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07 Jul 11 - 09:45 PM (#3183497) Subject: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Songwronger Hello everyone. I think I know how the search function works here, and I couldn't turn up any threads on "short stories." But I see threads on books and movies, so why not one about stories. I'm trying to get back into reading fiction and I make myself read an hour per night, one or two stories. Some of the better pieces I've come across lately: All the Young Men by Oliver La Farge His First Ball by Witi Ihimaera The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr The Fellow who Married the Maxill Girl by Ward Moore Frost Rides Alone by Horace McCoy The McCoy story may be in public domain and on the web somewhere. It's from a book called The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps. Cops and robbers stories from the 1920's, 30's and 40's. I'll add more to this list as I find other stories I think are worth mentioning. You might want to seek them out. I'd appreciate any recommendations on authors or stories. Just list them below. SW |
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07 Jul 11 - 09:59 PM (#3183499) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Janie Check out Ellen Gilchrist. |
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08 Jul 11 - 12:46 PM (#3183801) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: GUEST,999 Look up Alice Munro. |
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08 Jul 11 - 01:04 PM (#3183814) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: autolycus Wiki is great for lists. There are about 400 short story writers listed here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_short_story_authors |
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08 Jul 11 - 01:06 PM (#3183817) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: kendall Time and the Riddle by Howard Fast. 31 short Zen stories It is fascinating. |
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08 Jul 11 - 01:08 PM (#3183818) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: gnu I'll be darned if I can recall the name of my favourite... a Canuck. I am sure I still have the first book I bought when I was a lad. Hmmm... maybe not, though. >;-) The bluey won't work so... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Munro Worth a cut and paste. |
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08 Jul 11 - 01:24 PM (#3183833) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: John MacKenzie Not sure Alice Munro would appreciate that, Triple-9 |
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08 Jul 11 - 01:28 PM (#3183835) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: GUEST,999 Also "The Great Electrical Revolution" by Ken Mitchell. Darned near anything by Leacock. |
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08 Jul 11 - 02:25 PM (#3183864) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: GUEST,999 You are a sick man, MacKenzie. |
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08 Jul 11 - 02:31 PM (#3183871) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: John MacKenzie Yup Good innit? |
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08 Jul 11 - 03:06 PM (#3183889) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: gnu Leacock... great stuff. |
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08 Jul 11 - 03:13 PM (#3183895) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: bobad Raymond Carver, T.C. Boyle |
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08 Jul 11 - 08:28 PM (#3184061) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Joe_F Mark Twain, "The Mysterious Stranger" Chan Davis, "Adrift on the Policy Level" J. J. Coupling, "Period Piece" James Agee, "A Mother's Tale" E. M. Forster, "The Machine Stops" Avram Davidson, "No Fire Burns" Daniel Keyes, "Flowers for Algernon" Damon Knight, "The Country of the Kind" Shirley Jackson, "The Lottery" Thomas Mann, "Mario and the Magician" John Cheever, "The Enormous Radio" Robert A. Heinlein, "Universe" John Collier, "Witchs Money" |
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08 Jul 11 - 09:01 PM (#3184074) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: gnu Well, if we are gonna talk obvious check out a guy by the last name of Poe. I hear his heart was bigger than a swamp frog. That's about as literary as I git me son eh? |
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09 Jul 11 - 12:00 AM (#3184143) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Mrrzy Oh, for crying out loud. Saki! James Thurber! If I write a short story would it get its own thread or could I post it here? Also, how long does a story have to be to be a short story and not (what would you call it? A paragraph? A sentence? A page?) something else? At what length does it become a "novella" (if fiction) or is the distinction between novel and -lla obsolete, in which case, same question for novel? Can there be a short story that isn't fiction, or does the word "story" in the phrase determine it to be fiction? If no, then what do you call a short non-fiction piece? Now *this* is a Mudcat thread! |
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09 Jul 11 - 03:31 AM (#3184180) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: autolycus I've heard tell about O.Henry, Katherine Mansfield and read the Sherlock Holmes short stories of Conan Doyle nearly at a sitting. |
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09 Jul 11 - 03:59 AM (#3184187) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: John MacKenzie D H Lawrence John Steinbeck |
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09 Jul 11 - 06:03 AM (#3184224) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Max Johnson Some of Patrick O'Brien's short stories were collected under the title 'The Chian Wine'. Apparently he wasn't happy with them all, but I must say that I was. 'After Rain' by William Trevor. Beautifully crafted. 'The Illustrated Man' by Ray Bradbury. Classic SF. 'Declarations of War' by Len Deighton. Anti-War stories. 'No Comebacks' by Frederick Forsyth. Very slick - Classic FF. |
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09 Jul 11 - 06:08 AM (#3184225) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Max Johnson One of the best short stories I ever read was about a little girl having adventures with her invisible friend on the way to school. At the end it becomes clear that the story is being related by the invisible friend, sad when they arrive at the school and the girl must leave for a while. Can't remember where I read it - anyone recognise it? |
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09 Jul 11 - 06:29 AM (#3184232) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: John MacKenzie Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes |
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09 Jul 11 - 08:54 AM (#3184276) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: saulgoldie This has always been one of my favorites. I was "forced" to read it back in high school English class. Reload your coffee, and you'll be done reading before your cup runneth out. IRTNOG, by E.B. White (1938) Apropos of nothing but The Modern Condition (Long-Obtaining), an extremely short work of dystopian fiction: Along about 1920 it became apparent that more things were being written than people had time to read. That is to say, even if a man spent his entire time reading stories, articles, and news, as they appeared in books, magazines, and pamphlets, he fell behind. This was no fault of the reading public; on the contrary, readers made a real effort to keep pace with writers, and utilized every spare moment during their walking hours. They read while shaving in the morning and while waiting for trains and while riding on trains. They came to be a kind of tacit agreement among numbers of the reading public that when one person laid down the baton, someone else must pick it up; and so when a customer entered a barbershop, the barber would lay aside the Boston Evening Globe and the customer would pick up Judge; or when a customer appeared in a shoe-shining parlor, the bootblack would put away the racing form and the customer would open his briefcase and pull out The Sheik. So there was always somebody reading something. Motormen of trolley cars read while they waited on the switch. Errand boys read while walking from the corner of Thirty-ninth and Madison to the corner of Twenty-fifth and Broadway. Subway riders read constantly, even when they were in a crushed, upright position in which nobody could read his own paper but everyone could look over the next man s shoulder. People passing newsstands would pause for a second to read headlines. Men in the back seats of limousines, northbound on Lafayette Street in the evening, switched on tiny dome lights and read the Wall Street Journal. Women in semi-detached houses joined circulating libraries and read Vachel Lindsay while the baby was taking his nap. There was a tremendous volume of staff that had to be read. Writing began to give off all sorts of by-products. Readers not only had to read the original works of a writer, but they also had to scan what the critics said, and they had to read the advertisements reprinting the favorable criticisms, and they had to read the book chat giving some rather odd piece of information about the writer such as that he could write only when he had a gingersnap in his mouth. It all took time. Writers gained steadily, and readers lost. Then along came the Reader's Digest. That was a wonderful idea. It digested everything that was being written in leading magazine, and put new hope in the hearts of readers. Here, everybody thought, was the answer to the problem. Readers, badly discouraged by the rate they had been losing ground, took courage and set out once more to keep abreast of everything that was being written in the world. For a while they seemed to hold their own. But soon other digests and short cuts appeared, like Time, and The Best Short Stories of 1927, and the new Five-Foot Shelf, and Wells' Outline of History, and Newsweek, and Fiction Parade. By 1939 there were one hundred and seventy-three digests, or short cuts, in America, and even if a man read nothing but digests of selected material, and read continuously, he couldn't keep up. It was obvious that something more concentrated than digests would have to come along to take up the slack. It did. Someone conceived the idea of digesting the digests. He brought out a little publication called Pith, no bigger than your thumb. It was a digest of Reader's Digest, Time, Concise Spicy Tales, and the daily news summary of the New York Herald Tribune. Everything was so extremely condensed that a reader could absorb everything that was being published in the world in about forty-five minutes. It was a tremendous financial success, and of course other publications sprang up, aping it: one called Core, another called Nub, and a third called Nutshell. Nutshell folded up, because, an expert said, the name was too long; but half a dozen others sprang up to take its place, and for another short period readers enjoyed a breathing spell and managed to stay abreast of writers. In fact, at one juncture, soon after the appearance of Nub, some person of unsound business tendencies felt that the digest rage had been carried too far and that there would be room in the magazine field for a counterdigest, a publication devoted to restoring literary bulk. He raised some money and issued a huge thing called Amplifo, undigesting the digests. In the second issue the name had been changed to Regurgitans. The third issue never reached the stands. Pith and Core continued to gain, and became so extraordinarily profitable that hundreds of other digests of digests came into being. Again readers felt themselves slipping. Distillate came along, a superdigest which condensed a Hemingway novel to the single word "Bang!" and reduced a long article about the problem of the unruly child to the words "Hit him." You would think that with such drastic condensation going on, the situation would have resolved itself and that an adjustment would have been set up between writer and reader. Unfortunately, writers still forged ahead. Digests and superdigests, because of their rich returns, became as numerous as the things digested. It was not until 1960, when a Stevens Tech graduate named Abe Shapiro stepped in with and immense ingenious formula, that a permanent balance was established between writers and readers. Shapiro was a sort of Einstein. He had read prodigiously; and as he thought back over all the things that he had ever read, he became convinced that it would be possible to express them in mathematical quintessence. He was positive that he could take everything that was written and published each day, and reduce it to a six-letter word. He worked out a secret formula and began posting daily bulletins, telling his result. Everything that had been written during the first day of his formula came down to the word IRTNOG. The second day, everything reduced to EFSITZ. People accepted these mathematical distillations; and strangely enough, or perhaps not strangely at all, people were thoroughly satisfied, which would lead one to believe that what readers really craved was not so much the contents of books, magazines, and papers as the assurance that they were not missing anything. Shapiro found that his bulletin board was inadequate, so he made a deal with a printer and issued a handbill at five o clock every afternoon, giving the Word of the Day. It caught hold instantly. The effect on the populace was salutary. Readers, once they felt confident that they had one-hundred-per-cent coverage, were able to discard the unnatural habit of focusing their eyes on words every instant. Freed of the exhausting consequences of their hopeless race against writers, they found their health returning, along with a certain tranquility and a more poised way of living. There was a marked decrease in stomach ulcers, which, doctors said, had been the result of allowing the eye to jump nervously from one newspaper headline to another after a heavy meal. With the dwindling of reading, writing fell off. Forests which had been plundered for newsprint, grew tall again; droughts were unheard of; and people dwelt in slow comfort, in a green world. |
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09 Jul 11 - 12:00 PM (#3184399) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: GUEST,999 "The Sentry" by Fredrick(sp?) Brown. It's a gem, imo. |
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09 Jul 11 - 08:16 PM (#3184626) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Joe_F Oh, yes, John McK., absolutely, "Flowers for Algernon". And Bret Harte, "The Luck of Roaring Camp". |
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09 Jul 11 - 08:43 PM (#3184636) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Bill D "Nightfall" by Isaac Asimov and if you can stand a slightly longer story, "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" by Roger Zelazny, which I have long thought should be made into a movie. |
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10 Jul 11 - 11:11 AM (#3184852) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: MGM·Lion Can't believe that nobody has mentioned the great Damon Runyon. ~Michael~ |
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10 Jul 11 - 08:02 PM (#3185133) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Songwronger Hey thanks for the input. Lots of titles and authors here. Some I recognize, others I don't. I'll be researching the list. I have a bunch of anthologies I'm reading from and I'm picking up single-author books by people like Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Raymond Carver, Roald Dahl, V.S. Naipaul, T.C. Boyle, Robert E. Howard, Cornell Woolrich, and so on. I've read most of the Hemingway and O'Connor stories, but not many of the others. Looking forward to them. Some of the consistently good/enjoyable writers in my experience-- Isaac Singer Nathaniel Hawthorne Katherine Anne Porter P. K. Dick Conrad Maugham Salinger Joyce Faulkner I need to find a copy of Go Down, Moses by Faulkner. I read the four-part version of The Bear years ago, and I saw somewhere that the Moses book of stories has the original five-part version. The Bear is one of the most amazing pieces of writing I've ever come across. Novella length, I believe. Regarding lengths, flash fiction is generally anything up to 1000 words. Short story 1000-7500. Novelette 7500-15,000. Novella 15-40k. Novel 40k+. At any rate, continuing with my plan to mention the better stories I come across, the other evening I read one called The Haunted Palace, by Isabel Allende. Excellent. Reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. |
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10 Jul 11 - 11:24 PM (#3185206) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: GUEST,Josepp The Willows by Algernon Blackwood The Willows The Spider by Hanns Heinz Ewers The Horror of the Heights by Arthur Conan Doyle The Yellow Sign by Robert W. Chambers Suffer the Little Children by Stephen King The Ash Tree by M.R. James Grab Bags Are Dangerous by Frank Belknap Long The Brain-Eaters by Robert Bloch They Bite by Anthony Boucher The Incomplete Corpse by Jack Webb Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft (novella) The Terror by Arthur Machen (novella) |
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11 Jul 11 - 03:45 PM (#3185629) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: GUEST,HiLo Grand thread..I love short stories. So, Can anyone tell me who wrote the wonderful story "The Ballroom". I would love to re read it but cannot recall who wrote it. |
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11 Jul 11 - 09:06 PM (#3185779) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: josepp Anyone read "The Cocoon" by John B.L. Goodwin? |
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12 Jul 11 - 08:26 AM (#3185996) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Dave Hanson Once upon a time, Jack the sailior returnd after roaming the seven seas for seven years, he met his old truelove Doreen and they settled down in a cottage in Filey and lived happily ever after. copywrite retained Dave H |
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12 Jul 11 - 09:37 AM (#3186038) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: kendall A man died and found himself in the most beautiful place he could imagine. Nothing but beauty, peace and quiet. While he was drinking it all in, suddenly an entity appeared and told the man that it was his guardian angel, and that he could have anything he wanted, in any amount for as long as he wanted it. The man pigged out on food, booze, gambling and sex. That went on for 6 months and the man made a proper fool of himself. But, eventually, he came to his senses and realized that his existence was worthless. Calling upon his guardian he said, "This is all very nice, and I have enjoyed it all very much, but I need something to do that has some value. Give me a job." His Guardian said, "That is the one thing you can never have." In despair the man howled"What? you mean I must spend eternity with nothing worthwhile to do"? Guardian says "I'm afraid so." Man said, "I may as well be in Hell." Guardian said, "Where do you think you are."? This is one of my favorite short stories.Without goals and challenge we are worthless. |
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12 Jul 11 - 09:43 AM (#3186047) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: GUEST,999 "The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door." —Fredric Brown |
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13 Jul 11 - 07:16 PM (#3187091) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Songwronger I read some vengeance stories once, and two really stuck in my memory. A Vendetta by Guy de Maupassant. Hop-Frog by E. A. Poe. A Vendetta is only about 1700 words. Well worth the effort to read. Hop-Frog has a very memorable ending. There was a third one, I think by Saki, that was in the public domain. It concerned a man who killed a cat and how some children made him atone. Can't recall the name of the story. |
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20 Jul 11 - 10:03 PM (#3191753) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Songwronger The Penance by Saki. An excellent revenge story. A few days ago I read Red Wind, by Raymond Chandler. Novella length. Amazing. 1938. A Phillip Marlowe story. The dark guy took a week to fall down. He stumbled, caught himself, waved one arm, stumbled again. His hat fell off, and then he hit the floor with his face. After he hit it he might have been poured concrete for all the fuss he made. The drunk slid down off the stool and scooped his dimes into a pocket and slid towards the door. He turned sideways, holding the gun across his body. I didn't have a gun. I hadn't thought I needed one to buy a glass of beer.... Read a really funny story called Gertrude the Governor by Stephen Leacock. It has one of the funniest paragraphs I've ever come across. The two were destined to meet. Nearer and nearer they came. And then still nearer. Then for one brief moment they met. As they passed, Gertrude raised her head and directed towards the young nobleman two eyes so eye-like in their expression as to be absolutely circular, while Lord Ronald directed towards the occupant of the dogcart a gaze so gaze-like that nothing but a gazelle, or a gas-pipe, could have emulated its intensity. Read a story called B. Traven is Alive and Well in Cuernavaca, by Rudolfo Anaya. Excllent. First-rate writing. I think it would be classified as Magical Realism. Read one by Elizabeth George, mystery writer. A man's convinced his wife is cheating on him with his brother. He arranges an alibi and sneaks home to kill her (strangle her with a sash at the front door, to make it look like an outsider did it), and when she answers he violently kills her. Does a quick, efficient job. Then the light clicks on and people yell Surprise! His wife and brother were simply arranging a party for him. The partygoers (among them the mayor and the chief of police) are rather surprised themselves, seeing him at the door on top of his dead wife. And these are some of the stories I've read, lately. Just keeping a list of the good ones. |
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21 Jul 11 - 03:57 AM (#3191835) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity once upon a time came THE END. GfS Short enough? |
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21 Jul 11 - 06:46 AM (#3191890) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: kendall Shortest poem in history titled "Fleas" Adam had 'em. |
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21 Jul 11 - 08:36 AM (#3191932) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Dave Hanson It was a dark stormy night and the rain came down in torrents, so we stayed in and watched the telly. Dave H |
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21 Jul 11 - 08:38 AM (#3191934) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: John MacKenzie I've just about reached breaking point, he snapped. Adrian Henri |
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21 Jul 11 - 02:22 PM (#3192121) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: gnu AHA! I just started to read this thread again and the name came to me in an instant... Gregory Clark! Wiki... "Gregory (Greg) Clark, OC, OBE, MC (25 September 1892 – 3 February 1977) was a Canadian war veteran, journalist, and humorist. Both before and after World War I, Clark worked for the Toronto Star. After the war, he soon became a leading correspondent and reporter. At the Toronto Star, Clark befriended and mentored a young Ernest Hemingway, who said that Clark was the best writer on the paper. In later life Hemingway called Clark one of the finest modern short story writers in the English language." There ya go eh? |
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22 Jul 11 - 12:28 AM (#3192428) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity kendall:"Shortest poem in history titled "Fleas" Adam had 'em." Peeved Eve Wink, GfS |
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22 Jul 11 - 09:50 AM (#3192654) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: clueless don Speaking of short stories - For years, I have wondered about a story that I read in my high school American Literature textbook, back in my junior year (1965-66 school year.) Well, yesterday I finally described everything I could remember about the story to the BookSleuth forum at ABEbooks (http://forums.abebooks.com/abesleuthcom), and now I have it - "Of Missing Persons" by Jack Finney. I recommend it! Don |
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24 Jul 11 - 09:24 PM (#3194654) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Songwronger I'm a Fool, by Sherwood Anderson. Good story. He's best known for a short story collection called Winesburg, Ohio. Also, I just read a synopsis of a play written in 1902 by James M. Barrie (of Peter Pan fame). The play's called The Admirable Crichton. Sounds hilarious. About an aristocratic British family that's marooned on an island after a shipwreck. Their butler, Crichton, is the most capable of the party and rises to become Lord of the island. I haven't read a play in years but that one's next on my list. Looks like it's on Gutenberg. |
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25 Jul 11 - 06:11 PM (#3195309) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Ed T On Being Found Out |
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26 Jul 11 - 08:22 PM (#3196212) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Songwronger A Conflagration Artist, by Bradley Denton. Excellent story. It's from the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, Eighth Annual Collection, edited by Datlow and Windling. Haven't come across a bad story in it yet. |
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27 Jul 11 - 12:53 AM (#3196326) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Zhenya Island - The Collected Stories of Canadian writer Alistair MacLeod. Sixteen stories, and all of them good. |
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28 Jul 11 - 12:45 AM (#3197061) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: LadyJean If you want a good laugh you might like: The Open Window by Saki Tobermory also by Saki Gabriel Earnest likewise by Saki or; The Story of Webster by P.G Wodehouse Mulliner's Buck U Uppo by P.G. Wodehouse Just about anything by Wodehouse. I don't play golf. I don't know anything about golf. But his golf stories make me laugh. The Havoc of Havelock by Gerald Durrell The Night the Bed Fell on Father The Night the Ghost Got In, both by James Thurber. |
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28 Jul 11 - 03:58 AM (#3197100) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Will Fly Some other writers worth reading (in translation unless you have the gift of languages): Guy de Maupassant Alexander Pushkin And don't forget M.R. James for ghost stories... ... and the whimsical pieces and pastiches by S.J. Perelman. |
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02 Aug 11 - 07:31 PM (#3200529) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Songwronger J.G. Ballard. I read an entertaining story by him a few days ago. Called The Index. The story consists of an "Editor's Note" explaining that the following index is all that's left of the autobiography of one HRH. Says he was a famous man, hobnobbed, etc. Then comes the index, a list of names with notes next to them. HRH advised lots and of famous people. Presidents, prime ministers, actors, astronauts. Made Gandhi lose his temper. Introduced Hemingway to James Joyce. It's hinted at early on that HRH loved the ladies, but there are no notes next to the names of people like Barbra Stanwyck, Greta Garbo and so on. A really amusing story. |
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21 Aug 11 - 10:06 PM (#3210634) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Songwronger Just read "Three O'Clock," by Cornell Woolrich. Suspense story. One of the best I've ever come across. A lot of Woolrich's stories were adapted for radio dramas in the 40's. And Rear Window, Hitchcock's movie, was taken from a Woolrich story. |
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22 Aug 11 - 11:39 AM (#3210913) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Jim Dixon I once did some research to determine what were the most frequently anthologized short stories. This list can't be regarded as definitive, because, of course, I couldn't examine every anthology that's ever been published, but I did examine a lot of them. And my list is probably slanted toward American short stories, because that's where I did my research. And it may be a bit out of date, since I did the research maybe 20 years ago. Anyway, here's what I came up with: All of these stories appear in at least 5 anthologies: Sherwood Anderson, "The Egg" James Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues" Ambrose Bierce, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" Willa Cather, "Paul's Case" Joseph Conrad, "Heart of Darkness" [some would classify this as a novel, but it does appear in anthologies] Stephen Crane, "The Blue Hotel" Stephen Crane, "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat" Ralph Ellison, "Battle Royal" [which I think is actually an excerpt from his novel, "Invisible Man", but it stands on its own] Ralph Ellison, "King of the Bingo Game" [ditto?] William Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily" William Faulkner, "Barn Burning" William Faulkner, "That Evening Sun" F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Babylon Revisited" Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" Nathaniel Hawthorne, "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Minister's Black Veil" Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown" Ernest Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants" Shirley Jackson, "The Lottery" Henry James, "The Beast in the Jungle" Henry James, "The Real Thing" Sarah Orne Jewett, "A White Heron" James Joyce, "A Little Cloud" James Joyce, "Araby" James Joyce, "The Dead" Franz Kafka, "A Hunger Artist" D. H. Lawrence, "The Horse-Dealer's Daughter" D. H. Lawrence, "The Rocking-Horse Winner" Jack London, "To Build a Fire" Herman Melville, "Bartleby the Scrivener" Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" Flannery O'Connor, "Everything that Rises Must Converge" Joyce Carol Oates, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Grace Paley, "A Conversation with My Father" Edgar Allen Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado" Edgar Allen Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher" Katherine Anne Porter, "Flowering Judas" Katherine Anne Porter, "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" John Steinbeck, "The Chrysanthemums" James Thurber, "The Catbird Seat" Leo Tolstoy, "The Death of Ivan Ilych" Mark Twain, "The Notorious* Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" [* Some versions have "Celebrated"] John Updike, "A & P" Eudora Welty, "Why I Live at the P. O." Richard Wright, "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" |
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19 Sep 11 - 07:46 PM (#3225824) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Songwronger Really nice list. Those that I've read certainly deserve their wide distribution. A lot of anthologists now pride themselves on collecting "other masterpieces" by well-known writers, but it would be hard to improve on the list above. Someone should do a "most anthologized" collection and include those. It would be in perpetual reprint. Probably cost a fortune to acquire all the rights. Read a story called "Arena" yesterday, by Frederic Brown. He wrote a lot a pulp sci-fi and detective fiction back in the 40's and 50's. Someone on Amazon said, "'Arena' served as the inspiration for the Star Trek episode of the same name, but the savior of humanity confronts a much more formidable task than Captain Kirk did." It's a really good story. Sonofagun. Just looked for "Arena" at gutenberg.org and saw that Michael Hart, the founder of gutenberg.org recently died. He created eBooks. Michael S. Hart obituary. |
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19 Sep 11 - 11:06 PM (#3225897) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: MGM·Lion There's a v short story mentioned above by Fredric Brown. He is also responsible for the one about the computer, asked if there was a God, replying 'There is now.' Still no agreement to my post above about Damon Runyon, imo one of the great kings of the genre, along with Saki, Thurber et al. Anyone else rate him as I do? ~M~ BTW, talking of Thurber, ~ pedantry alert! ~ the companion story to 'The Night The Ghost Got In' is called simply 'The Night The Bed Fell' ~~ NOT, as frequently misquoted [e.g. above] 'The Night The Bed Fell |
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19 Sep 11 - 11:33 PM (#3225906) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Songwronger Damon Runyon was definitely a great short story writer. They did a radio program based on his stories in 1949. The Damon Runyon Theatre. Captures Runyon's style of prose very well. |
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20 Sep 11 - 05:27 AM (#3225976) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: MGM·Lion Re Thurber ~~ The Catbird Seat v good, indeed; but not IMO any better than The Greatest Man In The World, or The Unicorn In The Garden (& some of the other Fables For Our Time), or {pity so well-known as an archetypical antonomasia & Danny Kayes's witty but not quite on-the-button film} The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, or the terrifying The Kerb In The Sky; & I'll probably think of a few more candidates. ~M~ |
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20 Sep 11 - 08:15 AM (#3226030) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Bert The Loaded Dog by Henry Lawson Down to the Sea by Shalimar |
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20 Sep 11 - 01:54 PM (#3226156) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: YorkshireYankee If you like short stories, you might be interested in this year's (British) National Short Story Awards. You can download the five finalist short stories for listening later (all about 30 min long). They are available for download (for four weeks from their broadcast dates, which were last week) until (probably 3 pm British time) 10th October (2011). Enjoy! |
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20 Sep 11 - 04:28 PM (#3226236) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: ClaireBear So many stories. Here are a few (mostly SF) favorites of mine that may not have been discovered by some: "Allamagoosa" by Eric Frank Russell (this marvelous story won a Hugo for best SF short story of 1955) "The Ghost Ship" by Richard Middleton (dating from 1912, this is my favorite story for reading aloud and it's available free online -- here, for example) "They're Made Out of Meat" by Terry Bisson (another SF story -- a short short this time -- also available free online here) "Noise" by Jack Vance (a wonderfully atmospheric, loooong SF story from 1951 that hasa been anthologized several times) |
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20 Sep 11 - 06:43 PM (#3226292) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: MGM·Lion SF ~~ Asimov the best of them, IMO. Nightfall; the Robot stories. Philip K Dick's Imposter is brilliant also: one of best last lines of any story... |
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20 Sep 11 - 07:14 PM (#3226301) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Mrrzy The Catbird Seat is great, and so is The Lady on 142, or whatever train it was. But The Night The Ghost Got In and More Alarms At Night are my favorite Thurber shorts. Saki! Come on, Clovis Sangrail? The medlars and the boar-pig? |
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23 Sep 11 - 11:49 AM (#3227781) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: YorkshireYankee "The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin. Brilliant story from the golden age of sci fi. According to Wikipedia: "...first published in Astounding Magazine in 1954. In 1970, the Science Fiction Writers of America selected it as one of the best science fiction short stories published before 1965, and it was therefore included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964." |
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27 Sep 11 - 06:33 PM (#3230203) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Songwronger Read my first Raffles story last week. Got a bunch of old Ellery Queen & Alfred Hitchcock magazines, and one of them has a story called "Raffles on the Riviera" in it. Never knew about the character, but I enjoyed the story. Wikipedia has an entry about Raffles. Originally written by E.W. Hornung and then continued by Barry Perowne. "Raffles on the Riviera" is one of Perowne's. While searching the web for info about Raffles I saw mention of the Father Brown mystery stories, by G.K. Chesterton. Never read any of them, either, but I plan to. Project Gutenberg Raffles Project Gutenberg Father Brown |
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03 Oct 11 - 07:20 PM (#3233363) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Songwronger "Sonny's Blues," by James Baldwin. Just read it. Outstanding. Very profound observations on the human condition. Nice ending, with the main character describing his brother playing piano in a jazz quartet. Found the story anthologized in a textbook called "Fictions," put out years ago by Harcourt Brace. Best anthology of "literary" stories I've come across. 1200 pages, solid softback textbook, 100 stories. The great writers and their great stories. Good bios on each author and thematic classroom discussions. Heck of a book. Highly recommended. |
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23 Oct 11 - 08:01 PM (#3243722) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Songwronger "The Guest," by Albert Camus. Excellent story. "A Fear of Dead Things," by Andrew Klavan. Read that last week. A Frankenstein-type story. Everything about it is good. Found some audios of J.G. Ballard stories here. Can't get the Cloud Sculptors to load but the others do. Really nice. Working my way though a book called "The Vampire Archives." A hundred or so vampire stories that trace the development of the genre. Something in the preface struck me as amusing. The man who wrote the intro says the first English vampire story was written by Lord Byron's doctor, a man named Polidori. The intro says that Polidor based his vampire on Byron because Byron had a way of sucking the life out of people. From Wikipedia: One night in June, after the company had read aloud from the Tales of the Dead, a collection of horror tales, Byron suggested that they each write a ghost story. Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote "A Fragment of a Ghost Story" and wrote down five ghost stories recounted by Matthew Gregory ("Monk") Lewis, published posthumously as the "Journal at Geneva (including ghost stories) and on return to England, 1816", the journal entries beginning on August 18, 1816. Mary Shelley worked on a tale that would later evolve into Frankenstein. Byron wrote (and quickly abandoned) a fragment of a story, Fragment of a Novel, about the main character Augustus Darvell, which Polidori used later as the basis for his own tale, "The Vampyre", the first vampire story published in English. The Vampyre - Project Gutenbert I only read a few pages of Polidori's story so I can't recommend it, but there's a link if anyone's interested. Maybe some Byron scholar will get a kick out of it. |
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24 Oct 11 - 02:13 PM (#3244055) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Uncle_DaveO When I was a kid, my mother, brother, and I lived in the upstairs of my maternal grandparents' house. I was thoroughly at home all through the house. I was an enthusiastically bookish kid, always compulsively hungry for something--anything!--to read. At some time in elementary school I discovered, in my grandparents' bookcase downstairs, a set of I think twelve volumes of Great Short Stories. O.Henry of course, Gogol, Saki, and MANY more. I greedily gobbled all of them, and from time to time came back to re-read some of them. A few years later, in I think Eighth Grade English class, we were "introduced" to short stories. I was already familiar with all the stories set out for us in the textbook, I suppose mostly from that set I just mentioned. Old stuff to me. The assignment given by Miss Glaser (of whom more later) was for each of us to find and read two short stories that week, and on the following Monday to give the class a report on one of them, and also to name the title and author of another short story we had read. "Okay," thought I, "I'll get into the short-story set, refresh myself on some of the stories I already know, and report on them!" The reports were due Monday, so (ever the procrastinator) on Sunday, the day before the report date, I went to the bookcase to do my re-familiarization. Lo and behold, I could not find the set of short-story volumes where I knew it had been! Where it went, I had and have no idea. Okay, I remembered Gogol's "The Overcoat" quite well. In class on Monday, when it came my turn, I summarized the story, only to be accused by the teacher of not having read anything for the assignment, and of fabricating the story. "F" grade on the assignment! For the other part of the assignment I named Saki and his "The Schartz-Metterklume Method". Miss Glaser told me and the whole class than she had never heard of Saki or the name H.H. Munro, and therefore I must be lying about that, too! I don't know whether that counted as two "Fs" or merely a deeper hole for me to enjoy my "Overcoat" F grade in. Talk about public embarrassment! Talk about resentment! To this day, something like sixty-eight years later, I still burn over that. Now, as to that so-called teacher, Miss Glaser, by popular consensus among the students whom I knew, she was the most egregiously misinformed human being ever created! She would refer in class (with a straight face) to "The ancient Greek sport of throwing the hurdle." She warned us that pregnant women should never wear sunglasses, because wearing them would damage their babies' eyesight. And other ignorant gems. Well, given her status as "the worlds' most etc.", I suppose I ought to cut her some slack at this late date, but it's hard, hard, hard! Dave Oesterreich |
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25 Oct 11 - 11:55 AM (#3244563) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: GUEST,blogward Flannery O'Connor's short stories of the postwar South are superb. |
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25 Oct 11 - 01:21 PM (#3244609) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Stilly River Sage There's a wonderful radio program called Selected Shorts that we hear every Saturday evening in this market. I don't like them all, but some are stunningly good. And I like being read to. :) One of my all-time favorite short story writers is Roald Dahl who addressed adult and children audiences and who gave both more credit for understanding, irony, and intellect than a lot of other short story writers. My absolute favorite of his (so far) is "Parson's Pleasure." John Steinbeck wrote some marvelous short stories in addition to his novels. There are two particular collections, The Long Valley and Pastures of Heaven. Edith Wharton published several collections of short stories, and though I haven't read it in many years, her "Roman Fever" is a classic social illustration of it's day. SRS |
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26 Oct 11 - 06:39 AM (#3244980) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: MGM·Lion Has anyone mentioned Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge? |
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18 Dec 11 - 06:53 PM (#3276240) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Songwronger A couple of weeks ago I read a story called "Old Hundredth," by Brian Aldiss. Sometimes a story kind of stuns me with its imagination. This story is amazing. Distant future on earth, after the moon left its orbit and fell into a close orbit around the sun. The earth and Venus became twinned an circle each other. Mankind colonized Venus, where we began populating the planet with genetic experiments. The scientists especially liked tinkering with extinct prehistoric mammals, and the main character of the short story is the product of such an experiment--a megatherium, a ground sloth that was as big as an elephant. But they gave this breed opposable thumbs and larger brains, and the MC has been traveling the world studying musicolumns. They activate when a sentient being comes near and play death songs left by others. The MC is going home to die and thinking of what song she'll leave behind. Hasn't been home in 300 years, because the large herbivores have to keep on the move to feed themselves. And so on and so on. Amazing stuff. Some stories...you wonder how that kind of thinking comes together, and you're glad it did. |
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19 Dec 11 - 05:50 PM (#3276782) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Raedwulf I see a lot of SF writers mentioned here. Nothing wrong with that, although it may say something about the average age of MC posters. ;-) However, what I do find hard to believe is... not one mention of Rudyard Kipling? He wasn't much cop at writing a novel (Kim ws good; The Light That Failed wasn't), but short stories? A master of the art... |
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20 Dec 11 - 03:52 PM (#3277307) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: GUEST,Songbob The six-word novel contest winner: "FOR SALE: Baby shoes. Never used." I forget who wrote that -- Hemingway, I think -- but it always struck me as being as heart-breaking and honest as any six words could be. Bob |
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12 Jan 12 - 06:56 PM (#3289610) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Songwronger Just finished a collection of 2011 Nebula Award sci fi stories (NEBULA AWARDS SHOWCASE 2011). Most of the stuff I read is old (cheap to free variety), and I don't get to sample much current fiction, so I was glad to stumble across this book. Has all the nominated short stories and the novelettes (longer stories), plus the winner in those categories. Also has the winning novella (short novel) and the winning Rhysling Award poems. Times have sure changed. Most of these stories dwell on death and disease, pessimism. Someone said once that the golden age writers of sci fi (Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke) focused on the future, but writers now are focusing more on the present or past. The book I just finished seems to bear that out, but excellent stories nonetheless. Just so damn dark though. |
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28 Feb 12 - 11:15 PM (#3314911) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Songwronger I just picked up a bunch of London Mystery Magazines. Anyone ever read them? Lots of Brits here. I expect I'll enjoy them. Love the whodunnits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Mystery_Magazine |
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01 Nov 12 - 09:13 PM (#3429650) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Songwronger Recent acquisitions: Boxing Stories by Robert E. Howard. Howard created Conan, the great sword and sorcery character. He was a prolific writer for American pulp magazines in the 1920's and 30's. Wrote westerns, sword and sorcery, sports fiction. Boxing stories were popular at the time and he wrote a lot of those. His prose has a drive that I've rarely seen matched. Died when he was only 30, too. Star Western Stories. "A treasury of 22 classic western stories from the golden age of pulp fiction." Some names I recognize like Max Brand, Luke Short and others, but mostly unknown to me. Stories from the 20's, 30's, 40's. The best of the stories from a magazine called Star Western. Should be good. The Western Stories of Elmore Leonard. I've read some of Leonard's crime novels (Get Shorty comes to mind), but before he began a career writing those, he had a career as a western pulp writer. These stories are from the 50's, when the pulps were dying out. Leonard switched to crime fiction. One of the stories in this book is "Three-ten to Yuma," which was made into a movie. And the book I've just begun, A Treasury of American Horror Stories. "51 Spine-Chilling Tales from Every State in the Union plus Washington, D.C." Arranged alphabetically by state. Just finished Alabama ("An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," by Ambrose Bierce) and Alaska ("Lost Face," by Jack London). Incredible stories, and that's just the beginning. Looks like maybe half of these will be older public domain stories, and half will be newer (Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Stephen King and the like). Got a Matheson story coming up, "Being," set in Arizona. This is going to be a hell of a book. |
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01 Nov 12 - 10:04 PM (#3429684) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Ebbie It was a dark stormy night and the rain came down in Torrance; everybody said they had never before seen such weather in California. |
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02 Nov 12 - 01:09 AM (#3429739) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Bert Of course I can't resist plugging some of mine. |
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02 Nov 12 - 02:08 AM (#3429748) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: Ebbie That was fun, Bert. I just now read all three of your stories. Do you have more? |
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28 Jan 17 - 05:27 PM (#3835398) Subject: RE: BS: Short stories anyone? From: keberoxu The Whippoorwill, by James Thurber. Creepy and suspenseful. Even creepier because it could actually happen. "Take more 'n' a whippoorwill to cause a mess like that." Brrrrrrrr. |