he short story is generally defined as a piece of prose fiction that can be read in one sitting. In the hands of a master like Lee Abbott, however, the short story becomes something more—a microcosmic view of the world of Everyman and Everywoman, where calamity, loneliness, haplessness and heartbreak are revealed with both painful authenticity and comic acceptance.
Short stories are often compared to snapshots, but in Abbott’s case the more apt analogy is to holograms. His best work presents fully realized, three-dimensional characters and settings that are as vivid as life itself. With a remarkable ear for dialogue and a seemingly limitless supply of humor, Abbott creates characters that jump off the page and take up permanent residence in our minds, where they continue to amuse and enlighten us long after we’ve finished reading.
A native and still part-time resident of New Mexico, Abbott places most of his stories in the American Southwest, the area he knows best. His tales almost always feature a few kooks and oddballs, to be sure, but for the most part the stories are populated by average folks engaged in the same quests we all pursue—looking for meaning in life, for understanding and, above all, for love. That Abbott chooses to present his protagonists’ tribulations in a comic light reminds us that absurdity is as much a part of the human condition as suffering or joy. Indeed, the confusions and missteps of his characters are often the most profound revelations of their humanity.
Abbott served on the faculty of the English department of Case Western Reserve University from 1976 to 1989, during which period he won one of his two O. Henry Awards and all three of his Pushcart Prizes. He earned the Cleveland Arts Prize for Literature in 1982. His collection, The Heart Never Fits Its Wanting, won the 1980 St. Lawrence Award for Fiction; he has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction; and his stories have been included in The Best American Short Stories and other anthologies. Currently, he divides his time between New Mexico and Columbus, Ohio, where he is professor of English and former director of the master of fine arts in creative writing program at The Ohio State University.
Novelist William Harrison calls Abbott “John Cheever’s true heir, our major American short story writer.” Fellow writer Max Apple says Abbott possesses “a unique voice, one of the best in contemporary fiction.” Both men are correct. Like Cheever, Abbott limns people and places with the precision of a watchmaker. And he does so in a style purely his own, at once straightforward, quirky, formally intelligent and unabashedly acrobatic.
Most of Abbott’s readers harbor a frustration that, in its way, is one of the highest compliments an author can receive. They would like to spend more time with his characters—perhaps share miseries over a beer or three in some dusty Southwest saloon, or just eavesdrop on a few more of their disjointed conversations. One measure of Lee Abbott’s talent is that his stories make such robust connections with readers. Another is that those same readers keep coming back for more, returning again and again as to a much-loved old friend who never ceases to delight with his ability to spin a yarn they’ve never heard before.
—Mark Gottlieb