Prize Stories 1986: The O. Henry Awards

The tellers of these 19 tales constitute a pantheon of rising or already established young writers, including first-prize winner Alice Walker, with ""Kindred Spirits,'' a vignette about a young black woman returning home after divorcing her white husband, and special-award winner Joyce Carol Oates, whose ``Master Race'' recounts in spare and elegant prose the sexual assault in Germany of a youngish American academic by a black G.I. In many ways more compelling, however, are Bobbie Ann Mason's ``Big Bertha Stories,'' a blinding insight into the mind of a man hounded by memories of Vietnam; John L'Heureux's ``The Comedian,'' a metaphysical tour de force about a standup comic who becomes pregnant with a baby whose blithe in utero singing drowns out the arguments for abortion; Stephanie Vaughn's ``Kid MacArthur,'' a boy growing up in an army family, learning to use guns before pencils, reluctantly going off to war and returning a militant vegetarian, shrinking from any violation of flesh. These and several other stories capture and involve the reader: they are written with grace, authority and bitter knowledge, and despite their verbal brevity cast a long shadow that is deeply etched and hard to dispel. BOMC selection. (April)