Short Stories Message Board

Though some of my finest experiences as a reader have been with novels, I have a special place in my heart for short stories. Novels are like symphonies. Cerebral, drawing forth a whole world with their extended expressions of beauty, humor, passion, horror, what have you. Short stories are like songs, less expansive but at times equally moving, finding expression in restriction, poetry in conciseness.

But enough blithering. Here are some of my favorite short story collections:

1. Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme
2. Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
3. The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol by Nikolai Gogol
4. Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth
5. Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut

Some of my favorite stories not found in this list: "The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood, "The Killers" by Earnest Hemingway, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce, "Popular Mechanics" by Raymond Carver and "At the Mountains of Madness" by H.P. Lovecraft.

If you haven't read it yet, do pick up Bagombo Snuff Box, the other Kurt Vonnegut short-story collection put out a few years back. It's a worthy addition to the Vonnegut canon.

Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Other Stories is my all-time favorite short story collection. Ray Bradbury is another excellent short story author. The October Country and The Cat's Pajamas are a couple of my favorite collections by him.

I'm reading a couple of collections at the moment: I Am No One You Know by Joyce Carol Oates and Between Here and the Yellow Sea by Nic Pizzolatto.

As far as anthologies go, I like the O. Henry Prize series that are published annually.

Semi-randomly, though I had to dig through my library (I just realized how nice it is to say "dig through my library" and it doesn't mean "twenty books fell off the top shelf, thirteen of those hit me directly on the head, and the other seven fell on my pinkie toe.")

Moving on...

Oblivion and Girl With Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace
Hot Water Music by Charles Bukowski
Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill
Reasons to Live: Stories and Tumble Home: a Novella and Short Stories by Amy Hempel

...lots more I'm forgetting

I finished Haruki Murakami's new story collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman last week and liked almost all of them, except for a couple that seemed to be just a bit too obtuse or something for my taste, but overall, it was still pretty darn terrific stuff and definitely recommended. There were 25 stories altogether, nine of which had first appeared in the New Yorker, several from Harpers, and various singletons came from the usual suspects, Granta, McSweeney's, etc., while one was pulled from his novel Norwegian Wood.

In addition there's an utterly charming 4-page "Introduction to the English Edition" in which Haruki-san says, "I find writing novels a challenge; writing short stories a joy. If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden. The two processes compliment each other, creating a complete landscape I treasure." Blind Willow... came out in the UK on July 6, and won't be available in the US until the end of August, but if you're any sort of Murakami admirer at all, this really shouldn't be missed, a career-spanning collection by a world-class writer.

Nice to see so many people have joined the group already. A few responses:

rikker: Vonnegut is an author I devoured in high school and occasionally dip into every now and then to cover whatever I haven't read. "Bagombo" is certainly on my shopping list.

Ex_Libris:Can't go wrong with O'Conner. I've still got that collected short stories sitting around somewhere I need to get started on. "The Martian Chronicles" have always been a favorite of mine, though I'm not a big fan of Bradbury in general. Have you read Jackson's "The Lottery and Other Stories"? (those touchstones don't seem to be working for me right now). Sounds like it would be your cup of tea.

kperfetto: I haven't read any of Wallace's short stories, though I have "Oblivion" sitting around somewhere and did make it through "Infinite Jest." I almost fear to read them, since once I do there will be that much less of his work to read. Bukowski is one of those writers I have been meaning to read but have just never gotten around to picking up.

LouisBranning: I swear I have gotten more recommendations for Haruki Murakami than for any other writer since I started using this site. I have an unread copy of "Norwegian Wood" sitting in a box in a relative's attic 2000 miles away. I've been convinced I should pick it up on a trip back there in a couple of weeks.

Let's keep this up, it's getting interesting.

coffeezombie,

Funny you should mention Shirley Jackson :) I don't have The Lottery and Other Stories, but I do have her short story collection, Just An Ordinary Day. Many of the stories in that collection were discovered by her children years after she died.

Question: does everyone use the "short stories" tag? It's like the #20 most-used tag on LT, so I was wondering if other people are using variations on this tag to mean the same thing. Or have we all conformed?

I do use the "short stories" tag.

My love for the form is a relatively recent thing. As a callow youth, my preference was for the huge novel. I still have a place in my heart for U.S.A. (Dos Passos) and Don Quixote is on my pile to read, but the succinct beauty of a well-crafted short story is a real joy.

Which ones? How about these:

William Trevor -- The Hill Bachelors and A Bit on the Side
Raymond Carver -- especially Cathedral
Fitzgerald's The Diamond as big as the Ritz

I'm also currently dipping into Richard Yates's Collected Stories and John Updike's Early Stories. That should be enough to get on with!

I use the "short story" tag. It's good to be consistent and basic with some tags, especially if you are looking for recommendations.

New point for discussion: I've found that some of the most technically superior, well-crafted short stories are actually genre works. Though I don't make any serious distinction between genre and literary works (both can be engaging, both can be terrible), what are your favorite genre short stories/short story collections/anthologies?

A few of my favorites have been Isaac Asimov's collection I, Robot, The Ghost and Horror Stories of Ambrose Bierce (which I replaced with a larger collection of his works) and the Edgar Allen Poe story "The Fall of the House of Usher," just to name a few.

Here's the word on similar tags I can find, with their number of uses:

"short stories" : 23,818
"short story" : 961
"short story anthology" : 59
"short story collection" : 182
"short story collections" : 142

If you're an outlier, hop on the "short stories" bandwagon!

I do love a good short story. I have several anthologies used in college literature classes. Gives me a good covering of the classics. I also have a number of collections by various authors.

Some of my favorite collections are:
Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata
Saints and Strangers by Angela Carter
Lord Peter : a Collection of All the Lord Peter Wimsey Stories by Dorothy L. Sayers
Who Fears the Devil by Manly Wade Wellman
The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain by Mark Twain

EC

I highly recommend the various books of short stories by Charles de Lint. Start with The Ivory and the Horn.

As to tags, I use the "anthology" tag; it seems the most logical, since anthology means "A collection of literary pieces, such as poems, short stories, or plays." Currently used by 15,445 people. YMMV. ;-)

For tagging purposes, I use "anthology" to refer to a book that contains stories by more than one author (generally listing the editor as author of the book) and "collection" to refer to a book that contains stories by one author. For books containing a single story of less than novel length, I use "short story", "novelette" or "novella" as appropriate (those being less than 7500 words, 7500-15000 words and 15000-40000 words, respectively, at least as they're generally used in the science fiction field).

I like my system since it keeps things organized similarly to the awards structure of the Hugos and Locus Awards, which is handy when figuring out what to vote for in each of their categories. Of course, it'll be even better when Librarything adds real support for contents (hopefully with tagging of the individual stories) and some system for properly cataloging magazines.

I also have that The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain, which is a very good collection. Also, I have a collection of Stephen King: Nightmares and Dreamscapes, which is fun for a little light, creepy reading. heehee! I also have a collection of 'sketches' by J. Fred Lissfelt called Kaffeeklatsch, which is sort of a blend of short stories and memories of a childhood in Philadelphia.

oh, duh..I wrote Philadelphia...LOL! It's Pittsburgh, actually. Sorry!

I also use 'anthology' to refer to a book that contains stories by various authors and 'collection' for a book containing stories by a single author.

EC

Some responses:

elusivecritter & annabethblue: I've read most of Twain's short stories individually in other collections, though the I haven't sat down and read straight through the Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain. I should though, I love his work, particularly "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg."

andyhat: Those are approximatly the same codings I use. It's a pretty solid and standard system.

Interesting that a book that keeps show up in our collected catalogs is a collection of short stories by Isaac Asimov. I have no reason for mentioning that. Just interesting. Hmm.

The one commonly shared title that throws me for a loop every time I see it listed above is I Saw Esau: The Schoolchild's Pocket Book, an absolute treasure of a little book.

I'll second Raymond Carver and give you j g ballard

I've split off two of the major discussion points here into their own topic headings. This forum will remain for general discussion of short stories and the writers who write them.

Speaking of which: What do you all thing are the qualities that make a good short story (as opposed to a good novel or a good poem or just good writing in general)? Not looking for an agreement or a solid definition on this matter (since the form is wide and somewhat vaguely defined), just your own opinion on what it is you like to read in a story.

I find it interesting that the second most common book in the libraries of people in this group is The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy (it seem The Great Gatsby has it beat).

How many who have it have actually read it? I haven't, so it would be nice to know I'm not alone. And if you have, what did you think of it?

coffeezombie, I have read Tristram Shandy, multiple times in fact, and dearly love it. It's a wonderfully humorous, good-natured, often rather bawdy novel that delights the modern reader not just with its frequently laugh-out-loud comedy but also with the remarkable originality of Sterne's narrative style.

Well worth reading if only for the first scene alone!

(There is a most excellent web site devoted to Sterne and Tristram Shandy here: http://www.tristramshandyweb.it/home.htm )

I do like short stories

I've apparently over 30 books tagged that way - I couldn't list that many of the top of my head. I mostly own SF short story works a genre that ideally lends itself to the tale - sudden impact of a focused idea. Perhaps my favourite is The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh because its by my favourite author, and also that they are very well written. Each tale requires you to stop afterwards and contemplate the meanings...unlike some collections I've read.

I've been slowly working my way through The Dark Descent, which is a fine collection of horror stories. I read "The Call of Cthulhu" for the first time in years and it got me wishing for that Library of America collection of H.P. Lovecraft.

It also gave me an idea for a topic of discussion. Anyone have any favorite authors who are primarily known for short stories? Give us some names and let's see what we come up with

There's over 70 books with the short story tag in my library. I'd struggle to pick out a single favourite collection as my habit is to dip in an out rather than read a collection from beginning to end. Anyway, today my top five short story writers are Raymond Carver, T C Boyle, Ernest Hemingway, Etgar Keret, and George Saunders.

I just use the tag "stories" because that covers more territory like short shorts and long shorts (i.e novellas).

I liked Shandy. Although I confess there were brief times when it was a slog, if I kept slogging I was rewarded. It wilts a little in the middle but gets pretty crazy again as it heads toward the finish. There is a lot of crude sex and scat based humor that is interesting because its in an old book by a man of the cloth and you have to read between the lines but its not always hilarious. If there is something you think you are missing it is almost always the case that its a play on words about farts or pricks or bungholes etc. Am I allowed to write those words? I apologize if anyone is scandalized.

The current issue of the New Yorker (Feb 15 & 22, 2010) has one of the best stories that I've recently read, Foster by Claire Keegan. Here's the link:
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/02/15/100215fi_fiction_keegan

I've almost completed the Andrew Porter short story collection, The Theory of Light and Matter. I hadn't even heard of this author until I discovered his exquisite debut at the recent ABA Winter Institute in San Jose. He has the voice, the gift, the chops to be a master storyteller. An auspicious beginning for those craving a fresh new Tobias Wolff with their cup of joe.

Here's one I particularly like by Charles Portis.
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/96may/9605fict/9605fict.htm