The Doctor Stories is an eclectic collection of 13 works of short fiction by William Carlos Williams, compiled by Robert Coles and published by New Directions Publishing in 1984.Gish, 1989 p.199Shapiro, 1984: "Thirteen of those stories are direct accounts of his experiences as a doctor."
The stories are representative of Williams' autobiographical physician-patient narratives that characterize much of his short fiction.Gish, 1989 p. 66: ""Williams appears again, quite autobiographically, as the physician-writer, the narrator" of these medical encounters.
Stories The works are listed under the collection in which they first appeared.Gish, 1989 p. 199-200: Selected Bibliography And: p. 80, p. 84: See here for Blast issue stories and dates.
Those stories originally published in Blast are indicated with date of issue.
from The Knife of the Times and Other Stories (1932):
"Mind and Body" "Old Doc Rivers"
from Life Along the Passaic River (1938):
"A Face of Stone" "Jean Beicke" (Blast issue no. 1, 1933) "The Use of Force" (Blast issue no. 2, 1934) "The Girl With a Pimply Face" (Blast issue no. 4, 1934) "A Night in June" (Blast issue no. 5, 1934) "Danse Pseudomacabre"
from Make Light of It: Collected Stories of William Carlos Williams (1950):
"The Paid Nurse" "Ancient Gentility" "Verbal Transcriptions: 6 A.M" "The Insane" "Comedy Entombed: 1930"
Poems "The Birth" "Le Médecin malgré lui" "Dead Baby" "A Cold Front" "The Poor" "Too Close"
"The Practice" (chapter from The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams)
Afterword: "My Father, The Doctor" (by William Eric Williams)
Critical analysis
Writing in The New York Times, poet and literary critic Harvey Shapiro comments on how the theme of the stories emerges directly from their composition:
Footnotes
Sources Gish, Robert F. 1989. William Carlos Williams: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twayne Publishers, Boston, Massassachusetts. G. K. Hall & Co. Gordon Weaver, General Editor. Ross, Claudia. 2018. Surgical Prose: On William Carlos Williams' "The Doctor Stories." Cleveland Review of Books, September 25, 2018. https://www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/2018/09/25/2018-9-25-doctorstories Retrieved 25 July 2023. Shapiro, Harvey. 1984. Books of The Times; A Physician's Stories in The New York Times Archives. The New York Times, October 20, 1984. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/20/books/books-of-the-times-a-physician-s-stories.html Retrieved 30 July 2023.