Like James Joyce, Dr. Williams has his characters talk with such a native freshness that the sound is never obtrusive. It is a pure speech because it is so richly characteristic, and its utter realism is therefore deeper, more meaningful than the violent accuracy of naturalism.

Alfred Kazin, New York Times

The Farmers’ Daughters

Fiction by William Carlos Williams

For forty-two years the poet William Carlos Williams was a practicing physician in a typical American town in New Jersey. And, as Van Wyck Brooks points out in his introduction to this collection of Dr. Williams’ stories, the doctor “did not treat a man [only] as something to which surgery and drugs applied” but “as material for a work of art.” This point of view produced a dozen or more stories which are true masterpieces, and in all of Williams’ stories there is a vitality and an immediacy unique in American fiction. This volume gathers together fifty-two stories from earlier books, The Knife of the Times (1932), Life Along the Passaic River (1938), and Make Light of It (1950), and includes as well the great long story, The Farmers’ Daughters, completed in 1956.

Paperback(published Jun, 01 1961)

ISBN
9780811202282
Portrait of William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams

One of the greatest poets of the 20th Century, William Carlos Williams is “The cornerstone of New Directions”

Like James Joyce, Dr. Williams has his characters talk with such a native freshness that the sound is never obtrusive. It is a pure speech because it is so richly characteristic, and its utter realism is therefore deeper, more meaningful than the violent accuracy of naturalism.

Alfred Kazin, New York Times