Your favorite short story

[DanielBenoit]

A single favorite short story...? Isn't that almost as impossible as a single favorite poem?

Yeah, all attempts at naming 'favorite ____ ever' are kind of futile. Usually with just about anything I can only name what I've been liking at the moment.

I'm on a short story rampage right now.

[OrphanPip]

Here's some more, maybe not my favorites of all time, but certainly some good ones:

A Clean, Well-Lit Place by Ernest Hemingway
Hills like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway
Scenes from the Life of a Double-Monster by Vladimar Nabokov
Between Yes and No by Albert Camus

And the one which stands above them all:
Dream of a Ridiculous Man by Fydor Dostoyevsky

I love "Hills like White Elephants" too, Virginia Woolf remarked about the vagueness of the dialogue that the characters were probably talking about getting a tooth pulled.

"A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner
"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker
"A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor

There are so many great short stories out there, it is so hard to choose a favorite.

[blazeofglory]

My all time favorite story is Dostoevsky’s the Dream of a ridiculous ma. This book is full of imagination, fantasy, realism, magic realism, existentialism and all the rest and I never get tired of rereading this story. Besides this I like all the stories of Kafka, Checkav, James Joyce, Tolstoy. They are times less story tellers.

[hellsapoppin]

I commend the readers for their excellent choices.

My favorite (now and forever!) is Poe's The Cask of Amontillado. In fact, I feel like reading it again - perhaps tomorrow night ...

[DanielBenoit]

I love "Hills like White Elephants" too, Virginia Woolf remarked about the vagueness of the dialogue that the characters were probably talking about getting a tooth pulled.

I know! That's what's so brilliant about Hemingway! He's so minimal as to description, that there is so much left to the audiences imagination.

"A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner

Funny, I just read that today. Was good, but a bit tedious for me. I don't know why, because I usually like Faulkner.

[OrphanPip]

Funny, I just read that today. Was good, but a bit tedious for me. I don't know why, because I usually like Faulkner.

I love it, the achronological presentation of the plot goes so well with the theme of stagnation and clinging to an idealized past. Neither Emily nor the narrators are capable of progress.

[DanielBenoit]

I love it, the achronological presentation of the plot goes so well with the theme of stagnation and clinging to an idealized past. Neither Emily nor the narrators are capable of progress.

Yeah I know. I was just rather weary-eyed at the time I read it, I should probably re-visit it again sometime.

[sixsmith]

Yes, impossible to choose one.

The Mud Below - E.A Proulx
Communist - Richard Ford
After the Denim - Raymond Carver
Career Change - Martin Amis
Some of us had been threatening our friend Colby - Donald Barthelme

[tbarnes]

A Clean, Well-Lit Place by Ernest Hemingway

such a great story, i completely forgot about this.

[shortstoryfan]

I almost forgot about A Jury of Her Peers. Everyone should read that one if they have not.

[selsabil]

I have read last year Raymond Carver's "Little Things" and really I love it.

[Red-Headed]

It's so difficult to just choose one short story. I have always thought that Chekov wrote some of the finest short stories. Especially The Steppe which is technically a novella. Tolstoy wrote some fine short stories as well. But, if I had to plump for one, I would go for Surface Tension by James Blish. I have always loved it since I first read it in an anthology when I was about thirteen. It seems to touch something mythological & yet be very good speculative fiction as well.

[Three Sparrows]

Wow, some pretty nice choices! But hey, don't feel constrained to name only a few, the more suggestions the better.
I seems like Maugham is the favorite short story writer so far, so I shall ask: what makes Maugham better than others, in your opinion? And if you have a different favorite writer, why is he so favored?
Please discuss.

[OrphanPip]

"The Other Side of the Hedge" by E.M. Forster is another favorite of mine.

http://www.101bananas.com/library2/otherside.html

[Dinkleberry2010]

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson is my favorite short story