My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead (96 page)

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Authors: Jeffrey Eugenides

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MARY ROBISON was born in Washington, D.C. She graduated from Johns Hopkins, where she studied with John Barth. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, an O. Henry Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. She is the author of three previous novels,
Oh!, Subtraction,
and
Why Did I Ever,
and of four story collections,
Days, An Amateur’s Guide to the Night, Believe Them,
and
Tell Me.
Robison has written for Hollywood and has been a contributor to
The New Yorker
since 1977.

GEORGE SAUNDERS is the author of
In Persuasion Nation, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil; Pastoralia; CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
; a children’s book,
The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip
; and the essay collection
The Braindead Megaphone
. He writes regularly for
The New Yorker, Harper’s
, and
GQ
. In 2006 he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship for “bringing to contemporary American fiction a sense of humor, pathos, and literary style all of his own.” He teaches creative writing at Syracuse University.

GILBERT SORRENTINO (1929–2006) is the author of more than thirty books, including the classic
Mulligan Stew
and two novels that were finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award:
Little Casino
and
Aberration of Starlight
. He was the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and the 2005 Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award. Once an editor at Grove Press, Sorrentino taught at Stanford University before returning to his native Brooklyn.

WILLIAM TREVOR was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, and spent his childhood in provincial Ireland. He attended Trinity College, Dublin. He is a member of the Irish Academy of Letters and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A highly acclaimed short-story writer, his notable collections include
The Collected Stories, Two Lives, After Rain, The Hill Bachelors
, and most recently
Cheating at Canasta
. His novels include
Felicia’s Journey
and
The Story of Lucy Gault
. He received the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction in 1996.

PERMISSIONS

Poems II and III from
Catullus: The Complete Poems
translated by Guy Lee (Oxford University Press, 1991), by permission of Oxford University Press.

“First Love and Other Sorrows” from
First Love and Other Sorrows: Stories
by Harold Brodkey, copyright © 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1964 by Ellen Brodkey. Reprinted here by permission of Henry Holt and Company LLC.

“The Lady with the Little Dog,” translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, copyright © 2000 by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky,
The Selected Short Stories of Anton Chekhov
by Anton Chekhov, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Used by permission of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

“Love” from
The Collected Stories
by Grace Paley, copyright © 1994 by Grace Paley. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, LLC.

“A Rose for Emily” from
Collected Stories of William Faulkner
by William Faulkner, copyright © 1930 and renewed 1958 by William Faulkner. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.

“Dirty Wedding” from
Jesus’ Son
by Denis Johnson, copyright © 1992 by Denis Johnson. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, LLC.

“Natasha” from
Natasha
by David Bezmozgis, copyright © 2005 by David Bezmozgis. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, LLC, and HarperCollins Canada.

“Some Other, Better Otto” from
Twilight of the Superheroes
by Deborah Eisenberg, copyright © 2006 by Deborah Eisenberg. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, LLC.

“The Hitchhiking Game” from
Laughable Loves
by Milan Kundera, translated by Suzanne Rappaport, copyright © 1974 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

“Lovers of Their Time” from
The Collected Stories of William Trevor
by William Trevor, copyright © 1978 by William Trevor. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

“Mouche” from
Selected Short Stories
by Guy de Maupassant, translated and introduced by Roger Colet, copyright © 1971 by Roger Colet. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

“The Moon in Its Flight” from
The Moon in Its Flight
by Gilbert Sorrentino, copyright © 1971, 2004 by Gilbert Sorrentino. Reprinted with the permission of Coffee House press,
www.coffeehousepress.org
.

“Spring in Fialta” from
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
by Vladimir Nabokov, copyright © 1995 by Dimitri Nabokov. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

“How to Be an Other Woman” from
Self-Help
by Lorrie Moore, copyright © 1985 by M. L. Moore. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

“Yours” from
Tell Me: 30 Stories
by Mary Robinson, Counterpoint 2002, copyright © Mary Robinson.

“The Bad Thing” from
The Wonders of the Invisible World
by David Gates, copyright © 1999 by David Gates. Used be permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

“First Love” from
Collected Stories
by Isaac Babel, translated by David McDuff, copyright © 1994 by David McDuff. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

“Tonka” from
Five Women
by Robert Musil, copyright © 1966 by Dell Publishing, a division of Random House Inc. Used by permission of Dell Publishing, a division of Random House, Inc.

“Jon” from
In Persuasion Nation: Stories
by George Saunders, copyright © 2006 by George Saunders. Used by permission of Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

“Red Rose, White Rose” from
Love in a Fallen City
by Eileen Chang copyright © 1947, translated by Karen S. Kingsbury copyright © 2007. Published by New York Review Books Classics. Used by permission of Robin Straus Agency, Inc., acting in conjunction with Andrew Nurnberg Associates, Ltd.

“Fireworks” from
Rock Springs
by Richard Ford, copyright © 1987 by Richard Ford. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

“We Didn’t” from
I Sailed with Magellan
by Stuart Dybek, copyright © 2003 by Stuart Dybek. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, LLC.

“Something That Needs Nothing” reprinted with the permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from
No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories
by Miranda July. Copyright © 2007 by Miranda July. All rights reserved.

“The Magic Barrel” from
The Magic Barrel
by Bernard Malamud. Copyright © 1950, 1958, renewed 1977, 1986 by Bernard Malamud. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, LLC.

“What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” from
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
by Raymond Carver, copyright © 1974, 1976, 1078, 1980, 1981 by Raymond Carver. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

“Innocence” from
Stories in an Almost Classical Mode
by Harold Brodkey, copyright © 1963, 1965, 1968, 1969, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1983, 1985, and 1988 by Harold Brodkey. Reprinted by permission of International Creative Management, Inc., and the Harold Brodkey Estate.

“The Bear Came Over the Mountain” from
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories
by Alice Munro, copyright © 2001 by Alice Munro. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., and McClellan & Stuart Ltd.

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Credits

Designed by Leah Carlson-Stanisic

Cover design by Jarrod Taylor

Copyright

MY MISTRESS’S SPARROW IS DEAD. Introduction and selection Copyright © 2008 by Jeffrey Eugenides.
A
ll rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.