Truly great short stories

[Eric Cioe]

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, in Hemingway's collection Hemingway on Hunting. Come to think of it, everything in that collection is pretty top-notch.

If anyone says Annie Proulx's "The Half Skinned Steer," I'm going to leave this website and never come back. My god, what a terrible writer.

[mortalterror]

Thank you for mentioning Macomber. That would have made the list, but I figured one story by each author was enough and I wanted to limit my list to ten. I'd also recommend 12) The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 13) Was by William Faulkner from his Go Down, Moses, and 14) A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Technically it's a prose poem, but I also enjoy 15) The Bad Glazier by Charles Baudelaire from The Parisian Prowler.

[johann cruyff]

My favourite short stories,in no particular order:

How Much Land Does a Man Need? - Tolstoy
The Wall - Sartre
In the Penal Colony,A Hunger Artist - Kafka

And,pretty much all of the short stories by Andrić.

[islandclimber]

great short works of fyodor dostoevsky i love dostoevsky and notes from the underground is amazing, as the rest of the stories in this collection
the dubliners joyce
any set of chekhov's longer stories with the black monk, ward 6,etc...
labyrinths by borges so many good stories
collected short stories marquez again full of amazing stories
a collection of kafka's short works...

and there are probably others that I cannot think of at the moment..

cheers

[Mockingbird_z]

the Last Leaf by O. Henry
short stories by I. Bunin

[Hank Stamper]

You can't beat Poe, Kafka or HG Wells

Although I also love Roald Dahl's collected short stories and Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted is pretty good, if only for 'Guts'!
Bukowski's The Most Beautiful Woman in Town is one of my favourite books ever, and his other bits (Tales of Ordinary Madness and Notes of a Dirty Old Man) are ok (I'm planning on reading South of no North at some point).
Vonnegut's Bagombo Snuff Box and Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love are also some of my favourite short stories... For ghost stories the best by a spooky mile is M.R.James's Count Magnus and other stories...

[stlukesguild]

There are plenty of great short story writers and great short stories. I think it would be very difficult to hone it down to 10 favorite short stories... rather like 10 favorite poems. Among my favorite short stories I would include:

J.L. Borges- Collected Fictions (especially Ficciones, Labyrinths, El Hacedor...)
Kafka- Collected Short Stories
Maupassant- Tales
Thomas Mann- Death in Venice and other Stories
E.T.A. Hoffmann- Tales
Monterroso- Complete Works and other Stories
Robert Louis Stevenson- Short Stories
William Wilkie Collins- Short Stories
Henry James- Short Stories
Checkov- Collected Tales
Ambrose Bierce- Short Stories
E.A. Poe- Tales
Hawthorne- Tales
L.S. LeFanu- Tales
Sherwood Anderson- Winesburg Ohio
Hemingway- Collected Short Stories
H.G. Wells- Short Stories
Lord Dunsany- Tales
C.K. Chesterton- Collected Short Stories
Gottfried Keller- Short Stories
Rudyard Kipling- Collected tales
Mark Twain- Collected Tales
Flannery O'Conner- Collected Short Stories
Donald Barthleme- 40 Stories, 60 Stories
Harold Brodkey- Stories in an almost Classical Mode
Tolstoy- Collected Shorter Fiction
Dostoevski- Collected Short Stories

[_Shannon_]

I love Kipling's Just So Stories.

And collected stories of : Thomas Wolfe, Tenessee Williams, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Ring Lardner. Jack London, John O'Hara, DH Lawrence, Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, O. Henry.....

It's too hard to pick individual stories!!!

I can't remeber who wrote it- but "The Most Dangerous Game" is a great story.

[kasie]

Nobody seems to have have mentioned M R James - his ghost stories give me the shivers so much, I can't read them if I'm alone in the house!

[Hank Stamper]

Nobody seems to have have mentioned M R James - his ghost stories give me the shivers so much, I can't read them if I'm alone in the house!

look again :)

[kasie]

look again :)

D'oh! :blush:

Sorry - couldn't see for looking!

[Dark Muse]

There are all kinds of faveorite books lists floating around so I thought I would make one for the short story sense I do not think I have seen one yet.

What are your top 15 short stories?

[Jozanny]

In A Grove by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, is the best short story to emerge from the 19th into the 20th century. It allowed Hollywood to merge the attractiveness of Asian concepts of *face* and *honor* into American Western mythology, which is alive and well to this day. It is the basis for the urber-classic Japanese film Rashomon.

The rest is legacy.

I don't have another 14 for you at the moment, but most of those would be contemporary and I'd have to dig.

[Dark Muse]

That does sound interesting, I might have to look into it.

Hehe, that is alright, it is not a strict rule to follow.

[Jozanny]

That does sound interesting, I might have to look into it.

Hehe, that is alright, it is not a strict rule to follow.

I discussed it with a Yahoo Group which wanted me to leave. I did eventually, but not because of flaming. It was spoiler rules and I raised my voice over that, and posted about my personal problems with one of the owners, which was a mistake.

But one can get small gifts even if online communities aren't always suitable, and In a Grove was one.

Maybe I should put a plug on it for the rest of the evening Dark:) . I am sure I will think of a few more....

[kelby_lake]

I liked Bernice Bobs Her Hair by F Scott Fitzgerald.
Oh, and The Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka.

[WICKES]

D H Lawrence: The Prussian Officer
Roald Dahl: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Aldous Huxley: The Gioconda Smile

[Virgil]

Wasn't there a thread on tis already?

Anyway for now:
The Horse Dealer's Daughter - DH Lawrence
The Battler - Ernest Hemingway

[Dark Muse]

If there was I was not aware of it.

Here is my list as it currently stands, as it is subject to change while my reading progresses, but from what I have thus far read:

1. Youth, Beautiful Youth ~ Hesse
2. The Metamorphosis ~ Kafka
3. Liegeia ~ Poe
4. A Decent into the Maelstrom ~ Poe
5. The Aspern Papers ~ Henry James
6. The Open Boat ~ Stephen Crane
7. Bride Comes To Yellow Sky ~ Stephen Crane
8. The Apt Pupil ~ Stephen King
9. Bartleby ~ Melville

And that is all I have for now

[Jozanny]

I thought of another:
Maupassant, Boule de Suif

And an American,
Shirley Jackson, The Lottery

But to me, the short story blossomed in the mid-20th century, and surpasses anything which might be in the classic canon.

[Chester]

I have to put a plug in for "A Haunted House" by Virginia Woolf.

You can find it right here:
http://www.online-literature.com/virginia_woolf/856/

At just 700 words it reads more like poetry, and it's positively beautiful.

[Dori]

No one has listed 15 short stories yet...:lol:

My favorites:

"The Vanishing American" by Charles Beaumont
"Solo on the Drums" by Ann Petry
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce
"Pigs is Pigs" Ellis Parker Butler
"The Confession" by Anton Chekhov
"A Nincompoop" by A. Chekhov
"A Cure for Drinking" by A. Chekhov
"The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe
"The Tell-Tale Heart" by E. A. Poe
"White Nights" by Fyodor Dostoevsky
"A Dream of a Ridiculous Man" by F. Dostoevsky

Heck, I only can name 11 off the top of my head. :D

[Virgil]

A Rose For Emily - William Fualkner
Bartleby, the Scrivener - Herman Melville
The Blue Hotel - Stephan Crane
The Lady With the Dog - Aton Chekov

[tractatus]

I am not a big fan of short story, so my choices are from a small pool.

I give my Booker to Edgar Allen Poe and Julio Cortazar, not choosing any story, with their complete works.

I once read and like Erskina Caldwell, with his "Martha Jean", "Looking at you Agnes". Surely a lot Heinrich Böll, I cant recall story names. Also I can find a few stories from known names as Borges, Chekhov, Hemingway.

Anyway to make you search and find, I 'll give one story name,
-apologizing Poe- my Booker of Booker goes to "End of the Game"
from Julio Cortazar.

[armenian]

Dubliners by joyce has some pretty good short stories (the Encounter, Two Gallants, A Little Cloud, Counterparts, Clay, A Painful Case,), but then theres some boring ones to that i just couldnt get into (mostly the longer one towards the end).

the best short story ive read is 70,000 Assyrians by William Saroyan. Its In The flying Trapizist and other short stories by William Saroyan writting always flows very well, althought sometimes he gets too descriptive in a few of the short stories and i lose intrest in what he was saying

[kelby_lake]

Two of my favorites would be "the tell tale heart' by Poe and "the hunger artist" by Kafka

I love The Hunger Artist too. Hmm, short stories...I liked the Diamond as big as the Ritz by F Scott Fitzgerald. Although maybe you'd call that a novella?
Ooh, and I like The Metamorphosis :)

[book_jones]

Here's a few of my favorites.

The Wide Net - Eudora Welty (My favorite short story. I think Welty is one of the greatest writers of all time and it makes me sad that she doesn't get more attention)

See The Moon - Donald Barthelme (My favorite short story writer. His stories are always very strange and fun. I picked this one because I love the underlying sweetness behind it.)

A Haunted House - Virginia Woolf (Tiny and beautiful. It may be my favorite thing that Woolf ever wrote)

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - Ambrose Bierce
Harrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut
The Diary of Adam and Eve - Mark Twain

[Pensive]

"The Tell-Tale Heart" by E. A. Poe
"A Dream of a Ridiculous Man" by F. Dostoevsky

Now these both were amazing stories! I especially remember getting very emotionally hit by the narration in A Dream of a Ridiculous Man.

[DapperDrake]

Its funny you should mention A Dream of a Ridiculous Man as I have it out to read tonight, its the last short story in a little compilation of Dostoevsky's short stories that I have. I'm glad its good :) I'm looking forward to it now.

Back to OP topic, I'm not sure that I have a favourite short story, I've only read a few, of those I've read I guess I liked Dostoevsky's White nights and Sartre's The Wall the most, though I've only read these in the last 2-3 months.

[John Goodman]

Diamond as Big as the Ritz is a strange one. There is so much description, but for some reason you can't wait to read more of it to feed your craving of picturing this absolute luxury.

[DecemberSun]

The Lottery.

Absolutely genious, yes. Jackson is the master of gloomy atmospheres.

[Dark Muse]

I remember reading that story in like middle school I think it was.

[Niamh]

I really like The Last Leaf by O Henry

[Big Al]

"Babylon Revisited" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg" by Mark Twain
"The Devil and Daniel Webster" by Washington Irving
"An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce

Hm...

[armenian]

satre's 'the wall' and 'erostratus' are real good

[Melmoth]

Some short stories I like... as you can see most of them fantastic...

Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart
James' The Jolly Corner
Le Fanu's Green Tea and Mr. Justice Harbottle
Sartre's The Wall
Stevenson's Olalla
Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

[idiosynchrissy]

I love short stories!

"The Cask of Amontillado" by Poe- The line at the end about the jingling of the bells literally made me sick to my stomach. Who could ask for more in a short story?

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Gilman- What a great surreal work of insanity.

"All Summer in a Day" by Bradbury and "Rain, Rain, Go Away" by Asimov- these are two that struck me as a child and which are both coincidentally about rain.

[DeadAsDreams]

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft.

[TrooperW]

Timothy Findley's "Stones"

I went from enjoying reading to actually appreciating and thinking about literature.

[Qaphqa]

"The Cask of Amontillado" - Poe
"A Country Doctor" - Kafka
"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" - Borges

[Trekker114]

Juest a few personal favourites...

N. Gogol - "The Nose"
Flannery O'Connor - "A Good Man is Hard to Find", "Good Country People", "The Lame Shall Enter First"
Joseph Conrad - "The Secret Sharer"
Henry James - "The Jolly Corner"
Katherine Mansfield - "Bliss"
James Joyce - "Araby", "Eveline"

[Emil Miller]

Somerset Maugham's favourite short story wrtiter was Chekhov and having read both, I prefer Mauhgam. Of his many brilliantly constructed short stories a few from the top of my head are:
Rain
The Letter
Footprints in the Jungle
The Book Bag
The Taipan
Red
The Alien Corn
The Four Dutchmen
P.& O.
Lord Mountdrago
The Lotus Eater
Flotsam & Jetsam

[Virgil]

"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" by Earnest Hemingway

Now that's a great story.

Also

"Bernice Bobs Her Hair" by F. Scott Fitgerald

[bounty]

What is the best short story of ALL TIME?

i cant say "best" but two that certainly stick out in my memory are the gift of the magi, and, the lady or the tiger.

[traytray]

I love and adore short stories:) These are some of my favorites. It would be very hard for me to pick just one.

"A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner

"Araby" by James Joyce

"The Scarlet Ibis" by James Hurst.

"The Happy Prince" by Oscar Wilde

The Dead by James Joyce

"Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka

"A Vine on a House" by Ambrose Bierce

"The Stranger" by Ambrose Bierce

"Those Who Wait" by Ethel M. Dell

"The Child's Story" by Charles Dickens

"The Christmas Tree and the Wedding" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

"His Last Bow" (An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes) by Arthur Conan Doyle

"The Canterville Ghost" by Oscar Wilde

"The Nightingale and the Rose" by Oscar Wilde

"The Fisherman and his Soul" byOscar Wilde

"The Magic Shop" by H.G. Wells

"The Star" by H.G. Wells

"My Red Cap" by Louisa May Alcott

"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe

Those are some of my personal favorites:)

[Janine]

Thanks everybody for listing so many great short stories. I intend to copy all these suggested and make a list. That way I can refer back to it and try new ones I have not yet read. Thanks for all the great recommendatons. I have read many you have listed, but anxious to read more of these in the near future and get a taste of other authors, as well.

[promtbr]

Here's a few of my favorites.

The Wide Net - Eudora Welty (My favorite short story. I think Welty is one of the greatest writers of all time and it makes me sad that she doesn't get more attention)

See The Moon - Donald Barthelme (My favorite short story writer. His stories are always very strange and fun. I picked this one because I love the underlying sweetness behind it.)


Just joined so this is second post. Love the topic. Just getting back into reading literature after a long hiatus.

I know I am in the right forum...these are a couple of my all timers. Also, at least 4 mentions of "Eyes of a Blue Dog" a story that I thought I was one of maybe 3 admirers lol

Now I have to try that Woolf story-she is my ALL TIME favorite fiction writer..



Short stories that really stayed with me and I have gone back to (outside the classic masters of the form already mentioned here who most of their stories were amazing... Larwence, Hemingway, Chekov, Mansfield, O'connor :

"So Much Water so Close to Home" and "Cathedral" --Raymond Carver

and just recently read a story that Blew Me Away:

"Half Skinned Steer"--Annie Proulx

Jorge Luis Borges,Donald Barthelme and Bruno Schulz are all worth mining imho and written some gems...

I just bought "Things they caried" by Tim O'Brien and am excited to read it having heard part of it on an audio book and read "Going After Caciato"

[byquist]

Raymond Carver's "A Small Good Thing" will rip your heart out.

[Silas Thorne]

Robert Louis Stephenson, 'Markheim'
Edgar Allan Poe 'The Tell-tale heart'
Saki 'Shredni Vashtar' - I can read this one again and again-delightful!

[hampusforev]

Man there's so many, I really love short stories.
Poe's the Cask of Amontillado, as mentioned several times probably.
Kafka's Metamorphosis
Tom Wolfe's "Only the Dead Knows Brooklyn"
Shirley Jacksons "The Lottery"
James Joyce’s "Dubliners" are only complete in full in my opinion, but Araby is great.
Flannery O’Connor’s "A Good man is hard to find"
I like Garcia Márquez "An old man with very large wings" (dunno if that's the proper title in English? Just translated from the top of my head)

[Snowqueen]

I liked these short stories.
The Olive Grove
Boule De Suif
A Vendetta
By Guy De Maupassant

The Wolves of Cernograntz
By Saki

The Last Leaf
By O Henry

Overcoat
By Ghlam Abbas

[prendrelemick]

Katherine Mansfield's simple and elegant; The Picton Boat.

[Genejo]

The best short story : A Good Man is ahrd to find by Flannery O'Connor ; Hawthorne's "The BirthMark"
Joyce Carol Oates' "Manhattan Romance".
these are soem of the short stories that come to my mind.

[beto1glez]

For me the best short story i have read so far is Notes from the Underground.

[weltanschauung]

the wall (http://pagesperso-orange.fr/chabrieres/texts/sartre_thewall.html)

a hunger artist (http://www.kafka.org/index.php?id=162,159,0,0,1,0)

the cask of amontillado (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/POE/cask.html)

the diary of a madman (http://www.gordon-fernandes.com/hp-lovecraft/other_authors/madman.htm)

the most dangerous game (http://fiction.eserver.org/short/the_most_dangerous_game.html)

a few i can remember as of now

[MissScarlett]

I responded to the thread about truly great short story writers, but I wondered what stories everyone considers truly great. The one's I think are truly great include:

A Rose for Emily - Faulkner
The Fall of the House of Usher - Poe
The Kiss - Chekhov
The Lady With the Dog - Chekhov
The Horse Dealer's Daughter - D.H. Lawrence
The Blind Man - D.H. Lawrence
Miss Brill - Katherine Mansfield

There are others, but I just can't think right now.

[kelby_lake]

Vendetta was good.

The Schoolteacher's Guest was wonderful. Can't remember who it's by.

[Janine]

I responded to the thread about truly great short story writers, but I wondered what stories everyone considers truly great. The one's I think are truly great include:

A Rose for Emily - Faulkner
The Fall of the House of Usher - Poe
The Kiss - Chekhov
The Lady With the Dog - Chekhov
The Horse Dealer's Daughter - D.H. Lawrence
The Blind Man - D.H. Lawrence
Miss Brill - Katherine Mansfield

There are others, but I just can't think right now.

I bolded up the ones I read and loved, too. Excellent stories - all!:thumbs_up

[WICKES]

Evelyn Waugh: Mr Loveday's Little Outing

Roald Dahl: Henry Sugar

P G Wodehouse wrote some good short stories too

[sixsmith]

The Mud Below - Annie Proulx
Communist - Richard Ford
Career move - Martin Amis
After the denim - Raymond Carver
I hate to see that evening sun go down - William Gay

[Don Quixote Jr]

What is the best short story of ALL TIME?

Who knows? I think a "Top 10" (or at least a "Top 5") list would be much easier
to answer.

[DanielBenoit]

Funny how there's now two threads asking almost the same thing :rolleyes:

[Saleh]

Nice question. The best story is "Tower of Babel" . This story stands for a universal theme for people who are wondering why there are multiple languages all over the world.

[Mrig]

The Story of Bibi Haldar--- by Jhumpa Lahiri...It has a different sensibility

Coloured Lights was also a good collection but don't remember the writer

[Dinkleberry2010]

A Clean Well-Lighted Place - Hemingway
A Good Man Is Hard To Find - O'Connor

[JuniperWoolf]

The Lottery.

A bit obvious, but that'd be my pick too.
I also liked this one (really) short story by Neil Gaiman. Here it is:

http://jeniong.multiply.com/journal/item/163/Seven_Deadly_Sins_-_Part_7_The_Others?&item_id=163&view:replies=reverse

[Vladimir777]

For me the best short story i have read so far is Notes from the Underground.

To me this seems almost excessively long to be considered a "short story." Stuff like Of Mice and Men and Metamorphosis are already long, but isn't this at least 150 pages? It might be closer to 200.

[changelingchild]

"There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury

"By the Waters of Babylon" by Stephen Vincent Benet

I love these two stories. I find them really beautiful and moving.

I just thought of two others.

"Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" by Ray Bradbury

"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

[bouquin]

T.C. Boyle's short stories are fabulous!
Most recently I read WALKING OUT by David Quammen. Superlative!

[MarkC]

According to me: 1.The Dead (James Joyce)
2.The Hunger artist(J.Kafka.Jerome)

[BloomingRose]

Abelardo Castillo has some interesting ones, but I guess you have to know Spanish to read them unless you get a translation :/ Anyhow, his stories are quite original and after reading one for school, I ended up buying the whole book :)

[Dr Jekyll]

I love short stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov such as "Ward No. 6" and Stevenson's "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", "Markheim" and "The Body Snatcher". My favourite book of short tales is Kafka's "The Metamorphosis and Other Stories".

[DanielBenoit]

Long Walk to Forever by Kurt Vonnegut: A wonderful, near-perfect short story. I just found the ending to be rather unsubtle and cliched.

[Jeremydav]

I always enjoy Kafka's short stories and I think my favorite has to be "The Hunger Artist."

[Virgil]

Not sure if it has been mentioned, but "That Evening Sun" by William Faulkner.

[Dr Jekyll]

Two of my favorites would be "the tell tale heart' by Poe and "the hunger artist" by Kafka

Oh, yes "The Hunger Artist" is one of my favourites, too! Also, "A Country Doctor" and "An Old Page" are also great reads.

[King Mob]

These are some of my favorites so far (maybe note the best of all time but all awesome):

"Araby" - James Joyce
"Lost in the Funhouse" - John Barth
"Omnibus" - Julio Cortazar
"The Library of Babel" - Jorge Luis Borges
"Assumption" - Samuel Beckett (his very first published story)

[myrna22]

"Good Advice is Rarer Than Rubies," by Rushdie and "A Clean Well Lighted Place," by Hemingway. I like stories that are deceptively simple. I also like "Private Tuition by Mr Bose," by Anita Desai and the work of Raymond Carver, a minimalist short story writer. Also agree with many of the choices that have been mentioned here. There are many, many great short stories.

[AuntShecky]

Every once in a while, I get the gift of reading a story which reminds me why I wanted to write -- even though the particular work is so outstanding that I realize that I never could achieve its level of greatness.

Do yourself a favor and read "The Emporer of the Air" by Ethan Canin, the title short story in a collection Ethan Canin wrote when he was only 27 years old! This short story reaped many literary awards when it was first published around 1987, and once you read the story, you'll know why it won so much praise.

The vibrant language of the narrator, an aging high school science teacher, is unpretentious yet rich with evocative description. Whatever preconceived notions you may have about the title will vanish, as you realize that the title is perfect. What is remarkable about the plot is that what the reader expects will happen doesn't, but what does happen will touch an emotional chord, the same way
James Joyce's "The Dead" affects discerning readers.

Here's just a short passage to show the power of the narrator's voice:

Miracles. This is true everywhere in nature. The evolution of 500 million years is mimicked in each gestation: birds that in the egg look like fish; fish that emerge like their spineless, leaflike ancestors. What it is to study life! Anybody who had seen a cell divide could have invented religion.

And the short story genre may have been invented for stories just like this one.

[prendrelemick]

The Country of the Blind by HG Wells, is full of adventure and suprises, and has the status of a truly great short story.

My personal favourite is "The Voyage" by Katherine Mansfield, a simple tale, not much happens, but totally captivating.

[judges]

In my opinion Dostoevsky's White Nights is a really great short story. Everyone should read it

[keilj]

What is the best short story of ALL TIME?

I don't know about "of all time" - but these are phenomenal

Moths in the Arc Light by Sinclair Lewis

The Californian's Tale by Mark Twain

A Clean Well-Lighted Place by Hemingway

The Rich Boy by F Scott Fitzgerald

all are very short - and all 4 will always be unforgettable to me

[JuniperWoolf]

A Clean Well-Lighted Place by Hemingway


Good one, I love reading it out loud.