Short Stories
 

I really like the short story genre. When I was a kid, I loved Steinbeck's "The Red Pony", and Mark Twain's collected short stories were hilarious. I especially liked the one about the group of senators stranded in the wilderness who hold elections to find out who should be the next to be eaten. (I guess I had a strange sense of humor as a child).

Hemingway is the master, of course. Tim O'Brien's "The Things they Carried" (sort of a combo of novel and collection of short stories) is a more recent one.

Any other favorites?

Flannery O'Connor's short stories:

Everything That Rises Must Converge, Good Country People, and A Good Man is Hard to Find

Rudyard Kipling's:

The Gardener

Hemingway as you mentioned Farrah:

Soldier's Home

Faulkner:

Barn Burning, A Rose for Emily

Pynchon's:

Entropy

Gilman:

The Yellow Wallpaper

There are lots here...just some off the top of my head. There was a coming age of story by Vonnegut I believe about a boy working in a store when two girls stop in and after leaving the boy up and quits. That story always stuck with me, though the name escapes me now. Sound familiar to anyone?

My favorite Twain short story is "The Story of the Old Ram". Here's an excerpt:


Seth Green was prob'ly the pick of the flock; he married a Wilkerson -- Sarah Wilkerson -- good cretur, she was -- one of the likeliest heifers that was ever raised in old Stoddard, everybody said that knowed her. She could heft a bar'l of flour as easy as I can flirt a flapjack. And spin? Don't mention it! Independent? Humph! When Sile Hawkins come a browsing around her, she let him know that for all his tin he couldn't trot in harness alongside of her. You see, Sile Hawkins was -- no, it warn't Sile Hawkins, after all -- it was a galoot by the name of Filkins -- I disremember his first name; but he was a stump -- come into pra'r meeting drunk, one night, hooraying for Nixon, becuz he thought it was a primary; and old deacon Ferguson up and scooted him through the window and he lit on old Miss Jefferson's head, poor old filly. She was a good soul -- had a glass eye and used to lend it to old Miss Wagner, that hadn't any, to receive company in; it warn't big enough, and when Miss Wagner warn't noticing, it would get twisted around in the socket, and look up, maybe, or out to one side, and every which way, while t' other one was looking as straight ahead as a spy-glass.

Grown people didn't mind it, but it most always made the children cry, it was so sort of scary. She tried packing it in raw cotton, but it wouldn't work, somehow -- the cotton would get loose and stick out and look so kind of awful that the children couldn't stand it no way. She was always dropping it out, and turning up her old dead-light on the company empty, and making them oncomfortable, becuz she never could tell when it hopped out, being blind on that side, you see. So somebody would have to hunch her and say, "Your game eye has fetched loose. Miss Wagner dear" -- and then all of them would have to sit and wait till she jammed it in again -- wrong side before, as a general thing, and green as a bird's egg, being a bashful cretur and easy sot back before company. But being wrong side before warn't much difference, anyway; becuz her own eye was sky-blue and the glass one was yaller on the front side, so whichever way she turned it it didn't match nohow.

Twain, Capote, Wilde...lots of good stuff there.

A few other favorites I remember:

Bierce's "An Occurence ot Owl Creek Bridge"

Sartre's "The Wall"

And one of the best has to be Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"

I think I've mentioned before that "The Yellow Wallpaper" is probably far and away my favorite.

"Bernice Bobs Her Hair" by Fitzgerald

Tim once recommended Eggers to me. I really enjoyed his work.
"Notes for a Story about a Man Who Refuses to Die Alone"
and "Naveed" were my favorites.

Isn't he working at a soda shop fountain? If so, I know what you're talking about but I can't think of it.

I used to read a lot of short fiction anthologies but I find that afterward I can rarely remember the titles of the stories I liked.

"The Ransom of Red Chief" by O. Hare is one of my favorites:

http://fiction.eserver.org/short/ran...red_chief.html

I also like Twain's short stories. My favorite is "The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm" which is about a family who keeps getting robbed despite equipping their home with a great alarm system.

Updike, Cheever, Carver, Singer, Bellow, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Hemmingway. The New Yorker has roughly a couple of great ones every year. Here's one of my all-time favorites. It's adapted from her novel The History of Love:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/200...0209fi_fiction

For me its edgar allen poe... I love his short stories

That too.

I'm certain the short stories I loved as a little kid, namely, those of O'Henry, are not considered noteworthy, but as a young grammar schooler, they impressed me.

I liked the Birthday Gift, or something like that. It involved a couple who gave everything important to other, the husband selling his watch for a haircomb, and the wife having her cut to buy a band for the watch. It moved me every time I read it as a child.

In high school, I believe my English lit instructor told me O'Henry wasn't really regarded as a real author, which made think I had no eye for literature.