The Workshop: Seven Decades of the Iowa Writers Workshop - 43 Stories, Recollections, & Essays on Iowa's Place in Twentieth-Century

""For all its impact on twentieth-century American Literature, the Iowa Workshop must be acknowledged not only for the great writers connected with it but for the writers not connected with it,"" notes Grimes, a novelist and Iowa alum, in one of a spate of new books celebrating the Iowa M.F.A. program. Such disclaimers aside, this hefty volume, culled from the work of students and faculty, amply confirms the program's preeminent place in American writing. Though chronologically apt, it is dangerous to open such a collection with Wallace Stegner and Flannery O'Connor: there's not much room for improvement. But Grimes does an admirable job in compiling a diverse cast and a wide range of work. Standouts include Stuart Dybek's densely lyrical fable of love and fire, ""Paper Lantern""; Denis Johnson's ""Work,"" a pitch-perfect tale of a heroin junkie, with an unforgettable last line; Andre Dubus's gorgeously sad ""Falling in Love,"" about a wounded veteran and the young actress who captures his heart; and two very different stories about children and the complicated ways they revolve around their parents, Jayne Anne Phillips's ""Alma"" and Pinckney Benedict's ""The Sutton Pie Safe."" If there is a misstep, it is the ""Recollections"" section, in which graduates complain about scalding critiques, drop famous names or recount their own accomplishments. A warm elegy to Richard Yates, a beloved teacher at Iowa in 1967, as famous for his trenchant fiction as for his incessant smoking and poor mental health, is also included. Yates, we are told, ""thought his obituary would mention only Revolutionary Road,"" his devastating novel about failure, published in 1961. How fitting it would have been, therefore, to reprint one of Yates's incisive short stories. (Oct.)