my favorite short story writers:
Roald Dahl
E.L. Doctorow
Guy de Maupassant
Jhumpa Lahiri
Truman Capote
Printable View
my favorite short story writers:
Roald Dahl
E.L. Doctorow
Guy de Maupassant
Jhumpa Lahiri
Truman Capote
I don't about all time favourite but i really liked The little match girl by hans Christian Andersen. and Bliss by Katherine Mansfield
Have you read "The Cosmopolitan" by O'Heanry? If you had, i think you would agree it is amusingly ironic!:idea: Read it some time, seriously!
There are a lot of great short stories. I think one of the stories I found the most moving was All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury. So sad.
I don't read many short stories, but my father loves Asimov and he introduced me to his writing...so, I would say"the last question"..
Good one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Silvia
I'll add some of my favorites, off the top of my head:
"The fall of the house of Usher" - Poe. This one i guess is my favorite
"The Metamorphoses" - Kafka (I guess i'll consider it a long short story instead of a short novel. Really short stories by K that I really liked were "The Hunger Artist" and one that i dont know its name in English: "La Condena"?)
"Entropy" - Thomas Pynchon
"Calleidoscope" - Ray Bradbury
"The Visitor" - Dylan Thomas
Another great writer of short stories was sci-fi and mystery writer Fredric Brown. Is there anybody here into him?
Lovecraft is great too.
I forgot about Dostoyevsky's "White Nights", i was considering it as a short novel instead of a short story, i dont know why. I guess this one along with Poe's "The Fall..." are my favourites.
william faulkner's a rose for emily.
Will you all laugh at me if I say
Roald Dahl's Lamb to the Slaughter
????
It truly is the perfect murder....
all time? hard. I love short stories so much, especially Jack London's work, I grew up reading his adventures. Guess I'll go with any one of Jack London's short stories.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ;5107
I read The Cask of Amontillado back in high school, many years ago ... and I loved it! Perhaps in great part because it was discussed thoroughly in class, thanks to my Literature teacher.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bouquin
update:
I have just finished reading Interpreter of Maladies and now include Jhumpa Lahiri among my favorite short story writers!
I love Nabokov's short stories, my favourite that comes to mind is 'The Admiralty Spire'.
A Rose for Emily - Faulkner
The Cask of Amontillado - Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher - Poe
The Life You Save May be Your Own - O'Connor
To Build a Fire - London
The Sniper - Liam O'Flaherty
The Minister's Black Veil - Hawthorne
I just finished reading John Steinbeck's The Pearl and I'm going to go ahead and consider it not only a short story, but one of my favorites.
a lot of the short stories by ray bradbury.
The Wall by John Paul Sartre is my favorite short story.
A Passion in the Desert - Balzac
Lukardis - Wassermann
The War Prayer - Twain
Kannitverstan - Hebel
I couldn't possibly list only one. I have a folder of short stories from school last year, somewhere. I couldn't find it, and the only one that comes to mind is The Queen of Spades.
"A Good Man is Hard to Find" - Flannery O'Connor'
"The Chaser" - John Collier
"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" - E. Hemingway
"Hills Like White Elephants" - E. Hemingway
"The Babysitter" - Robert Coover
Very very difficult question, there are a lot of great tales, but my personal list maybe can be like this:
-Message found in a bottle (Edgar Alan Poe)
-The Dunwich horror (HP. Lovecraft)
-The diary of a madman (Guy de Maupassant)
-Carcasona (Lord Dunsany)
Good question. If I were to pick just one I would say "the Zahir" by Borges. Other goodies not mentioned here are:
- "There will come soft rains" by Bradbury
- "Studio 5, the Stars", by Ballard
- "birthday of the infanta" by Wilde
- "Automatic tiger" by Kit Reed
- "The 9 billion names of god" by Clarke
- "The autopsy" by Michael Shea
- "The copper rain" by Lugones
There are so many. But my favourite is the Zahir.
I liked The Lottery. I forget who it's by.
The old man and the sea. Earnest Hemingway
I read Brokeback Mountain having seen the film and thought it was pretty amazing. In face everything in that volume of stories was very good - pressed to think of a better collection.
The Conan Doyle is worth a mention!
Checkhov is almost synonymous with excellent short fiction. Brief, vivid, and devastating.
Tim O'Brien's <i>The Things They Carried</i> is a collection of short stories that are simply stunning. He also addresses in one of them, I don't recall the exact title, the power and essence of a story itself. I consider it a must-read for aspiring writers/human beings.
I agree! A Scandal in Bohemia is my fav.Quote:
Originally Posted by McGrain
Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber was an amazing short story
Henry James - A bundle of letters
Truman Capote - My Side of the Matter
ligeia - edgar allan poe
the dead - james joyce
when read in comparison whith other stories from the dubliners ( and other writings for poe) excellent but just as poignant and stirring on there own.
There are many that are delightful no matter how many times I read them:
Ball of Fat - Guy de Maupassant - Sad, wonderful, and the FIRST story he ever published! Amazing.
Uncle Fred Flits By - P.G. Wodehouse - but it's hard to name one, because he wrote many that are priceless.
The Tall Men, A Rose For Emily - William Faulkner - Two of his best "the past isn't dead -- it isn't even past" stories.
Bartleby - Herman Melville - An automatic selection for anyone confined in a cube. "I would prefer not to." Amen.
The Tell-Tale Heart - Poe - As nearly perfectly constructed as a short story can be.
The Chaser - John Collier - Still works after 50 readings...
And many others, but I wanted to get started on this topic.
"The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner" by Alan Sillitoe. Anyone else read this? Never met anyone who has, curious to see what others think of it. For me one of those stories so powerful that, like 9-11 and presidential assassinations I still remember where I was when I first read it. A long time ago now.
For humour I really liked Henry Lawson's "The Loaded Dog". Also his "The Drover's Wife". I still get chills when I read it.
I found this thread by typing "Greatest Short Stories" into GOOGLE. I was curious to see if anyone had ever come up with some kind of list of The
Greatest Short Stories Of All Time. They've come up with several 'definitive' lists for Movies and Books and Albums and probably for Screensavers and Mobile Phone Ringtones for all I know. But nothing for short stories.
I'm less interested in seeing such a list than in the fact that no publication has bothered to even come up with one. Do many people read short stories any more?
The loneliness of the long distance runner is a great story. I read it at school when I was 14.Quote:
Originally Posted by Walter Necks
My favorites are:
An Occurance ot Owl Creek Bridge - Ambrose Bierce
A Horseman in the Sky - Ambrose Bierce
One Kind of Officer - Ambrose Bierce
The Overcoat - Nikolai Gogol
A Rose for Emily - William Faulkner (Not one of my favorites, but after listing all those Ambrose Bierce stories, I'm in a rather morbid mood, and felt like listing this one :p)
The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut by Mark Twain
His Wife Anton Chekhov
as I was not here while this thread unfolded, I certainly have not read of of the replies... but I do wonder, was one of my all time favorite stories mentioned?
Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol
"And, instead of hugging one another after their long separation, father and son began to aim heavy blows at the other's ribs, belly and chest, side-stepping, moving, back, attacking again, their eyes glued on each other."
:-)
Yes, I mentioned it earlier. It is simply an amazing story, almost like poetry albeit violent, brutal poetry but still...poetry. I wouldn't say I'm a huge Gogol fan but this story is a standout for me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoffrey
Logically, the best short story ever should come from the best short story writer ever.
And since Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is that writer, the best(s) would be:
A Boring Story (a.k.a. A Dreary Story)
In the Ravine
The Bishop
The Lady with the Little Dog
And Tolstoy also would have a few pieces in contention (even if they are long short, stories:
The Death of Ivan Ilych
Father Sergius
Hadji Murad
And Gogol:
The Overcoat
Diary of a Madman
Nevsky Prospect
Non-Russian pieces (and thus slightly lower in rank):
The Dead - Joyce
Benito Cereno - Melville
The Fall of the House of Usher - Poe
The Metamorphosis - Kafka
To Build A Fire - London
The Carver story about the blind man was "Cathedral"....also Lawrence wrote "The Odour of Chrysanthemums" - not to be confused with Steinbeck's "The Chrysanthemums"....
Try anything by Ray Bradbury or William Trevor. Masters of the craft. But my own favourite is a little known short story by PG Wodehouse "In Alcala". It is written with an intensity that I found stunning in Plum`s writing. Suddenly you realize that the jokes have stopped and it hits you between the eyes like a rake from long grass.
My favorite short story is The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell. Two other favorites are Robert Louis Stevenson's Olalla and Poe's Fall of the House of Usher.
Short stories are ideal for making any sort of profound "statement" (or portrayal), or writing something with the intention of making an intense impact. I find that open-ended stories that leave room for interpretation are often the ones that stick with me most... Certain ones seem to pop up in my memory from time to time, when an event or person in my own life will make me 'wonder' in the same way certain short stories did.
I'm trying to start a thread about my favorite short story writer, Chekhov. It's over at:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...770#post429770
Here's some of the explanation I gave over in that discussion:
"Chekhov is great for online discussion because he's an author that's accessible; but, at the same time, he's poetic and philosophical. Short stories don't make quite the demand that full length novels do, and laconic Realism is easier to grasp than voluble Modernism. But, that doesn't mean that just because Chekhov is terse the stories don't have subtlety. Often, clever turns of the plot reveal meaning and feeling to the story without the author having to directly explain to the reader the importance of events. Joseph Conrad, for example, has to purposely intervene in many of his stories to tell the reader what to think. In The Heart of Darkness, Marlowe has his adventure, but then he has to tell all the other sailors in asides and a final monologue how its important. That isn't to say Joseph Conrad is a horrible writer who should never be discussed online--in fact, I'm reading Nostromo right now. I'm only arguing that it's easier for the reader when the meaning is slowly revealed and not dictated at certain moments. Chekhov is considered one of the masters of the short story for his ability to manipulate the story and not the reader. He doesn't resort to sentimentality or weak intellectualism to tell his stories, yet he is still able to discuss the most important ideas in life like loss, death, memory, idealism, and self-image. It's literary things like this that I hope people get interested in."
Right now we're discussing "Rothschild's Violin". It's one of his best short stories talking about death and loss. You can get the full story, here, on LitNet at:
http://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/1272/