― Josh, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Melissa W, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Geoff, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Least Favourite: JD Salinger. Utter dreck.
― masonic boom, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― gareth, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Andrew L, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― duane z., Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― duane, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― mark s, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― tarden, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Nicole, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
x0x0
― Norman Fay, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― fred solinger, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Dan Perry, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― james e l, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Tracer: I said "something bizarre happened" because A) I really don't want to get into the specifics of that chapter of my life AGAIN, no matter how fucking hilarious the whole thing was B) it'd take too long to explain anyhow. You got the gist, leave me alone, hello! :)
― Ally, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
And Josh isn't really getting away with stating "I guess you haven't read the right short stories" either, Fred, it's just not something worth my time to get into as to how that's the most worthless argument in the entire universe that assumes your opponent in a debate knows less than you do and that's the only possible reason they could agree. The other thing is that Josh has only said that to me once now, while you have said that to me 8 quadrillion times (approx.) so he's got a few more goes before he gets to your level. But rest assured, I've filed it away in my "Wow, that completely annoyed me" file.
I am someone who likes plots and stories and the more involved something gets, the better. It's very difficult to get that level of involvement and philosophy and psychology in a short story.
― AP, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
And Ally, that's not a "you don't like X cause you haven't heard every single last obscure reference..." type argument, it's more equivalent to saying "you are judging an artist by their crappy debut album and ignoring their more substantial later output".
With Salinger, it wasn't even the adolescent angst of _Catcher_ that bothers me. I just do not find his writing style engaging, I find it frustrating and infuriating the way he starts these fragments and never clarifies half the plot. The whole series of short stories about that huge family just PISS ME OFF because it's like he started to write a novel, but could never get around to sewing up all the pieces, so he just put out individual chapters he's written as short stories.
Maybe it pisses me off especially was because one of the writers I used to work with on E-Me! was a huge fan- her stories used to infuriate me, because she was working with a huge backplot in her head which she never actually explored in the written chapters. In some cases, that can be interesting- in Will Self's mental illness short stories, you can sew together back story, and figure out or invent bits of your own to make it all add up together and make sense. In both Salinger and this girl who idolised him, it just seemed like laziness, and arrogance on the author's part, and assuming that the reader had ESP or something.
(Well, he should have said that.)
The last anthology I can recall reading was John Cheever's collection, which was good, but I think reading it like a novel (straight through) ruined it for me. I also gave _Dubliners_ a shot, but (once again) tried reading it straight through, and got side- swiped.
(Short stories should be used as pallete cleansers during the reading of a novel, I think - referring back to Fred's original query, they (short stories) could be like the ambient noise / segue track on an album, bridging two sections, allowing the reader a chance to pause & reflect.) (Or they could serve as EPs - a sampling of an author's work that's substantial, but not too weighty. Someone mentioned this already, right?)
― David Raposa, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Maryann, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Oh, and I'm reading Phillip K. Dick at the moment...
― Paul Strange, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Favourite short story though is "The Prize Of Peril" by Robert Sheckley. Indeed most of Sheckley's stuff is a good science fiction laugh riot. The short story after all is the home of the half assed Sci-fi idea.
― Pete, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Insert punchline here.
― Dan Perry, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
* crickets, tumbleweed, etc *
― mark s, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber' collection has been an old, old fave of mine. JG Ballard's 'The Garden of Time' is probably my favourite short story ever. Poetic and heartbreaking.
― DavidM, Saturday, 16 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Mavis Gallant - in transit (book) Sinclair Ross- lamp at noon WG Valgardson- bloodflowers, god is not a fish inspector,celebration Alice Munro - lives of girls and women (book) Thomas King- borders Margaret Atwood - birth
― anthony, Sunday, 17 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Joe, Tuesday, 19 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Zach Richer, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
but hemingway's "the short happy life of francis macomber" is good too.
― sundar subramanian, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
And yes, he wrote my favourite short story of which I typically forgot the title. It's about a boy and girl who at night watch angels descent on sacrificial blood (something like that). Anyway, something goes terribly wrong, so there's a beautiful passage about dimensional travelling. When we're back the boy (I think) walks around and starts noticing that people around him are changing into the girl, and I mean everybody! The story ends with him in a room looking into the mirror and seeing a girl asking "where are you?'.
― Omar, Thursday, 2 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― duane, Thursday, 2 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Two other personal favourites are by JG Ballard (from War Fever).
1) The Greatest Theme Park in the World, about tourists on the Mediterranean who refuse to go back to their home countries/work, basically get obsessed with their bodies, begin a fascistic body/sun cult and end up invading the northern countries. All told at an amazing pace btw. not a word wasted.
2) the other one I forget the title of again ;) It's about some astronauts who discover a space-ship and start to walk around, every time the spaceship seems to grow, so every time they give an estimate how big it is supposed to be, at the end it's as big as the universe. Freaky tale.
― sundar subramanian, Thursday, 2 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Joe, Friday, 3 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― anthony, Friday, 3 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― duane, Friday, 3 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Omar, Friday, 3 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Sam, Friday, 3 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Saturday, 24 March 2007 17:58 (seventeen years ago) link
― oscar, Saturday, 24 March 2007 21:45 (seventeen years ago) link
― Abbott, Saturday, 24 March 2007 21:54 (seventeen years ago) link
― Ward Fowler, Saturday, 24 March 2007 22:07 (seventeen years ago) link
― oscar, Saturday, 24 March 2007 22:54 (seventeen years ago) link
― Abbott, Saturday, 24 March 2007 22:57 (seventeen years ago) link
― the table is the table, Saturday, 24 March 2007 23:06 (seventeen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett, Saturday, 24 March 2007 23:07 (seventeen years ago) link
― rrrobyn, Saturday, 24 March 2007 23:22 (seventeen years ago) link
― rrrobyn, Saturday, 24 March 2007 23:27 (seventeen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett, Saturday, 24 March 2007 23:29 (seventeen years ago) link
― rrrobyn, Saturday, 24 March 2007 23:30 (seventeen years ago) link
― rrrobyn, Saturday, 24 March 2007 23:31 (seventeen years ago) link
― homosexual II, Saturday, 24 March 2007 23:44 (seventeen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett, Saturday, 24 March 2007 23:45 (seventeen years ago) link
― Abbott, Sunday, 25 March 2007 00:01 (seventeen years ago) link
― unfished business, Sunday, 25 March 2007 00:40 (seventeen years ago) link
― J.D., Sunday, 25 March 2007 00:53 (seventeen years ago) link
― Eazy, Sunday, 25 March 2007 01:10 (seventeen years ago) link
― M.V., Sunday, 25 March 2007 01:40 (seventeen years ago) link
― Bill Bary, Sunday, 25 March 2007 02:10 (seventeen years ago) link
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Sunday, 25 March 2007 02:36 (seventeen years ago) link
― clotpoll, Sunday, 25 March 2007 05:36 (seventeen years ago) link
― Abbott, Sunday, 25 March 2007 06:11 (seventeen years ago) link
― unfished business, Sunday, 25 March 2007 13:20 (seventeen years ago) link
― horseshoe, Sunday, 25 March 2007 17:11 (seventeen years ago) link
― ENBB, Sunday, 25 March 2007 17:42 (seventeen years ago) link
― homosexual II, Sunday, 25 March 2007 22:49 (seventeen years ago) link
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, 26 March 2007 00:53 (seventeen years ago) link
― Hurting 2, Monday, 26 March 2007 02:34 (seventeen years ago) link
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, 26 March 2007 02:37 (seventeen years ago) link
Does anybody have any favorite short story collections?
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 20 December 2007 23:47 (sixteen years ago) link
Andre Dubus - either the big-ass collected stories or We Don't Live Here Anymore
― milo z, Thursday, 20 December 2007 23:52 (sixteen years ago) link
Drat. If this were ILM I could edit my own posts to fix that.
-- Josh, Wednesday, June 13, 2001 7:00 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Link
?!?!
― jaymc, Thursday, 20 December 2007 23:54 (sixteen years ago) link
I wonder how Josh is doing. These days he just writes about people he meets on the bus.
― jaymc, Thursday, 20 December 2007 23:55 (sixteen years ago) link
You mean collected short stories of one author, or anthologies?
― franny glass, Friday, 21 December 2007 00:07 (sixteen years ago) link
J: I assume that's because he had mod powers on ILM, but not ILE
― nabisco, Friday, 21 December 2007 00:09 (sixteen years ago) link
-- franny glass, Friday, December 21, 2007 12:07 AM
The former is what I had in mind.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, 21 December 2007 04:47 (sixteen years ago) link
But of course I won't turn down the latter.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, 21 December 2007 04:48 (sixteen years ago) link
I was going to mention "Fundamental Disch" but then I saw that I already did on this thread.
― Rock Hardy, Friday, 21 December 2007 04:55 (sixteen years ago) link
The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories, edited by Malcolm Bradbury.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Friday, 21 December 2007 04:57 (sixteen years ago) link