Ernest Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life Of Francis McComber" is a killer. So economical and poignant. You just sit back and let out a big sigh after you finish it.
Ernest Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life Of Francis McComber" is a killer. So economical and poignant. You just sit back and let out a big sigh after you finish it.
Sure, F. Scott Fitzgerald is praised for his novels but his short stories are amazing.
I like the cut-glass bowl---it's got an interesting spin on fate and The Off-shore Pirate because it's so funny and great to read out loud
"In the penal colony", Kafka
i remember doing a book of short stories at college and one that struck me was 'rasperry jam' with a young boy and a coupe of mad old women! any one know who thats by?
I have already joined myself in marriage to a husband, namely the kingdom of England.
Poe - The Cask of Amontillado
Vonnegut - The Boy who Hated Girls
Doyle - The Adventure of the Speckled Band
If life gives you poop.... make poop juice!
fairy-tales written by Anderen
:-?
But I would go with a Philip K. Dick short story:
'Breakfast at twilight'.
A rather discouraging story, but then it was written by Dick!
'Solvitur Ambulando'
I'm a big fan of The Lottery, also The Signalman by Dickens. Harrison Burgeron is killer, don't remember who wrote it though. And although I have grown to dislike him somewhat, Stephen King has written some really memorable short stories. There are better ones, but one called Rock and Roll Heaven always springs to mind.
Permit me to doubt.
i like a lot of the above, esp Kafka & Poe but my fav all time was "Death of Ivan Illich" (sp?)!!!
JP
The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
Nobody has mentioned Alice Walker ..
I think she is a great writer
her "Kindered Spirits" and "Everydayuse" are awesome ..
We meet no Stranger, but Ourself .
Emily Dickinson
I really like Raymond Carver's "Popular Mechanics" and Linda Hogan's "Making Do," but there are so many good short stories that it is impossible to say which one is the best.
I like "Selfish Giant" of Oscar Wilde...and most of his short stories.
We are all in the gutter,
but some of us are looking at the stars.
----Oscar Wilde
I've just finished reading a book of Kafka's short stories and I loved all of them. My favourite from that book, apart from Metamorphosis, which I'm sure I'll hate after writing an essay about it this weekend, are The Burrow, In the Penal Settlement and Investigations of a Dog.
That scene of In the Penal Settlement, when the officer was explaining the execution device enthusiastically to the diplomat while the condemned man just stood there in chains, all in the oppressing sunlight and the intense heat...I just got captured by the atmosphere and tone of the entire story.
The Burrow was appealing to me because of the paranoid hysteria that ensues in the end, and along with Investigations of a Dog it examined human characteristics through the conciousness of animals so well. If anyone else was also captured/entranced, let me know. I'd enjoying talking more about it.
I too like:
The Lottery
Yellow Wallpaper
The Dead
plus:
A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings--Gabriel Garcia Marquez
o. henry's a midsummer knight's dream was brilliant and--for blind little me--brought a sweet and unexpected ending. i'm no expert on short stories, but i'll side with o. henry any day!
"I never travel without my dairy. One must always have something SENSATIONAL to read on the train." --Oscar Wilde
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