Louis Zukofsky: Collected Fiction

Author: Louis Zukofsky

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press (1997)

Best known as one of the most significant poets of the 20th century, Louis Zukofsky was also an accomplished writer of fiction, all of which is collected here for the first time. Included is his only novel, Little (1970), which John Leonard in the New York Times called “an odd, playful, thoroughly charming novel about a child prodigy.” (The novel is very autobiographical and Zukofsky’s son, violin virtuoso, Paul Zukofsky, has written an afterword for this edition.)

Also included are the four stories comprising It Was, published in 1961 in a limited edition and virtually unobtainable for years. The stories range from the brief title story in which a writer struggles with the composition of the perfect sentence to the novella-length “Ferdinand,” which Guy Davenport praised in the New York Times Book Review as “a finely tuned story from a sensibility of extraordinary range and skill.”