are closing, and they were such a force for so long. I’m not sure how often Saturday Night does a story, but I can actually remember when Maclean’s published fiction. Chatelaine always, at one time, had a fiction piece. It would be interesting to track just when this change came. The situation is very different in England. The BBC has bought five of the stories from my book, and several others have been sold to magazines. Women’s magazines actually publish rather on-edge fiction here and in Ireland. Q. If the exposure for the story through the media is diminishing, what might account for the increase in readership for short story collections? I think it’s fair to say if the short story "slots" are fewer so too are the slots for fiction of any sort. Why then does the novel maintain its position of fiction of choice over the short story? A. I think about these things all the time, beginning with the question of why people read fiction at all. Because our own lives aren’t big enough, wide enough, varied enough for us. Through fiction we expand our existence, which is always going to be confining. My friends tell me they love to "get lost" in a novel, and I understand part of that. One becomes thoroughly acquainted with certain characters in a novel. Other people tell me that they think of short fiction as a form of poetry that "knocks" on their consciousness, surprises them, and often — if a story satisfies — answers some questions they weren’t even aware of asking. Q. Very few writers choose to write exclusively in the short story genre. Why do you think that is? A. I’ve sometimes had students writing short stories, and I really feel they should be writing novels. There is something novelistic about the texture of their prose, more space around it, more thickness. I’ve also read novels — most recently the Booker Prize winner, Disgrace — that are really so spare and open that they seem closer to being short stories. Review Quotes "Carol Shields’ short stories have given me happiness, not just pleasure. They’re prismatic; they delight at first by the clear and simple elegance with which they are made, then there’s something so bountiful and surprising, like beautiful broken light." —Alice Munro Reader Reviews Average Reader Review: Number of Reviews: 1 1. A TRIUMPH Reviewer: Janet Morris from Waterloo (janetmorris@home.com) Date: 1/7/2001 9:25:27 PM Carol Shields has done it again in this triumph of writing. Dressing Up for the Carnival is an extrodinary colouring of meticulously explored characters, fantasically imaginative yet realistic tales of life and life's great struggles and a delight to the very soul of one's emotions. A true tribute to its author's compassion and insight, this book will certainly be of help to many. 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