What's Your Favorite Short Story?

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i used to be really into carver, pos still am
the kafka stories, borges, yes

alice munro is also a short-story master

― rrrobyn, Saturday, 24 March 2007 23:22 (seventeen years ago) link

most of my recommendations are going to be canadian 'cause that's what i am and that's how it goes

― rrrobyn, Saturday, 24 March 2007 23:27 (seventeen years ago) link

How dare you support your home country, we can't have that.

― Ned Raggett, Saturday, 24 March 2007 23:29 (seventeen years ago) link

big choice wld be ondaatje's 'running in the family' which is sort of short stories, sort of personal narrative

mark anthony jarman also v good and funny (and still alive)

― rrrobyn, Saturday, 24 March 2007 23:30 (seventeen years ago) link

haha xpost

― rrrobyn, Saturday, 24 March 2007 23:31 (seventeen years ago) link

anything written by me!!!!!!

― homosexual II, Saturday, 24 March 2007 23:44 (seventeen years ago) link

Then you must share so we can judge!

― Ned Raggett, Saturday, 24 March 2007 23:45 (seventeen years ago) link

Are they funny Mandee?

― Abbott, Sunday, 25 March 2007 00:01 (seventeen years ago) link

We studied The Turn Of The Screw recently. I came to the conclusion that Miles was a repressed homosexual ("I want my own kind!") and the female narrator (whose name escapes me) lusted after him to no small extent. It was then pointed out to me that he was 10 years old. :-(

Plenty of devious psycho-sexual intrigue going on in there, however, not least from the aforementioned governess.

― unfished business, Sunday, 25 March 2007 00:40 (seventeen years ago) link

"young goodman brown" by hawthorne
"bartleby" by herman melville
"mr costello, hero" by theodore sturgeon
"rebecca" by donald barthelme
everything by kafka (espec "in the penal colony" and "before the law")
all of the nine stories
all of dubliners (and all ulysses snobs can eat a dick)

― J.D., Sunday, 25 March 2007 00:53 (seventeen years ago) link

"Heat" - Joyce Carol Oates
"Moon" - Stephen Dixon
"Sea Foam" - George Saunders
"Intimacy" - Raymond Carver
"Five Signs of Disturbance" - Lydia Davis
"The Old Forest" - Peter Taylor
All of "The Gifts Of The Body" by Rebecca Brown

― Eazy, Sunday, 25 March 2007 01:10 (seventeen years ago) link

Borges' "The Lottery in Babylon," though I far prefer one translation to the other.

― M.V., Sunday, 25 March 2007 01:40 (seventeen years ago) link

"A Rose for Emily" - Faulkner

― Bill Bary, Sunday, 25 March 2007 02:10 (seventeen years ago) link

"The Turn of the Screw" is rather overrated; there at least a dozen examples of James perfectly able to write realist short stories with the best of'em, and they're NEVER anthologized.

Seek: "A Light Man," "In the Cage," "Glasses," "The Jolly Corner," "Crapy Cornelia."

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Sunday, 25 March 2007 02:36 (seventeen years ago) link

"The Watchful Poker Chip" is brilliant. Bradbury's "The Lake" (the first story he ever published) is one of those stories that just kicks me in the gut every time I read it.

A recent favorite is Tove Jansson's "The Golden Calf," one of her stories involving humans, specifically childhood religious obsession.

Others:
Shirley Jackson - "The Summer People" (much quieter and more terrifying than "The Lottery")
James Thurber - "The Night the Bed Fell"
A bunch of Saki - "Sredni Vashtar" is the one that sticks most in my mind, though it's a complete outlier
Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find
the story in "Homer Price" about the doughnuts

― clotpoll, Sunday, 25 March 2007 05:36 (seventeen years ago) link

Hello Homer Price fan, may I platonically hold your hand?

― Abbott, Sunday, 25 March 2007 06:11 (seventeen years ago) link

'Sredni Vashtar' is (with reason) his most famous, but his vignettes of hypocritical Edwardian society are just as delicious.

― unfished business, Sunday, 25 March 2007 13:20 (seventeen years ago) link

is "Turn of the Screw" really a short story? I don't think it's overrated, though; I think it's usually regarded as kind of anomalous in his body of work. I like it a lot.

― horseshoe, Sunday, 25 March 2007 17:11 (seventeen years ago) link

Many of my favorites have already been mentioned so I'll just add, "The Other Side of the Hedge" by E.M. Forster. Actually, I really like all of the stories in The Celestial Omnibus.

― ENBB, Sunday, 25 March 2007 17:42 (seventeen years ago) link

oh, i was kidding about me loving my own stories, btw....

― homosexual II, Sunday, 25 March 2007 22:49 (seventeen years ago) link

Where is the love for Elizbath Bowen's "Mysterious Kôr," which some people think is the story about London during the blitz?

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, 26 March 2007 00:53 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm surprised no one has pointed out how awesome Hawthorne's "Wakefield" is yet.

― Hurting 2, Monday, 26 March 2007 02:34 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh yeah, forgot about that one.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, 26 March 2007 02:37 (seventeen years ago) link

eight months pass...

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

Does anybody have any favorite short story collections?

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

You mean collected short stories of one author, or anthologies?

-- 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

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