Who writes the best short stories?

[Nemerov]

This question has probably been asked before but I can't seem to find the thread.

I'm totally into short stories right now. And I'm running out of material. What's your favorite short story writer? Or do you even have a favorite short story? I'd love to know why you like it/him/her that much.

[nome1486]

I love O. Henry (probably best known for "The Gift of the Magi"). His stories always make me smile because they all have some ironic twist of fate (well, almost always; some of his stories have a dark side). And I like that most of them deal either with cowboys or city life.

[Dragoro]

Poe has always been one of my favorites for short stories. Stienbeck is great too (if ya consider Cannery Row or Tequilla Flats short stories).

[litjunkie]

Classics: Hawthorne all the way. I enjoy his short stories far better than Poe's. My favorite would be a tie between "The Minister's Black Veil" and "The Birthmark."

Modern: Cisneros. She's won me with "Woman Hollering Creek." I love the way that she integrated the story of "La Llorona" in her modern exploration of women's roles.

[ben]

I don't mind O'Henry, but a lot of his work just seems so similar to me at times.

I much prefer Checkhov who writes fantastic short stories, some of the collections by Guy de Maupassant and Dubliners by James Joyce are also superb.

[Monica]

Poe is the best short story writer. I also like Julio Cortazar. He's just amazing. His stories are pretty weird and it's great fun reading them. Sometimes a bit depressing too.

[verybaddmom]

margaret atwood has some great short stories, as does hemmingway and faulkner. my personal fave's are the respledant quetzal, a clean well lighted place and a rose for emily (in the order of the authors mentioned)

[trismegistus]

Classics: Hawthorne all the way. I enjoy his short stories far better than Poe's. My favorite would be a tie between "The Minister's Black Veil" and "The Birthmark."
Agreed. And I'll take his short fiction over his novels every day of the week. "Young Goodman Brown" is his best, IMO.

Modern: Harlan Ellison - Excellent craftsman and his concerns don't lessen with time.

[Sniper15]

Me, obviously.

[Nemerov]

I don't mind O'Henry, but a lot of his work just seems so similar to me at times.

I much prefer Checkhov who writes fantastic short stories, some of the collections by Guy de Maupassant and Dubliners by James Joyce are also superb.


LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY and RICHARD PEVEAR just translated some of the early Checkhov stories and a lot of his plays. They did a wonderful job, I think. I can't be sure, because I don't know Russian, but it just feels right. The flow is better than in other translations.

Dubliners is great!

[Miranda]

I too love Chekhov's short stories. It seems to me the fascination is created by him taking some ordinary occurence and writing about it in an extraordinary way so that the most mundane things become interesting. He seems to be addicted to characterisation and his stories are more based around the intricies of their characters, rather than any particular happenings. Here he is writing about not being able to sleep from 'A Dreary Story' translated by Constance Garnett:
'As regards my present manner of life, I must give a foremost place to the insomnia from which I have suffered of late. If I were asked what constituted the chief and fundamental feature of my existence now, I should answer, Insomnia. As in the past, from habit, I undress and go to bed exactly at midnight. I fall asleep quickly, but before two o'clock, I wake up and feel as though I had not slept at all. Sometimes I get out of bed and light a lamp. For an hour or two, I walk up and down the room looking at the familiar photographs and pictures. When I am weary of walking about, I sit down to my table. I sit motionless, thinking of nothing, conscious of no inclination; if a book is lying before me, I mechanically read it without any interest - in that way not long ago, I mechanically read through in one night, a whole novel, with the strange title 'The Song the Lark was Singing'; or to occupy my attention I force myself to count to a thousand; or I imagine the face of one of my colleagues and begin trying to remember in what year and under what circumstances he entered the service. I like listening to sounds. Two rooms away from me my daughter LIza says something rapidly in her sleep, or my wife crosses the drawing room with a candle and invariably drop the match box, or a warped cupboard creaks; or the burner of the lamp suddenly begins to hum - all these sounds, for some reason, excite me. To lie awake at night means to be at every moment conscious of being abnormal, and so I look forward with impatience to the morning and the day when I have a right to be awake. Many wearisome hours pass before the **** crows in the yard. He is my first bringer of good tidings. As soon as he crows I know that within an hour the porter will wake up below, and coughing angrily, will go upstairs to fetch something. And then a pale light will begin gradually glimmmering at the windows, voices will sound in the street...'

There isn't really a rude word in this..only the word for a male hen but the automatic censor has dirty mind!

[verybaddmom]

omg....i cant read that.....
my eyes hurt. i have to go wash them now

edited to add: thank you thank you thank you....
i shall try again!

[Miranda]

Sorry VBM, I was playing around with the fonts - you must've seen my post a minute after I posted it and just before I retrieved it. It looked okay with a white background but green and orange...oh! Sorry VBM - I am very bored tonight.

[verybaddmom]

me too, which is probably how i saw it before you edited it....
may i suggest some shroomz for boredom.....
http://services.gametrust.com/webgames/shroomz/

[Miranda]

I never had any shroomz before...but I'm still bored cos the link wont work for me and all I got was a lovely page of black. Anymore ideas... VBN> I bin bored all day!! Glad tis nearly bedtime...

[verybaddmom]

um....hmmm......i play alchemy on www.popcap.com
thats a good game. and shroomz is also a game....

[Miranda]

I'm not too good at games. Sometimes my lads get me to play with them on Xbox..but they only do it for fun, to laff at me cos I dont know one end of a gun from another or even which character I'm supposed to be.

[amuse]

www.playbabble.com
(i'm 4t8)
i can initially get the link to work for shroomz, but i can't make a hand appear, only an arrow - ?

[EAP]

authors in the topmost tier.

Edgar Allan Poe
O Henry
Anton Chekov
William Faulkner - A Rose For Emily [LOVE THE STORY!]
Graham Joyce
Harlan Ellison
Robert Anson Heinlein
Isaac Asimov
Connie Willis
Philip K Dick
George R.R. Martin
Cordwainer Smith
Clive Barker
H. P. Lovecraft
Stephen King
Washington Irving

I personally prefer short stories/novellas over novels.

[verybaddmom]

www.playbabble.com
(i'm 4t8)
i can initially get the link to work for shroomz, but i can't make a hand appear, only an arrow - ?

you need a hand for what now??
i dont understand. this game is not played with a mouse, but with cursor keys...hm...im confused

[amuse]

oh! i meant shroomz. didn't check out alchemy. zuma's a lot of fun. well, addictive.

[verybaddmom]

warning: thread hijacking ahead!

amuse, there should be no hands in shroomz, that i can think of.

[amuse]

i will try it again later. it shall not gainsay me!

[subterranean]

I always like Guy de Maupassant for short stories...

Cheers

[amuse]

<<here's another popcap game: http://www.popcap.com/gamepopup.php?theGame=zuma >>

[Kiwi Shelf]

I for some reason never read short story collections, not on purpose, they just never fall into my lap for some reason. The only author that I have really read short stories by in a large quantity is Carol Shields. She writes some interesting things.... There is also the duel collection: "Dropped Threads 1 and 2" These books are woman writing about experiences in their life that they were never told were going to happen, hoping to fill other women more in on the subjects that are never talked about. It's a good read. :) I liked the second one better than the first, though.

[Shea]

Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville are my standard favorites, but I also love this one by Shirley Jackson (I think), called The Lottery. It's got one of those great twisted endings.

[Piramni]

Clive Barker
Neil Gaiman
Jorge Luis Borges
Isaac Asimov
Ray Bradbury
Roald Dahl
Ernest Hemingway
Stephen King
Franz Kafka

[simon]

Kafka has interesting short stories if you can stand a bit of slow depressing reading, though hardly ordinary. Metamorphosis might even make it to my topten books of all time, or at least nearly there.

[baddad]

"Short stories", you say? You want to see style, you want different, you want literary technique flashing before your very eyes, you want lit-magic? Check out Raymond Carver, writer extradonaire, alcholic, currently dead. Enjoy!!!

[mono]

Tough, but good, question! I have always admired the classics: O. Henry, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Anton Chekhov, Washington Irving, and Henry James, to name a few. But if you want specific stories, I recommend The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaal (a rather long short story) by Poe, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce, and The Stranger (it could be A Stranger) by Mark Twain. Good luck!

[Helga]

Edgar Allan Poe- there is no one greater

[simon]

Is the one by Ambrose Bierce where a man is to be hanged or shot on the bridge? That is a good work in terms of literary arts, I mean the metaphors and description and double meanings, but I didn't find it all that enjoyable to read, a little on the boring side I'm afraid.

Anybody read the Hunger Artist? I think it's by Kafka, but it is facinating, dealing with perserverance and stubborness and life and death.

[Nemerov]

Yes, it's Kafka. Perfect story. Lovely first sentence.

"During these last decades the interest in professional fasting has markedly diminished."

Has anyone read Eating Naked by Dobyns? Very good book. The first story is about a guy getting killed by a falling pig.

...

[nome1486]

The Stranger (it could be A Stranger) by Mark Twain. Good luck!

A short story by Mark Twain--that would be interesting. I don't think I've read any of his short stories; I'll have to find them. And I just thought I'd repeat what someone said on the Vonnegut thread--I think it was simon--about his short stories. Those are good too.

[mono]

Yes, nome, Mark Twain wrote many short stories worth reading. His most famous was called The Jumping Frog of Calveras County; however, to me, it seems full of humorous talent, but not his best.