In the Autumn of the Year (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Joyce Carol Oates
- First Published: 1978
- Type of Work: Short story
- Genres: Short fiction
- Subjects: Memory, Love or romance, Poetry or poets, New England
- Locales: New England
“In the Autumn of the Year” received an O. Henry Award in 1979, a year after its first publication in The Bennington Review. Like many of Oates's stories, it tells of a single but important encounter between a man and a woman from different backgrounds and with different attitudes.
The protaonist, Eleanor Gerhardt, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, an articulate spinster suggestive of the nineteenth century American poet Emily Dickinson, who has come to a small New England college to accept an award. Her host for the visit is Benjamin Höller, a man she knew as a boy...
[The entire page is 663 words long]
