Complete Stories & Other Writings

This exhaustive repackaging of Stafford’s richly satisfying 1970 Pulitzer Prize–winning collection is supplemented by 16 short stories and four nonfiction works. Stafford’s prose is lyrically entrancing, anchored by a boundless vocabulary and taking readers through Europe, the East Coast, and to Adams, Colo., a “semi-fictitious” version of Boulder. Her characters—often out of their element, by choice or by fate—seek a sense of belonging but rarely find one. Standout stories are by turns cautiously hopeful (“The Mountain Day”), wistfully ambiguous (“A Country Love Story”), deliciously creepy (“The Bleeding Heart”), and charmingly innocent (“The Violet Rock”). Less enjoyable is “A Mother in History,” Stafford’s lengthy interview of Marguerite Oswald, mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, who claims to have (but can’t disclose) evidence exonerating her son and says she has “been persecuted and have suffered just like my son.” Of the three concluding essays, only the last—a speech delivered in July 1952 at her alma mater, the University of Colorado—truly resonates, offering insights on her career, a critique of the literary profession, and a final assertion almost unthinkable today: “keeping oneself before the public eye is, I think, totally inessential.” The most familiar work remains her best, and this burly tome offers a worthy occasion to rediscover it. (Apr.)