The legendary writer's first collection in more than ten years, a literary event of the highest order
Joy Williams has been celebrated as a master of the short story for four decades, her renown passing from one generation to the next even in the shifting landscape of contemporary writing. And at long last the incredible scope of her singular achievement is put on display: thirty-three stories drawn from three much-lauded collections, and another thirteen appearing here for the first time in book form. Forty-six stories in all, far and away the most comprehensive volume in her long career, showcasing her crisp, elegant prose, her dark wit, and her uncanny ability to illuminate our world through characters and situations that feel at once peculiar and foreign and disturbingly familiar. Virtually all American writers have their favorite Joy Williams stories, as do many readers of all ages, and each one of them is available here in this definitive collection.
"The Visiting Privilege is a fifty-course, full-tilt tasting menu of misanthropy and guile…[and] solidifies her position as a thorny American writer of the first rank…This is a writer who sees deeply into the hearts of things [and her] stories transmit a deep feeling for life's transience."
"The Visiting Privilege is…laced with Williams's trademark cutting wit, which provides a small release, as of steam escaping through a pressure valve, while also pushing the stories' dark absurdity."
"Immaculate artistry…[and] one of the most fearless, abyss-embracing literary projects our literature has seen."
"To read Joy Williams is to be arrested in a state of relentless awe and wonderment…[Her] preternatural intelligence, coupled with a scorching wit and an inability to bore or commit an unoriginal thought to the page, has made her a cult hero."
"The Visiting Privilege…doesn't have a single story, even a single paragraph, that's less than brilliant…Williams is quite possibly America's best living writer of short stories."
"When I was young I loved Joy Williams because I thought she was so hilarious. When I got older I loved her because she refused to look away."
"Jolting, tonic, and valiant in their embrace of the ludicrous and the tragic, Williams' masterful stories belong in every fiction collection."
"Four dozen stories by one of the form's greatest practitioners…If you want to see how the pros do it-or simply want to read some of the best stories written today-you need look no further."
"Williams delivers a powerful jolt, as in the recent 'Brass,' about an Arizona family facing tragedy. Throughout, her characters seem familiar yet unknowable, and she's brilliantly original, whether depicting strange hospital visits, a teenager with a dying mother, or the death of a German shepherd."
