Daniel Halpern
Author of The Art of the Story: An International Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories
About the Author
Daniel Halpern was born on September 11, 1945 in Syracuse, New York. He received a master of fine arts degree from Columbia University in 1972. He has been an instructor in poetry at Princeton University, New School of Social Research, and Columbia University. He began working at Ecco Press in New show more York City in 1969, and later became editor-in-chief. He has written several collections of poetry including Traveling on Credit, Tango and Something Shining: Poems. He has edited anthologies of both poetry and prose including Dante's Inferno: Translations by Twenty Contemporary Poets, The American Poetry Anthology, and The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories. He has won several awards and honors as an editor including the Jessie Rehder Poetry Award, YMHA Discovery Award, and the Great Lakes Colleges National Book Award. (Bowker Author Biography) Daniel Halpern is editorial director of The Ecco Press/HarperCollins & the author of seven previous books of poetry. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with his wife & daughter. (Publisher Provided) show less
Image credit: via Poetry Foundation
Series
Works by Daniel Halpern
The Art of the Story: An International Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories (1999) — Editor — 352 copies
The Sophisticated Cat: A Gathering of Stories, Poems, and Miscellaneous Writings About Cats (1992) — Editor — 100 copies
Who's Writing This? Notations on the Authorial I, with Self-Portraits {not Antæus} (1995) — Editor & Preface — 72 copies
Antaeus No. 73/74, Spring 1994 - Who’s Writing This: Notations on the Authorial I {magazine} (1994) — Editor & Preface — 5 copies
Antaeus No. 28, Winter 1978 3 copies
Antaeus No. 18, Summer 1975 2 copies
Antaeus No. 29, Spring 1978 — Editor — 2 copies
Antaeus No. 16, Winter 1975 - Special Translation Issue — Editor — 2 copies
Antaeus No. 35, Autumn 1979 — Editor — 1 copy
Antaeus No. 23, Autumn 1976 — Editor — 1 copy
The lady knife-thrower 1 copy
Antaeus No. 34, Summer 1979 — Editor — 1 copy
Antaeus No. 19, Autumn 1975 1 copy
Halpern's guide to the essential restaurants of Italy : from Milan to Rome with notes on the food and wine (1990) 1 copy
Antæus: 33, 36, 67 1 copy
Antaeus No. 20, Winter 1976 1 copy
ANTAEUS - Literary Magazine — Editor — 1 copy
Antaeus No. 32, Winter 1979 1 copy
Antaeus No. 33, Spring 1979 1 copy
Antaeus, No. 27. 1 copy
Associated Works
And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again: Writers from Around the World on the COVID-19 Pandemic (2020) — Contributor — 12 copies
Antaeus No. 11, Autumn 1973 — Editor — 3 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1945-09-11
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Syracuse, New York, USA
- Places of residence
- Los Angeles, California, USA
Seattle, Washington, USA
New York, New York, USA
Tangier, Morocco
Princeton, New Jersey, USA - Occupations
- author
editor
poet - Organizations
- The Ecco Press
Columbia University
Antaeus - Awards and honors
- Guggenheim Fellowship
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship - Short biography
- Daniel Halpern was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1945 and has lived in Los Angeles, Seattle, New York City, and Tangier, Morocco. The author of seven previous collections of poems, Halpern is editorial director of The Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins. He has received many grants and awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Halpern divides his time between New York City and Princeton, New Jersey, where he lives with his wife and daughter.
Members
Reviews
The Art of the Story: An International Anthology of… by Daniel Halpern
not surprisingly it was a mixed bag. felt like could have represented global writing with more diversity. but there were some stand out selections by Richard Wright and James Baldwin.
Too many stories about cat abuse and death to be considered good for cat lovers. There are a few good stories here, but overall it's a no.
As any anthology, there're some really good stories, and then we big flops. Some were so bad, I turned down the pages of the whole story, to show my disdain. I owned this book, so I could get away with it. Here are the stories that rated 4 Stars:
"Going to Meet the Man," James Baldwin
"Greasy Lake," T. Coraghessan Boyle
"The Adulterous Woman," Albert Camus
"Order of Insects," William Gass
"The Mother," Natalia Ginsburg
"The Habit of Loving," Doris Lessing
"The Last Mohican," Bernard Malamud
"Patriotism," Yukio Mishima
"Talpa," Juan Rulfo
AND here's some meaningful quotes I liked:
From "Everything," Ingeborg Bachmann:
"I once read in a book the sentence: 'it is not heaven's way to raise its head.' It would be a good thing if everyone knew of this sentence that speaks of the hardness of heaven. Oh no, it really isn't heaven's way to look down, to give signs to the bewildered people below it. At least not where such a somber drama takes place in which it too, this fabricated 'above,' plays a part."
From "Why I Transformed Myself Into a Nightingale," by Wolfgang Hildesheimer:
"I might mention here that I did not arrive at the decision I made during the next year because I wanted to appear eccentric or unique in the eyes of others. It was more my growing awareness that I couldn't select a conventional, bourgeois profession without in some way interfering with other people's lives. The career of a bureaucrat seemed particularly immoral to me, but I rejected other, more accepted humanitarian careers as well. To me, the work of a doctor who could save human life through his interference was highly suspect, because it might be that the person he saved was an out-and-out scoundrel whose life hundreds of oppressed people fervently wished would end."
From "A Friend and Protector," by Peter Taylor:
"That was the end of it for Jesse. And this is where I would like to leave off. It is the next part that is hardest for me to tell. But the whole truth is that my aunt did more than just show herself to Jesse through the glass door. While she remained there her behavior was such that it made me understand for the first time that this was not merely the story of that purplish black, kinky headed Jesse's ruined life. It is the story of my aunt's pathetically Unruined life, and my uncle's too, and even my own. I mean to say that at this moment I understood that Jesse's outside activities had been not only his, but ours too. My Uncle Andrew, with his double standard or triple standard - whichever it was - had most certainly forced Jesse's destruction upon him, and Aunt Margaret had made the complete destruction possible and desirable to him with her censorious words and looks. But they did it because they had to, because they were so dissatisfied with the pale unruin of their own lives. They did it because something would not let them ruin their own lives as they wanted and felt a need to do – as I have often felt a need to do, myself. As who does not sometimes feel a need to do? Without knowing it, I think, Aunt Margaret wanted to see Jesse as he was that morning. And it occurs to me now that dr. Morley understood this at the time."
… (more)
"Going to Meet the Man," James Baldwin
"Greasy Lake," T. Coraghessan Boyle
"The Adulterous Woman," Albert Camus
"Order of Insects," William Gass
"The Mother," Natalia Ginsburg
"The Habit of Loving," Doris Lessing
"The Last Mohican," Bernard Malamud
"Patriotism," Yukio Mishima
"Talpa," Juan Rulfo
AND here's some meaningful quotes I liked:
From "Everything," Ingeborg Bachmann:
"I once read in a book the sentence: 'it is not heaven's way to raise its head.' It would be a good thing if everyone knew of this sentence that speaks of the hardness of heaven. Oh no, it really isn't heaven's way to look down, to give signs to the bewildered people below it. At least not where such a somber drama takes place in which it too, this fabricated 'above,' plays a part."
From "Why I Transformed Myself Into a Nightingale," by Wolfgang Hildesheimer:
"I might mention here that I did not arrive at the decision I made during the next year because I wanted to appear eccentric or unique in the eyes of others. It was more my growing awareness that I couldn't select a conventional, bourgeois profession without in some way interfering with other people's lives. The career of a bureaucrat seemed particularly immoral to me, but I rejected other, more accepted humanitarian careers as well. To me, the work of a doctor who could save human life through his interference was highly suspect, because it might be that the person he saved was an out-and-out scoundrel whose life hundreds of oppressed people fervently wished would end."
From "A Friend and Protector," by Peter Taylor:
"That was the end of it for Jesse. And this is where I would like to leave off. It is the next part that is hardest for me to tell. But the whole truth is that my aunt did more than just show herself to Jesse through the glass door. While she remained there her behavior was such that it made me understand for the first time that this was not merely the story of that purplish black, kinky headed Jesse's ruined life. It is the story of my aunt's pathetically Unruined life, and my uncle's too, and even my own. I mean to say that at this moment I understood that Jesse's outside activities had been not only his, but ours too. My Uncle Andrew, with his double standard or triple standard - whichever it was - had most certainly forced Jesse's destruction upon him, and Aunt Margaret had made the complete destruction possible and desirable to him with her censorious words and looks. But they did it because they had to, because they were so dissatisfied with the pale unruin of their own lives. They did it because something would not let them ruin their own lives as they wanted and felt a need to do – as I have often felt a need to do, myself. As who does not sometimes feel a need to do? Without knowing it, I think, Aunt Margaret wanted to see Jesse as he was that morning. And it occurs to me now that dr. Morley understood this at the time."
… (more)
"A Gift from Somewhere," by Ama Ata Aidoo (1995): 7.25
- understated, almost too-readily diving into subaltern speak, but interesting macrostylistic points (ie the midpoint shift from the mallam to the mother, which was effective and broadening), even if the broader outlines of the plot contrivances are familiar (religio-medical shuckster/conman improvises in midst of plight and things work out differently than he'd planned). Also, nicely realist look at a set of deeply superstitious practices. That switch, nonetheless, also ruined it a bit for me--as we get the surprise of perspective shift and tonal shift, but lose connections to established arcs
"The Keeper of the Virgins," by Hanan al-Shaykh (1998): 7.5
- Reading predominantly genre stories has ill prepared me for the whiplash of a return to the stillness and impressionistic thinnness of a certain type of literary short story. In fact, it's something I wish some SF tales would take up (as, if I'm being honest, certain types of fantasy stories do actually at least try and replicate the tone here, as well as the subject matter too actually [think of all those Beneath Ceaseless Skies stories populated by penitents and monks and nuns and set in dusty convents and such]). Nonetheless, I was still pleasantly caught off guard by this pointed meditation of a story, in which a dwarf, intrigued by the life therein, visits a convent everyday, until finally being taken on inside, only to be, in turn, half devoted to the place and its inhabitants and half concerned about his increasing withdrawal from the world outside, especially after his own mother and brother recreate his own vigil outside the convent gates in order to get him to return. In fact, it was this last development, noted in the story's final paragraph, that moved this into the “solid” category for me. It wasn't so much as necessarily poignant, or even really earned [the minimum length required for any story to actually “earn” anything in the first place would be an interesting question to ponder], as a justification of the faith I'd put in the author to bring us, his audience, through this story cleanly, to make us reflect on a cycle, on the ambiguities of devotion and self-abnegation, and not simply sift through the story threads like an aimless, if pleasant, dream.
"Amor Divino," by Julia Alvarez (1997): 7
- Treacly muck, with some solid characterization and good writing, but that otherwise little examines or acknowledges the class implications of its characters and is, more distractingly, some Fiery Latina essentialism run amok.… (more)
- understated, almost too-readily diving into subaltern speak, but interesting macrostylistic points (ie the midpoint shift from the mallam to the mother, which was effective and broadening), even if the broader outlines of the plot contrivances are familiar (religio-medical shuckster/conman improvises in midst of plight and things work out differently than he'd planned). Also, nicely realist look at a set of deeply superstitious practices. That switch, nonetheless, also ruined it a bit for me--as we get the surprise of perspective shift and tonal shift, but lose connections to established arcs
"The Keeper of the Virgins," by Hanan al-Shaykh (1998): 7.5
- Reading predominantly genre stories has ill prepared me for the whiplash of a return to the stillness and impressionistic thinnness of a certain type of literary short story. In fact, it's something I wish some SF tales would take up (as, if I'm being honest, certain types of fantasy stories do actually at least try and replicate the tone here, as well as the subject matter too actually [think of all those Beneath Ceaseless Skies stories populated by penitents and monks and nuns and set in dusty convents and such]). Nonetheless, I was still pleasantly caught off guard by this pointed meditation of a story, in which a dwarf, intrigued by the life therein, visits a convent everyday, until finally being taken on inside, only to be, in turn, half devoted to the place and its inhabitants and half concerned about his increasing withdrawal from the world outside, especially after his own mother and brother recreate his own vigil outside the convent gates in order to get him to return. In fact, it was this last development, noted in the story's final paragraph, that moved this into the “solid” category for me. It wasn't so much as necessarily poignant, or even really earned [the minimum length required for any story to actually “earn” anything in the first place would be an interesting question to ponder], as a justification of the faith I'd put in the author to bring us, his audience, through this story cleanly, to make us reflect on a cycle, on the ambiguities of devotion and self-abnegation, and not simply sift through the story threads like an aimless, if pleasant, dream.
"Amor Divino," by Julia Alvarez (1997): 7
- Treacly muck, with some solid characterization and good writing, but that otherwise little examines or acknowledges the class implications of its characters and is, more distractingly, some Fiery Latina essentialism run amok.… (more)
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