Most psychological story-writing?

[Kyriakos]

I am looking for short (up to 30 pages) stories which not only feature psychologically-driven narrative, but moreover rely on the narrator having some not foreseen mental handicap, which taints his narrative.

In a way it should be the antithesis of Poe's Tell-tale heart, where the narrator tries to prove he was rational; in the case i am looking for it should become slowly obvious (perhaps in a very subtle way) to the reader, that the narrator is insane.

I cannot really think of any work that i read that does this. Perhaps if you take Kafka's "The Burrow", with an imagined ending in which it is revealed that the narrator is a human being believing he is that animal in the burrow, you would have a story like the one i am thinking of.

So, any ideas? :) I heard Beckett might have something like this in his prose work, but in that case which should i try reading?

[namenlose]

Beckett’s trilogy has some resemblance to the style of The Burrow, which is usually considered a phenomenological parody, a classification that could also be applied to some extent to Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable, although they are also much more than this.

However, there’s no conclusive revelation in them and you may be disappointed if what you want is a clear suggestion of madness. Perhaps the narrators are insane – well, at least in the first two novels –, but the author won’t endorse this resolution and I don’t think it would be helpful to follow such idea while reading them. All the characters have is their hellish universe, and all you will have are their thoughts and the miserable reality they portray.

Language is a central theme in these works, but you should not forget they are about minds – or voices –, and the sorrow of the creatures that inhabit them is of great relevance too. It’d be interesting to take also into account the philosophical works of Descartes, Schopenhauer and even Plato while reading, since one of the main motifs of The Trilogy is the nature of the mind, the body and the physical world, as well as their mutual relation. In Murphy, the protagonist felt disturb by the material universe; throughout these three new books it dissipates, but the consequence is not exactly an elevation of the inner self. I’m not very acquainted with his short stories, but they seem to carry some similarities to his novels.

[Kyriakos]

Thank you for the useful information, namenlose :)

Now that i think of it, Gogol's "Diary of a madman" could have been somewhat close to what i am looking for, but it has mad right there on the title, and it is writen mostly as comedy (although its ending pages are extremely dramatic)...

[Summer M]

Poe's William Wilson, and Stephen King's Secret Window, Secret Garden, which borrowed from Poe's story. Both push your 30-page limit, methinks.

[Lost_Souls]

Sure you've already read it, but Charlotte Gilman-Perkin's famous short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is exactly what you describe, only we are left to wonder if madness isn't preferable to sanity.

[Kyriakos]

Thank you, i had begun reading the yellow wall-paper (and i think i had once actually read it all for an english class, years ago), but gave up. Time to pick it up again, and i recall that i was very impressed by it :)

[TheFifthElement]

Julio Cortazar's story Axolotl