A Story Teller's Story

442 pages. Octavo (8 1/4" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's brown pebbled cloth with yellow lettering to spine and cover in original pictorial jacket. First editor. A Story Teller's Story is a memoir as such, but anyone who has read anything by Anderson will realise that we aren't necessarily going to get a straightforward autobiography. Anderson was an author that excelled in character studies and short stories; his style is almost impressionistic, where objective details can get a bit blurred or fuzzy; but he really excels in getting inside the characters' heads. Even when he tried to write longer works Anderson seemed unable to stop it from fragmenting into tales and anecdotes, and I'm guessing that for many people this is one aspect of his style that they find annoying. Winesburg, Ohio is the best example of this as sometimes it's described as a novel and other times as a collection of short stories. Likewise A Story Teller's Story soon fragments into episodic tales and recollections from his childhood to the period when he was writing the book. He starts to tell tales from different periods as well and it becomes a glorious, jumbled-up mess of memoir, essay and character studies. Condition: Light edge wear. Jacket reinforced with cozo, spine ends chipped with loss, edge wear with closed tears, spine age toned else a very good copy in like jacket.