The Watchful Gods and Other Stories
(publ. Random House)
The Watchful Gods and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by Walter Van Tilburg Clark published in 1950. Clark is best known for his first novel, the classic Western The Ox-Bow Incident. The book brings together eight stories and one novella (the title story). Three of the stories had already appeared in the annual anthology of O. Henry Award winning stories, most notably "The Wind and the Snow of Winter" which was selected by that anthology in 1945 as their "first-place winner."[1] Since this book's publication, two other stories remain notable: "The Portable Phonograph" and "Hook" have both been widely anthologized since they were published.[2]
Contents
The stories in this book appear in the following sequence:
- "Hook"
- "The Wind and the Snow of Winter"
- "The Rapids"
- "The Anonymous"
- "The Buck in the Hills"*
- "Why Don't You Look Where You're Going?"*
- "The Indian Well"
- "The Fish Who Could Close His Eyes"
- "The Portable Phonograph"
- "The Watchful Gods"
Background
- Of the nine stories in this volume, "Hook" first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly; "The Wind and the Snow of Winter" and "The Portable Photograph" in The Yale Review; "The Rapids", "Why Don't You Look Where You're Going?", and "The Indian Well" in Accent; "The Anonymous" in The Virginia Quarterly Review; "The Buck in the Hills" in The Rocky Mountain Review; "The Fish Who Could Close His Eyes" in Tomorrow. The novella, "The Watchful Gods" is published here for the first time.
- Clark dedicated this book: for A.E. Hill.
Reception
The Portable Phonograph is a tale about the last survivors in the world after the total destruction of a war. The author gives clues and hints of this throughout the beginning by writing in a narrative voice and describing the scene in dark war-like terms. The characters are then introduced as a group of men huddled around a fire. One of them, a doctor has a portable phonograph.[3]
References
- ↑ http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/ohenry/0999/winnerslist.html
- ↑ The Watchful Gods and Other Stories, Random House (New York, NY), 1950. Reprinted, University of Nevada Press (Reno, NV), 2004. With a "Foreword" by Ann Ronald.
- ↑ "The Portable Phonograph". Studyworld.com. Retrieved 2010-08-24.