Big Cat : a collection of short stories

Abstract

Big Cat: A collection of short stories comprises Big Cat, a collection of thirteen short stories, and a critical commentary entitled ‘The challenges of realism in the work of Tobias Wolff, Alice Munro and John Cheever, and in my own practice’. The critical commentary consists of close readings of three short stories, ‘An Episode in the Life of Professor Brooke’ by Tobias Wolff, ‘Silence’ by Alice Munro and ‘The Swimmer’ by John Cheever, and a final chapter which analyses the stories of Big Cat and reflects on the creative process that produced them. The overall purpose is to illuminate and reflect on my own fiction, situating it in the context of literary realism. Referring to the critical work of Raymond Tallis and James Wood in particular, I argue that realism has been wrongly characterised as artistically irrelevant and outmoded and that, on the contrary, it represents the highest and most consistent challenge of fiction. I use the close readings of Wolff, Munro and Cheever to demonstrate this, and trace the development of my own work in relation to this same challenge.