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The Art of the Short Story
This affordably-priced collection presents masterpieces of short fiction from 52 of the greatest story writers of all time. From Sherwood Anderson to Virginia Woolf, this anthology encompasses a rich global and historical mix of the very best works of short fiction and presents them in a way students will find accessible, engaging, and relevant. The book's unique integration of biographical and critical background gives students a more intimate understanding of the works and their authors.
Contents:
Part I. Introduction. The art of the short story.-- Part II. Stories [A-J]. Chinua Achebe: Dead men's path ; Author's perspective, Achebe: modern Africa as the crossroads of culture -- Sherwood Anderson: Hands ; Author's perspective, Anderson: Words not plot give form to a short story -- Margaret Atwood: Happy endings ; Author's perspective, Atwood: On the Canadian identity -- James Baldwin: Sonny's blues ; Author's perspective, Baldwin: Race and the African-American writer -- Jorge Luis Borges: The garden of forking paths ; Author's perspective, Borges: Literature as experience -- Albert Camus: The guest ; Author's perspective, Camus: Revolution and repression in Algeria -- Raymond Carver: Cathedral ; A small, good thing ; Author's perspective, Carver: Commonplace but precise language -- Willa Cather: Paul's case ; Author's perspective, Cather: Art as the process of simplification -- John Cheever: The swimmer ; Author's perspective, Cheever: Why I write short stories -- Anton Chekhov: The lady with the pet dog ; Misery ; Author's perspective, Chekhov: Natural description and "The center of gravity" -- Kate Chopin: The storm ; The story of an hour ; Author's perspective, Chopin: My writing method -- Sandra Cisneros: Barbie-Q ; Author's perspective, Cisneros: Bilingual style -- Joseph Conrad: The secret sharer ; Author's perspective, Conrad: The condition of art -- Stephen Crane: The open boat ; Author's perspective, Crane: The sinking of the Commodore -- Ralph Ellison: A party down at the square ; Author's perspective, Ellison: Race and fiction -- William Faulkner: Barn burning ; A rose for Emily ; Author's perspective, Faulkner: The human heart in conflict with itself -- F. Scott Fitzgerald: Babylon revisited ; Author's perspective, Fitzgerald: On his own literary aims -- Gustave Flaubert: A simple heart ; Author's perspective, Flaubert: The labor of style -- Gabriel García Marquez: A very old man with enormous wings ; Author's perspective, García Marquez: My beginnings as a writer -- Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The yellow wallpaper ; Author's perspective, Gilman: Why I wrote "The yellow wallpaper" -- Nikolai Gogol: The overcoat ; Author's perspective, Gogol: On realism -- Nadine Gordimer: A company of laughing faces ; Author's perspective, Gordimer: How the short story differs from the novel -- Nathaniel Hawthorne: Young Goodman Brown ; The birthmark ; Author's perspective, Hawthorne: On the public failure of his early stories -- Ernest Hemingway: A clean, well-lighted place ; Author's perspective, Hemingway: One true sentence -- Zora Neale Hurston: Sweat ; Author's perspective, Hurston: Eatonville when you look at it -- Shirley Jackson: The lottery ; Author's perspective, Jackson: The public reception of "The lottery" -- Henry James: The real thing ; Author's perspective, James: The mirror of a consciousness -- Ha Jin: Saboteur ; Author's perspective, Jin: Deciding to write in English -- James Joyce : Araby ; The dead ; Author's perspective, Joyce: Epiphanies. Contents: Part II[ Cont.]. Stories [K-W]. Franz Kafka: Before the law ; The metamorphosis ; Author's perspective, Kafka: Discussing The metamorphosis -- D.H. Lawrence: Odour of Chrysanthemums ; The rocking-horse winner ; Author's perspective, Lawrence: The novel is the bright book of life -- Ursula K. Le Guin: the ones who walk away from Omelas ; Author's perspective, Le Guin: On "The ones who walk away from Omelas" -- Doris Lessing: A woman on a roof ; Author's perspective, Lessing: My beginnings as a writer -- Jack London: To build a fire ; Author's perspective, London: Defending the factuality of "To build a fire" -- Katherine Mansfield: Miss Brill ; The garden-party ; Author's perspective, Mansfield: On "The garden-party" -- Bobbie Ann Mason: Shiloh ; Author's perspective, Mason: Minimalist fiction -- Guy de Maupassant: The necklace ; Author's perspective, Maupassant: The realist method -- Herman Melville: Bartleby, the scrivener : a story of Wall-Street ; Author's perspective, Melville: American literature -- Yukio Mishima: Patriotism ; Author's perspective, Mishima: Physical courage and death -- Alice Munro: How I met my husband ; Author's perspective, Munro: How I write short stories -- Joyce Carol Oates: where are you going, where have you been? ; Author's perspective, Oates: Productivity and the critics -- Flannery O'Connor: A good man is hard to find ; Revelation ; Author's perspective, O'Connor: The element of suspense in "A good man is hard to find" -- Edgar Allan Poe: The fall of the House of Usher ; The Tell-tale heart ; Author's perspective, Poe: The tale and its effect -- Katherine Anne Porter: Flowering Judas ; Author's perspective, Porter: Writing "Flowering Judas" -- Leslie Marmon Silko: The man to send rain clouds ; Author's perspective, Silko: the basis of "The man to send rain clouds" -- Isaac Bashevis singer: Gimpel the Fool ; Author's perspective, Singer: The character of Gimpel -- Leo Tolstoy: The death of Ivan Ilych ; Author's perspective, Tolstoy: The moral responsibility of art -- John Updike: Separating ; Author's perspective, Why write? -- Alice Walker: Everyday use ; Author's perspective, Walker: The Black woman writer in America -- Eudora Welty: Why I live at the P.O. ; Author's perspective, Welty: The plot of the short story -- Edith Wharton: Roman fever ; Author's perspective, Wharton: The subject of short stories -- Virginia Woolf: A haunted house ; Author's perspective, Woolf: Women and fiction. Contents: Part III. Writing. The elements of short fiction -- Writing about fiction -- Critical approaches to literature. Formalist criticism: Light and darkness in "Sonny's Blues" / Michael Clark -- Biographical criticism: Chekhov's attitude to romantic love / Virginia Llewellyn Smith -- Historical criticism: The Argentine context of Borges's fantastic fiction / John King -- Psychological criticism: The father-figure in "The tell-tale heart" / Daniel Hoffman -- Mythological criticism: Myth in Faulkner's "Barn Burning" / Edmond Volpe -- "Sociological criticism: Money and labor in "The rocking-horse winner" / Daniel P. Watkins -- Gender criticism: Gender and pathology in "The yellow wallpaper" / Juliann Fleenor -- Reader-response criticism: An Eskimo "A Rose for Emily" / Stanley Fish -- Deconstructionist criticism: The death of the author / Roland Barthes -- Cultural studies: What is cultural studies? / Makr Bauerlein. Part IV. Glossary of literary terms.
Contents:
Part I. Introduction. The art of the short story.-- Part II. Stories [A-J]. Chinua Achebe: Dead men's path ; Author's perspective, Achebe: modern Africa as the crossroads of culture -- Sherwood Anderson: Hands ; Author's perspective, Anderson: Words not plot give form to a short story -- Margaret Atwood: Happy endings ; Author's perspective, Atwood: On the Canadian identity -- James Baldwin: Sonny's blues ; Author's perspective, Baldwin: Race and the African-American writer -- Jorge Luis Borges: The garden of forking paths ; Author's perspective, Borges: Literature as experience -- Albert Camus: The guest ; Author's perspective, Camus: Revolution and repression in Algeria -- Raymond Carver: Cathedral ; A small, good thing ; Author's perspective, Carver: Commonplace but precise language -- Willa Cather: Paul's case ; Author's perspective, Cather: Art as the process of simplification -- John Cheever: The swimmer ; Author's perspective, Cheever: Why I write short stories -- Anton Chekhov: The lady with the pet dog ; Misery ; Author's perspective, Chekhov: Natural description and "The center of gravity" -- Kate Chopin: The storm ; The story of an hour ; Author's perspective, Chopin: My writing method -- Sandra Cisneros: Barbie-Q ; Author's perspective, Cisneros: Bilingual style -- Joseph Conrad: The secret sharer ; Author's perspective, Conrad: The condition of art -- Stephen Crane: The open boat ; Author's perspective, Crane: The sinking of the Commodore -- Ralph Ellison: A party down at the square ; Author's perspective, Ellison: Race and fiction -- William Faulkner: Barn burning ; A rose for Emily ; Author's perspective, Faulkner: The human heart in conflict with itself -- F. Scott Fitzgerald: Babylon revisited ; Author's perspective, Fitzgerald: On his own literary aims -- Gustave Flaubert: A simple heart ; Author's perspective, Flaubert: The labor of style -- Gabriel García Marquez: A very old man with enormous wings ; Author's perspective, García Marquez: My beginnings as a writer -- Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The yellow wallpaper ; Author's perspective, Gilman: Why I wrote "The yellow wallpaper" -- Nikolai Gogol: The overcoat ; Author's perspective, Gogol: On realism -- Nadine Gordimer: A company of laughing faces ; Author's perspective, Gordimer: How the short story differs from the novel -- Nathaniel Hawthorne: Young Goodman Brown ; The birthmark ; Author's perspective, Hawthorne: On the public failure of his early stories -- Ernest Hemingway: A clean, well-lighted place ; Author's perspective, Hemingway: One true sentence -- Zora Neale Hurston: Sweat ; Author's perspective, Hurston: Eatonville when you look at it -- Shirley Jackson: The lottery ; Author's perspective, Jackson: The public reception of "The lottery" -- Henry James: The real thing ; Author's perspective, James: The mirror of a consciousness -- Ha Jin: Saboteur ; Author's perspective, Jin: Deciding to write in English -- James Joyce : Araby ; The dead ; Author's perspective, Joyce: Epiphanies. Contents: Part II[ Cont.]. Stories [K-W]. Franz Kafka: Before the law ; The metamorphosis ; Author's perspective, Kafka: Discussing The metamorphosis -- D.H. Lawrence: Odour of Chrysanthemums ; The rocking-horse winner ; Author's perspective, Lawrence: The novel is the bright book of life -- Ursula K. Le Guin: the ones who walk away from Omelas ; Author's perspective, Le Guin: On "The ones who walk away from Omelas" -- Doris Lessing: A woman on a roof ; Author's perspective, Lessing: My beginnings as a writer -- Jack London: To build a fire ; Author's perspective, London: Defending the factuality of "To build a fire" -- Katherine Mansfield: Miss Brill ; The garden-party ; Author's perspective, Mansfield: On "The garden-party" -- Bobbie Ann Mason: Shiloh ; Author's perspective, Mason: Minimalist fiction -- Guy de Maupassant: The necklace ; Author's perspective, Maupassant: The realist method -- Herman Melville: Bartleby, the scrivener : a story of Wall-Street ; Author's perspective, Melville: American literature -- Yukio Mishima: Patriotism ; Author's perspective, Mishima: Physical courage and death -- Alice Munro: How I met my husband ; Author's perspective, Munro: How I write short stories -- Joyce Carol Oates: where are you going, where have you been? ; Author's perspective, Oates: Productivity and the critics -- Flannery O'Connor: A good man is hard to find ; Revelation ; Author's perspective, O'Connor: The element of suspense in "A good man is hard to find" -- Edgar Allan Poe: The fall of the House of Usher ; The Tell-tale heart ; Author's perspective, Poe: The tale and its effect -- Katherine Anne Porter: Flowering Judas ; Author's perspective, Porter: Writing "Flowering Judas" -- Leslie Marmon Silko: The man to send rain clouds ; Author's perspective, Silko: the basis of "The man to send rain clouds" -- Isaac Bashevis singer: Gimpel the Fool ; Author's perspective, Singer: The character of Gimpel -- Leo Tolstoy: The death of Ivan Ilych ; Author's perspective, Tolstoy: The moral responsibility of art -- John Updike: Separating ; Author's perspective, Why write? -- Alice Walker: Everyday use ; Author's perspective, Walker: The Black woman writer in America -- Eudora Welty: Why I live at the P.O. ; Author's perspective, Welty: The plot of the short story -- Edith Wharton: Roman fever ; Author's perspective, Wharton: The subject of short stories -- Virginia Woolf: A haunted house ; Author's perspective, Woolf: Women and fiction. Contents: Part III. Writing. The elements of short fiction -- Writing about fiction -- Critical approaches to literature. Formalist criticism: Light and darkness in "Sonny's Blues" / Michael Clark -- Biographical criticism: Chekhov's attitude to romantic love / Virginia Llewellyn Smith -- Historical criticism: The Argentine context of Borges's fantastic fiction / John King -- Psychological criticism: The father-figure in "The tell-tale heart" / Daniel Hoffman -- Mythological criticism: Myth in Faulkner's "Barn Burning" / Edmond Volpe -- "Sociological criticism: Money and labor in "The rocking-horse winner" / Daniel P. Watkins -- Gender criticism: Gender and pathology in "The yellow wallpaper" / Juliann Fleenor -- Reader-response criticism: An Eskimo "A Rose for Emily" / Stanley Fish -- Deconstructionist criticism: The death of the author / Roland Barthes -- Cultural studies: What is cultural studies? / Makr Bauerlein. Part IV. Glossary of literary terms.
944 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
About the author
Dana Gioia
152 books106 followersDana Gioia is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning poet. Former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Gioia is a native Californian of Italian and Mexican descent. He received a B.A. and a M.B.A. from Stanford University and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. (Gioia is pronounced JOY-uh.)
Gioia has published four full-length collections of poetry, as well as eight chapbooks. His poetry collection, Interrogations at Noon, won the 2002 American Book Award. An influential critic as well, Gioia's 1991 volume Can Poetry Matter?, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, is credited with helping to revive the role of poetry in American public culture.
Gioia's reviews have appeared in many magazines including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post Book World, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, and The Hudson Review. Gioia has written two opera libretti and is an active translator of poetry from Latin, Italian, and German.
As Chairman of the NEA, Gioia succeeded in garnering enthusiastic bi-partisan support in the United States Congress for the mission of the Arts Endowment, as well as in strengthening the national consensus in favor of public funding for the arts and arts education. (Business Week Magazine referred to him as "The Man Who Saved the NEA.")
Gioia's creation of a series of NEA National Initiatives combined with a wider distribution of direct grants to reach previously underserved communities making the agency truly national in scope. Through programs such as Shakespeare in American Communities, Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, NEA Jazz Masters, American Masterpieces, and Poetry Out Loud, the Arts Endowment has successfully reached millions of Americans in all corners of the country.
The Big Read became the largest literary program in the history of the federal government. By the end of 2008, 400 communities had held month-long celebrations of great literature. Because of these successes as well as the continued artistic excellence of the NEA's core grant programs, the Arts Endowment, under Chairman Gioia, reestablished itself as a preeminent federal agency and a leader in the arts and arts education.
Renominated in November 2006 for a second term and once again unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Dana Gioia is the ninth Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Gioia left his position as Chairman on January 22, 2009. In 2011 Gioia became the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California where he teaches each fall semester.
Gioia has been the recipient of ten honorary degrees. He has won numerous awards, including the 2010 Laetare Medal from Notre Dame. He and his wife, Mary, have two sons. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Sonoma County, California
Gioia has published four full-length collections of poetry, as well as eight chapbooks. His poetry collection, Interrogations at Noon, won the 2002 American Book Award. An influential critic as well, Gioia's 1991 volume Can Poetry Matter?, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, is credited with helping to revive the role of poetry in American public culture.
Gioia's reviews have appeared in many magazines including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post Book World, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, and The Hudson Review. Gioia has written two opera libretti and is an active translator of poetry from Latin, Italian, and German.
As Chairman of the NEA, Gioia succeeded in garnering enthusiastic bi-partisan support in the United States Congress for the mission of the Arts Endowment, as well as in strengthening the national consensus in favor of public funding for the arts and arts education. (Business Week Magazine referred to him as "The Man Who Saved the NEA.")
Gioia's creation of a series of NEA National Initiatives combined with a wider distribution of direct grants to reach previously underserved communities making the agency truly national in scope. Through programs such as Shakespeare in American Communities, Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, NEA Jazz Masters, American Masterpieces, and Poetry Out Loud, the Arts Endowment has successfully reached millions of Americans in all corners of the country.
The Big Read became the largest literary program in the history of the federal government. By the end of 2008, 400 communities had held month-long celebrations of great literature. Because of these successes as well as the continued artistic excellence of the NEA's core grant programs, the Arts Endowment, under Chairman Gioia, reestablished itself as a preeminent federal agency and a leader in the arts and arts education.
Renominated in November 2006 for a second term and once again unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Dana Gioia is the ninth Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Gioia left his position as Chairman on January 22, 2009. In 2011 Gioia became the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California where he teaches each fall semester.
Gioia has been the recipient of ten honorary degrees. He has won numerous awards, including the 2010 Laetare Medal from Notre Dame. He and his wife, Mary, have two sons. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Sonoma County, California
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
July 20, 2023
I've read most of the stories in this collection together with The Short Story Group since May, last year.
The anthology boasts to include 52 of the greatest story writers of all time. The book also includes biographical and critical background information. The anthology has a decent mix of male/female with the focus on English speaking writers. I liked most of the stories, maybe the modern choices a bit less than the classics.
See below for a list of the short stories:
1. Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne
2. The Birthmark, Nathaniel Hawthorne
3. The Overcoat, Nikolai Gogol
4. The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allen Poe
5. The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allen Poe
6. Bartleby the Scrivener, Herman Melville
7. A Simple Heart, Gustave Flaubert
8. The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy
9. The Real Thing, Henry James
10. The Necklace, Guy de Maupassant
11. The Storm, Kate Chopin
12. The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin
13. The Secret Sharer, Joseph Conrad
14. The Lady with the Little Dog, Anton Chekhov
15. Misery, Anton Chekhov
16. The Yellow Wall-Paper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
17. Roman Fever, Edith Wharton
18. The Open Boat, Stephen Crane
19. Paul’s Case, Willa Cather
20. Hands, Sherwood Anderson
21. To Build a Fire, Jack London
22. Araby, James Joyce
23. The Dead, James Joyce
24. A Haunted House, Virginia Woolf
25. Before the Law, Franz Kafka
26. Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
27. The Odour of Chrysanthemums, DH Lawrence
28. The Rocking Horse Winner, DH Lawrence
29. Miss Brill, Katherine Mansfield
30. The Garden Party, Katherine Mansfield
31. Flowering Judas, Katherine Anne Porter
32. Sweat, Zora Neale Hurston
33. Babylon Revisited, F. Scott Fitzgerald
34. Barn Burning, William Faulkner
35. A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner
36. The Garden of the Forking Paths, JL Borges
37. A Clean Well-Lighted Place, Ernest Hemmingway
38. Gimpel the Fool, Isaac Bashevis Singer
39. Why I Live at the P.O., Eudora Welty
40. The Swimmer, John Cheever
41. The Guest, Albert Camus
42. A Party Down at the Square, Ralph Ellison
43. The Lottery, Shirley Jackson
44. A Woman on A Roof, Doris Lessing
45. A Company of Laughing Faces, Nadine Gordimer
46. Sonny's Blues, James Baldwin
47. Patriotism, Yukio Mishima
48. A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Conner
49. Revelation, Flannery O’Conner
50. A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, Gabriel García Márquez
51. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula Le Guin
52. Dead Men's Path, Chinua Achebe
53. How I Met my Husband, Alice Munro
54. Separating, John Updike
55. Cathedral, Raymond Carver
56. A Small, Good Thing, Raymond Carver
57. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, Joyce Carol Oates
58. Happy Endings, Margaret Atwood
59. Shiloh, Bobbie Ann Mason
60. Everyday Use, Alice Walker
61. The Man to Send Rain Clouds, Leslie Marmon Silko
62. Barbie-Q, Sandra Cisneros
63. Saboteur, Ha Jin
The anthology boasts to include 52 of the greatest story writers of all time. The book also includes biographical and critical background information. The anthology has a decent mix of male/female with the focus on English speaking writers. I liked most of the stories, maybe the modern choices a bit less than the classics.
See below for a list of the short stories:
1. Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne
2. The Birthmark, Nathaniel Hawthorne
3. The Overcoat, Nikolai Gogol
4. The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allen Poe
5. The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allen Poe
6. Bartleby the Scrivener, Herman Melville
7. A Simple Heart, Gustave Flaubert
8. The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy
9. The Real Thing, Henry James
10. The Necklace, Guy de Maupassant
11. The Storm, Kate Chopin
12. The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin
13. The Secret Sharer, Joseph Conrad
14. The Lady with the Little Dog, Anton Chekhov
15. Misery, Anton Chekhov
16. The Yellow Wall-Paper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
17. Roman Fever, Edith Wharton
18. The Open Boat, Stephen Crane
19. Paul’s Case, Willa Cather
20. Hands, Sherwood Anderson
21. To Build a Fire, Jack London
22. Araby, James Joyce
23. The Dead, James Joyce
24. A Haunted House, Virginia Woolf
25. Before the Law, Franz Kafka
26. Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
27. The Odour of Chrysanthemums, DH Lawrence
28. The Rocking Horse Winner, DH Lawrence
29. Miss Brill, Katherine Mansfield
30. The Garden Party, Katherine Mansfield
31. Flowering Judas, Katherine Anne Porter
32. Sweat, Zora Neale Hurston
33. Babylon Revisited, F. Scott Fitzgerald
34. Barn Burning, William Faulkner
35. A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner
36. The Garden of the Forking Paths, JL Borges
37. A Clean Well-Lighted Place, Ernest Hemmingway
38. Gimpel the Fool, Isaac Bashevis Singer
39. Why I Live at the P.O., Eudora Welty
40. The Swimmer, John Cheever
41. The Guest, Albert Camus
42. A Party Down at the Square, Ralph Ellison
43. The Lottery, Shirley Jackson
44. A Woman on A Roof, Doris Lessing
45. A Company of Laughing Faces, Nadine Gordimer
46. Sonny's Blues, James Baldwin
47. Patriotism, Yukio Mishima
48. A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Conner
49. Revelation, Flannery O’Conner
50. A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, Gabriel García Márquez
51. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula Le Guin
52. Dead Men's Path, Chinua Achebe
53. How I Met my Husband, Alice Munro
54. Separating, John Updike
55. Cathedral, Raymond Carver
56. A Small, Good Thing, Raymond Carver
57. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, Joyce Carol Oates
58. Happy Endings, Margaret Atwood
59. Shiloh, Bobbie Ann Mason
60. Everyday Use, Alice Walker
61. The Man to Send Rain Clouds, Leslie Marmon Silko
62. Barbie-Q, Sandra Cisneros
63. Saboteur, Ha Jin
September 20, 2023
I read one story a week, along with The Short Story Club, starting 2 May 2022, reading in chronological (not TOC) order.
You can join the group here.
About the collection
• Most of the stories either have a clever twist or are immersive vignettes; a few have both.
• They date from 1835 to 2000 and range from barely a page to 80+ pages.
• The book lists them in chronological order, but prints the stories themselves alphabetically by author.
• Each author's work is preceded by a short biography and followed by an essay or letter they wrote about their work.
• A section at the back analysis techniques for writing short fiction.
Stories and reviews
1. Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 3*. Review here.
2. The Birthmark, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 4*. Review here.
3. The Overcoat, Nikolai Gogol, 5*. Review here.
4. The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allen Poe, 4*. Review here.
5. The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allen Poe, 4*. Review here.
6. Bartleby the Scrivener, Herman Melville, 5*. Review here.
7. A Simple Heart, Gustave Flaubert, 3*. Review here.
8. The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy, 2*. Review here.
9. The Real Thing, Henry James, 4*. Review here.
10. The Necklace, Guy de Maupassant, 4*. Review here.
11. The Storm, Kate Chopin, 5*. Review here.
12. The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin, 5*. Review here.
13. The Secret Sharer, Joseph Conrad, 4*. Review here.
14. The Lady with the Little Dog, Anton Chekhov, 4*. Review here.
15. Misery, Anton Chekhov, 5*. Review here.
16. The Yellow Wall-Paper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 4*. Review here.
17. Roman Fever, Edith Wharton, 4*. Review here.
18. The Open Boat, Stephen Crane, 4*. Review here.
19. Paul’s Case, Willa Cather, 4*. Review here.
20. Hands, Sherwood Anderson, 4*. Review here.
21. To Build a Fire, Jack London, 5*. Review here.
22. Araby, James Joyce, 5*. Review here.
23. The Dead, James Joyce, 3*. Review here.
24. A Haunted House, Virginia Woolf, 4*. Review here.
25. Before the Law, Franz Kafka, 5*. Review here.
26. Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka, 5*. Review here.
27. The Odour of Chrysanthemums, DH Lawrence, 3*. Review here.
28. The Rocking Horse Winner, DH Lawrence, 4*. Review here.
29. Miss Brill, Katherine Mansfield, 4*. Review here.
30. The Garden Party, Katherine Mansfield, 4*. Review here.
31. Flowering Judas, Katherine Anne Porter, 1*. Review here.
32. Sweat, Zora Neale Hurston, 5*. Review here.
33. Babylon Revisited, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 5*. Review here.
34. Barn Burning, William Faulkner, 4*. Review here.
35. A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner, 4*. Review here.
36. The Garden of the Forking Paths, JL Borges, 5*. Review here.
37. A Clean Well-Lighted Place, Ernest Hemmingway, 4*. Review here.
38. Gimpel the Fool, Isaac Bashevis Singer, 3*. Review here.
39. Why I Live at the P.O., Eudora Welty, 2*. Review here.
40. The Swimmer, John Cheever, 4*. Review here.
41. The Guest, Albert Camus, 4*. Review here.
42. A Party Down at the Square, Ralph Ellison, 5*. Review here.
43. The Lottery, Shirley Jackson, 4*. Review here.
44. A Woman on A Roof, Doris Lessing, 4*. Review here.
45. A Company of Laughing Faces, Nadine Gordimer, 5*. Review here.
46. Sonny's Blues, James Baldwin, 4*. Review here.
47. Patriotism, Yukio Mishima, -*. Review here.
48. A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Conner, 3*. Review here.
49. Revelation, Flannery O’Conner, 3*. Review here.
50. A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, Gabriel García Márquez, 3*. Review here.
51. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula Le Guin, 4*. Review here.
52. Dead Men's Path, Chinua Achebe, 4*. Review here.
53. How I Met my Husband, Alice Munro, 3*. Review here.
54. Separating, John Updike, 5*. Review here.
55. Cathedral, Raymond Carver, 3*. Review here.
56. A Small, Good Thing, Raymond Carver, 5*. Review here.
57. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, Joyce Carol Oates, 4*. Review here.
58. Happy Endings, Margaret Atwood, 4*. Review here.
59. Shiloh, Bobbie Ann Mason, 2*. Review here.
60. Everyday Use, Alice Walker, 4*. Review here.
61. The Man to Send Rain Clouds, Leslie Marmon Silko, 4*. Review here.
62. Barbie-Q, Sandra Cisneros, 3*. Review here.
63. Saboteur, Ha Jin, 4*. Review here.
About the collection, part 2
The discipline of reading, reviewing, and discussing a story a week is excellent, especially because the participants are insightful, entertaining, varied, and polite. I've gained new insights to stories I've read before and enjoyed authors I didn't think I wanted to read and ones I'd never heard of. It has added variety to my reading, but...
As discussed in the comments, the range of genres and authors is not as broad as I think it should be, even allowing for the fact it was published in 2006. In particular:
• Not a single sci-fi or fantasy story, even though the short form has always been a mainstay of the genre. There are a couple of dystopian stories.
• No detective fiction - another genre that's strong in short stories.
• No humorous stories. Some have a dash of comedy, but that's not the same as including Saki or Wodehouse, for example. See Paul Merton's anthology Funny Ha, Ha, which I reviewed HERE.
More specifically, of 63 stories from 52 authors, approximately:
• 60% men, 40% women. Not bad.
• 62% born in the US or naturalised USicans. Rather a lot, but it’s a US anthology.
• Women not from N America (Atwood and Munro are Canadian, so are north American), 7.7%. Hmm.
• Writers of colour, 17%. A bit low - though you can push it up a bit if you add three white Jewish writers!
• The writers of colour are not very diverse: only 5 of the 9 are black, and 7 of the 9 are from the US. 1 is Hispanic, 1 is Chinese, 1 is Japanese, 1 is Native American, 1 is Nigerian, and 3 are African-American.
Thoughts on shorts
People often look down on short stories as being somehow easier - for writer and reader - just because they're short. And yet they often hold poetry in high esteem. The fewer the words, the more carefully they need to be chosen and juxtaposed. As I hope this review, and those I've linked to, demonstrate how enriching it is to intersperse short works and long ones.
I'd read 19 of the 63 stories before and 28 of the 52 authors. I like the fact so many of the authors were new to me, and there were several I'd not previously heard of. Of course, some of them were or are novelists as well as writers of short stories.
There will be more...
In September 2023, the Short Story Club will start a new anthology. I'm really looking forward to it: Black Water: The Anthology of Fantastic Literature by Alberto Manguel. My rolling review is HERE.
You can join the group here.
About the collection
• Most of the stories either have a clever twist or are immersive vignettes; a few have both.
• They date from 1835 to 2000 and range from barely a page to 80+ pages.
• The book lists them in chronological order, but prints the stories themselves alphabetically by author.
• Each author's work is preceded by a short biography and followed by an essay or letter they wrote about their work.
• A section at the back analysis techniques for writing short fiction.
Stories and reviews
1. Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 3*. Review here.
2. The Birthmark, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 4*. Review here.
3. The Overcoat, Nikolai Gogol, 5*. Review here.
4. The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allen Poe, 4*. Review here.
5. The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allen Poe, 4*. Review here.
6. Bartleby the Scrivener, Herman Melville, 5*. Review here.
7. A Simple Heart, Gustave Flaubert, 3*. Review here.
8. The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy, 2*. Review here.
9. The Real Thing, Henry James, 4*. Review here.
10. The Necklace, Guy de Maupassant, 4*. Review here.
11. The Storm, Kate Chopin, 5*. Review here.
12. The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin, 5*. Review here.
13. The Secret Sharer, Joseph Conrad, 4*. Review here.
14. The Lady with the Little Dog, Anton Chekhov, 4*. Review here.
15. Misery, Anton Chekhov, 5*. Review here.
16. The Yellow Wall-Paper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 4*. Review here.
17. Roman Fever, Edith Wharton, 4*. Review here.
18. The Open Boat, Stephen Crane, 4*. Review here.
19. Paul’s Case, Willa Cather, 4*. Review here.
20. Hands, Sherwood Anderson, 4*. Review here.
21. To Build a Fire, Jack London, 5*. Review here.
22. Araby, James Joyce, 5*. Review here.
23. The Dead, James Joyce, 3*. Review here.
24. A Haunted House, Virginia Woolf, 4*. Review here.
25. Before the Law, Franz Kafka, 5*. Review here.
26. Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka, 5*. Review here.
27. The Odour of Chrysanthemums, DH Lawrence, 3*. Review here.
28. The Rocking Horse Winner, DH Lawrence, 4*. Review here.
29. Miss Brill, Katherine Mansfield, 4*. Review here.
30. The Garden Party, Katherine Mansfield, 4*. Review here.
31. Flowering Judas, Katherine Anne Porter, 1*. Review here.
32. Sweat, Zora Neale Hurston, 5*. Review here.
33. Babylon Revisited, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 5*. Review here.
34. Barn Burning, William Faulkner, 4*. Review here.
35. A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner, 4*. Review here.
36. The Garden of the Forking Paths, JL Borges, 5*. Review here.
37. A Clean Well-Lighted Place, Ernest Hemmingway, 4*. Review here.
38. Gimpel the Fool, Isaac Bashevis Singer, 3*. Review here.
39. Why I Live at the P.O., Eudora Welty, 2*. Review here.
40. The Swimmer, John Cheever, 4*. Review here.
41. The Guest, Albert Camus, 4*. Review here.
42. A Party Down at the Square, Ralph Ellison, 5*. Review here.
43. The Lottery, Shirley Jackson, 4*. Review here.
44. A Woman on A Roof, Doris Lessing, 4*. Review here.
45. A Company of Laughing Faces, Nadine Gordimer, 5*. Review here.
46. Sonny's Blues, James Baldwin, 4*. Review here.
47. Patriotism, Yukio Mishima, -*. Review here.
48. A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Conner, 3*. Review here.
49. Revelation, Flannery O’Conner, 3*. Review here.
50. A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, Gabriel García Márquez, 3*. Review here.
51. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula Le Guin, 4*. Review here.
52. Dead Men's Path, Chinua Achebe, 4*. Review here.
53. How I Met my Husband, Alice Munro, 3*. Review here.
54. Separating, John Updike, 5*. Review here.
55. Cathedral, Raymond Carver, 3*. Review here.
56. A Small, Good Thing, Raymond Carver, 5*. Review here.
57. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, Joyce Carol Oates, 4*. Review here.
58. Happy Endings, Margaret Atwood, 4*. Review here.
59. Shiloh, Bobbie Ann Mason, 2*. Review here.
60. Everyday Use, Alice Walker, 4*. Review here.
61. The Man to Send Rain Clouds, Leslie Marmon Silko, 4*. Review here.
62. Barbie-Q, Sandra Cisneros, 3*. Review here.
63. Saboteur, Ha Jin, 4*. Review here.
About the collection, part 2
The discipline of reading, reviewing, and discussing a story a week is excellent, especially because the participants are insightful, entertaining, varied, and polite. I've gained new insights to stories I've read before and enjoyed authors I didn't think I wanted to read and ones I'd never heard of. It has added variety to my reading, but...
As discussed in the comments, the range of genres and authors is not as broad as I think it should be, even allowing for the fact it was published in 2006. In particular:
• Not a single sci-fi or fantasy story, even though the short form has always been a mainstay of the genre. There are a couple of dystopian stories.
• No detective fiction - another genre that's strong in short stories.
• No humorous stories. Some have a dash of comedy, but that's not the same as including Saki or Wodehouse, for example. See Paul Merton's anthology Funny Ha, Ha, which I reviewed HERE.
More specifically, of 63 stories from 52 authors, approximately:
• 60% men, 40% women. Not bad.
• 62% born in the US or naturalised USicans. Rather a lot, but it’s a US anthology.
• Women not from N America (Atwood and Munro are Canadian, so are north American), 7.7%. Hmm.
• Writers of colour, 17%. A bit low - though you can push it up a bit if you add three white Jewish writers!
• The writers of colour are not very diverse: only 5 of the 9 are black, and 7 of the 9 are from the US. 1 is Hispanic, 1 is Chinese, 1 is Japanese, 1 is Native American, 1 is Nigerian, and 3 are African-American.
Thoughts on shorts
People often look down on short stories as being somehow easier - for writer and reader - just because they're short. And yet they often hold poetry in high esteem. The fewer the words, the more carefully they need to be chosen and juxtaposed. As I hope this review, and those I've linked to, demonstrate how enriching it is to intersperse short works and long ones.
I'd read 19 of the 63 stories before and 28 of the 52 authors. I like the fact so many of the authors were new to me, and there were several I'd not previously heard of. Of course, some of them were or are novelists as well as writers of short stories.
There will be more...
In September 2023, the Short Story Club will start a new anthology. I'm really looking forward to it: Black Water: The Anthology of Fantastic Literature by Alberto Manguel. My rolling review is HERE.
June 17, 2023
This anthology features 60+ of the world’s finest short stories and illustrates the genre’s evolution throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. These stories have been the subject of weekly discussions—and sometimes heated debates—for over a year in The Short Story Group (you can apply if you’re interested).
Dana Gioia and R. S. Gwynn’s survey starts with the symbolic and hallucinatory landscapes of Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” and Gogol’s “The Overcoat”. It then explores Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, Flaubert’s “A Simple Heart”, and Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych”. These are all seminal precursors to modern psychological short stories, who have influenced countless authors after them.
The narrative exploration then moves on to the turn of the century, starting with Henry James’s “The Real Thing”, Maupassant’s “The Necklace”, Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer”, Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Little Dog”, a tale that Nabokov once proclaimed as one of the greatest stories ever written.
Further on, the early 20th century heralds a flourish of stylistic innovations, brought to the fore in Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”, Joyce’s “Araby”, Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”, Woolf’s “A Haunted House”, Lawrence’s “The Rocking-Horse Winner”, Mansfield’s “The Garden Party”, Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” and “A Rose for Emily”, Hemingway’s “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”. These stories usher the reader into the Modernist era, highlighting remarkable shifts in storytelling: from Joyce’s use of epiphany, the surrealism/expressionism in Kafka and Lawrence, and the stylistic breakthroughs and “iceberg theory” in Hemingway, to the rise of female Modernist authors, with Woolf and Mansfield.
The second half of this anthology takes us to the mid and late-20th century, beginning with Shirley Jackson’s unsettling tale, “The Lottery”, which later paved the way for Flannery O'Connor, a virtuoso of suspense and the grotesque. This mid-century storytelling wave also introduces prominent Latino-American authors, like the labyrinthine Jorge Luis Borges and the distinguished Colombian fabulist Gabriel García Márquez. Some eminent African American writers, like Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin, are also prominent figures of this era. Japanese literature is also, although briefly, represented by Yukio Mishima’s gripping and controversial “Patriotism”.
The final cluster of stories exhibits the richness of storytelling toward the end of the 20th century, reflecting the societal and cultural changes of the period. Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” and Margaret Atwood’s metafictional “Happy Endings” showcase an innovative approach to storytelling and contemporary feminist sensibility. The journey concludes with (among others) Joyce Carol Oates’s suspenseful “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” and Raymond Carver’s minimalist and transformative stories, “Cathedral” and “A Small, Good Thing”.
Gioia’s and Gwynn’s anthology also includes an extensive appendix with a range of critical approaches delving into the key elements of storytelling: plot, character, setting, style, viewpoint, theme, etc. Literature students might find this addition valuable.
So anyway, why read short fiction? Many of the stories collected in this book pack profound cultural or historical moments into a concise form. And navigating through the canon of these renowned storytellers reveals a fabric of connections over time. In short, it enhances our comprehension of literature’s interconnectedness.
And while novels have long been favoured for their expansive canvas, scholarly and critical attention, the tide might be turning for short fiction, spurred by our fast-paced lives. Despite shifting cultural landscapes, our hunger for excellent literature persists. We read short stories because of their very brevity, because the writing of these texts is often more intense, full of narrative drive, and fuelled with passion. Because the shortest tales can reveal the greatest truths.
Why read short fiction? Borges once said: “The essential advantage that I see is that the story can be covered at a glance. On the other hand, in the novel, the successive is more noticeable. And then there is the fact that a three-hundred-page work cannot do without scraps, pages that are mere links between one part and another. On the other hand, in a story, everything can be more or less essential, or—let’s say—it can be more like the essential.”
Dana Gioia and R. S. Gwynn’s survey starts with the symbolic and hallucinatory landscapes of Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” and Gogol’s “The Overcoat”. It then explores Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, Flaubert’s “A Simple Heart”, and Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych”. These are all seminal precursors to modern psychological short stories, who have influenced countless authors after them.
The narrative exploration then moves on to the turn of the century, starting with Henry James’s “The Real Thing”, Maupassant’s “The Necklace”, Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer”, Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Little Dog”, a tale that Nabokov once proclaimed as one of the greatest stories ever written.
Further on, the early 20th century heralds a flourish of stylistic innovations, brought to the fore in Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”, Joyce’s “Araby”, Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”, Woolf’s “A Haunted House”, Lawrence’s “The Rocking-Horse Winner”, Mansfield’s “The Garden Party”, Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” and “A Rose for Emily”, Hemingway’s “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”. These stories usher the reader into the Modernist era, highlighting remarkable shifts in storytelling: from Joyce’s use of epiphany, the surrealism/expressionism in Kafka and Lawrence, and the stylistic breakthroughs and “iceberg theory” in Hemingway, to the rise of female Modernist authors, with Woolf and Mansfield.
The second half of this anthology takes us to the mid and late-20th century, beginning with Shirley Jackson’s unsettling tale, “The Lottery”, which later paved the way for Flannery O'Connor, a virtuoso of suspense and the grotesque. This mid-century storytelling wave also introduces prominent Latino-American authors, like the labyrinthine Jorge Luis Borges and the distinguished Colombian fabulist Gabriel García Márquez. Some eminent African American writers, like Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin, are also prominent figures of this era. Japanese literature is also, although briefly, represented by Yukio Mishima’s gripping and controversial “Patriotism”.
The final cluster of stories exhibits the richness of storytelling toward the end of the 20th century, reflecting the societal and cultural changes of the period. Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” and Margaret Atwood’s metafictional “Happy Endings” showcase an innovative approach to storytelling and contemporary feminist sensibility. The journey concludes with (among others) Joyce Carol Oates’s suspenseful “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” and Raymond Carver’s minimalist and transformative stories, “Cathedral” and “A Small, Good Thing”.
Gioia’s and Gwynn’s anthology also includes an extensive appendix with a range of critical approaches delving into the key elements of storytelling: plot, character, setting, style, viewpoint, theme, etc. Literature students might find this addition valuable.
So anyway, why read short fiction? Many of the stories collected in this book pack profound cultural or historical moments into a concise form. And navigating through the canon of these renowned storytellers reveals a fabric of connections over time. In short, it enhances our comprehension of literature’s interconnectedness.
And while novels have long been favoured for their expansive canvas, scholarly and critical attention, the tide might be turning for short fiction, spurred by our fast-paced lives. Despite shifting cultural landscapes, our hunger for excellent literature persists. We read short stories because of their very brevity, because the writing of these texts is often more intense, full of narrative drive, and fuelled with passion. Because the shortest tales can reveal the greatest truths.
Why read short fiction? Borges once said: “The essential advantage that I see is that the story can be covered at a glance. On the other hand, in the novel, the successive is more noticeable. And then there is the fact that a three-hundred-page work cannot do without scraps, pages that are mere links between one part and another. On the other hand, in a story, everything can be more or less essential, or—let’s say—it can be more like the essential.”
Read
July 31, 2023Some statistics.
What we've got inside the covers of this brick of a book are 940 pages containing 63 stories by 52 authors from 20 countries.
In addition, there are short excerpts on writing by those 52 authors plus sections on reading, writing and literary criticism by the 2 compilers of the anthology, Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn.
I read those 940 pages over the course of 63 weeks with the Goodreads Short Story Club moderated by GR friend Leonard Gaya. Leonard had the clever idea of creating a poll of our favourite stories after every 8 stories, so now I can quickly check back and see exactly which stories impressed me most during the 63 weeks:
-Un coeur simple* by Gustave Flaubert
-The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
-Paul's Case by Willa Cather
-Odour of Chrysanthemums by D.H. Lawrence
-The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges
-L'hôte* by Albert Camus
-Cathedral by Raymond Carver
-Everyday Use by Alice Walker
* the Flaubert and Camus stories were in English in the anthology but I chose to read them in French.
Another statistic: the Borges story was the only favourite of mine that the majority of the group also chose as a favourite.
Alice Walker's story came 2nd in its section's poll.
Raymond Carver's came 3rd.
Willa Cather's, Conrad's and Flaubert's stories were in 5th place in their sections.
Camus' and Lawrence's came sixth.
That means most people in the group had different preferences to me—which is interesting.
There are only 11 stories in translation, by the way.
Besides Flaubert and Camus, there is also a story from their compatriot Guy de Maupassant.
There are 3 stories from writers in Russian: Gogol, Tolstoy and Chekhov.
Franz Kafka is here too, and Latin American authors Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Yiddish writer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Japanese author, Yukio Mishima.
The stories from Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, Chinua Achebe, Sandra Cisneros, and Ha Jin, were all written in their adoptive language, English.
Of the rest, at least 32 of the writers are Americans or naturalized Americans, 2 are Canadian, 2 English, 1 South African, 1 born in former Rhodesia, 1 born in New Zealand, and 1 is Irish.
There are 2 stories each from 10 of the 52 authors: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Kate Chopin, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, D H Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Raymond Carver. I don't know if my numbers quite stack up but who's counting;-)
You may have noticed that my list of poll favorites has a chronological order. That's because we read the stories in that order (noting how the genre evolved from 1835 to 2000) rather than in the alphabetical order offered by the anthology—which explains why the updates I added after reading each of the 52 authors make for such a crazy reading pattern. The only other book I've read in that hopping-back-and-forth way was Julio Cortazár's Hopscotch. Reading this book felt like a very long game of hopscotch!
Apart from the interesting pattern of the updates, I'm very glad I started posting them because they are a record of my favourite aspect of the anthology: they are mostly selected from the short sections on writing that followed on from each author's story. I learned a lot about what writers think about writing from those little sections.
But I also learned a lot from the insights shared by the other participants in the group. And I have to admit that without the motivation of the group, I'd never have finished this brick of a book. I love short stories but I prefer reading them in collections by individual authors rather than in anthologies where every story is by a different author.
Final statistic: although I've read many short stories in my life, it turns out I had read only 10 of the 63 stories in this anthology. That was a surprise statistic:-(
But to balance things out, of the 52 authors, I had read something or indeed many things by 37 of them. I prefer that statistic:-)
………………
A writer who wasn't included in the anthology snuck into my review somehow so I decided to leave him there. He has a point too—one of his stories should have been included.
What we've got inside the covers of this brick of a book are 940 pages containing 63 stories by 52 authors from 20 countries.
In addition, there are short excerpts on writing by those 52 authors plus sections on reading, writing and literary criticism by the 2 compilers of the anthology, Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn.
I read those 940 pages over the course of 63 weeks with the Goodreads Short Story Club moderated by GR friend Leonard Gaya. Leonard had the clever idea of creating a poll of our favourite stories after every 8 stories, so now I can quickly check back and see exactly which stories impressed me most during the 63 weeks:
-Un coeur simple* by Gustave Flaubert
-The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
-Paul's Case by Willa Cather
-Odour of Chrysanthemums by D.H. Lawrence
-The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges
-L'hôte* by Albert Camus
-Cathedral by Raymond Carver
-Everyday Use by Alice Walker
* the Flaubert and Camus stories were in English in the anthology but I chose to read them in French.
Another statistic: the Borges story was the only favourite of mine that the majority of the group also chose as a favourite.
Alice Walker's story came 2nd in its section's poll.
Raymond Carver's came 3rd.
Willa Cather's, Conrad's and Flaubert's stories were in 5th place in their sections.
Camus' and Lawrence's came sixth.
That means most people in the group had different preferences to me—which is interesting.
There are only 11 stories in translation, by the way.
Besides Flaubert and Camus, there is also a story from their compatriot Guy de Maupassant.
There are 3 stories from writers in Russian: Gogol, Tolstoy and Chekhov.
Franz Kafka is here too, and Latin American authors Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Yiddish writer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Japanese author, Yukio Mishima.
The stories from Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, Chinua Achebe, Sandra Cisneros, and Ha Jin, were all written in their adoptive language, English.
Of the rest, at least 32 of the writers are Americans or naturalized Americans, 2 are Canadian, 2 English, 1 South African, 1 born in former Rhodesia, 1 born in New Zealand, and 1 is Irish.
There are 2 stories each from 10 of the 52 authors: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Kate Chopin, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, D H Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Raymond Carver. I don't know if my numbers quite stack up but who's counting;-)
You may have noticed that my list of poll favorites has a chronological order. That's because we read the stories in that order (noting how the genre evolved from 1835 to 2000) rather than in the alphabetical order offered by the anthology—which explains why the updates I added after reading each of the 52 authors make for such a crazy reading pattern. The only other book I've read in that hopping-back-and-forth way was Julio Cortazár's Hopscotch. Reading this book felt like a very long game of hopscotch!
Apart from the interesting pattern of the updates, I'm very glad I started posting them because they are a record of my favourite aspect of the anthology: they are mostly selected from the short sections on writing that followed on from each author's story. I learned a lot about what writers think about writing from those little sections.
But I also learned a lot from the insights shared by the other participants in the group. And I have to admit that without the motivation of the group, I'd never have finished this brick of a book. I love short stories but I prefer reading them in collections by individual authors rather than in anthologies where every story is by a different author.
Final statistic: although I've read many short stories in my life, it turns out I had read only 10 of the 63 stories in this anthology. That was a surprise statistic:-(
But to balance things out, of the 52 authors, I had read something or indeed many things by 37 of them. I prefer that statistic:-)
………………
A writer who wasn't included in the anthology snuck into my review somehow so I decided to leave him there. He has a point too—one of his stories should have been included.
August 26, 2024
While pursuing my genealogical duties
I have come to the conclusion that collections of family tales and legends are a close cousin to collections of short fictional stories that are interrelated. The latter are frequently called composite novels and a half dozen other names.
With the help of Ms. Internet, and a (MFA?) thesis written by Melanie Fried, I've prepared a list of fourteen composite novels. I will pursue this list until either a gopher or squirrel crosses my path or I muster the motivation to repair the swing set in my backyard.
Some composite novels:
1. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
2. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
3. Love Machine by Louise Erdrich
4. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
5. The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
6. Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner
7. Cane by Jean Toomer
8. Dubliners by James Joyce
9. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
10. There There by Tommy Orange
11. Girl, Women, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
12. Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
13. Legends of the Province House by
Nathaniel Hawthorne
14. The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
15. A Hunger Artist: Four Stories by Franz Kafka
Note: The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien isn't on this list because I've already read it.
Oh, look! Did you see that cute little lizard?
I have come to the conclusion that collections of family tales and legends are a close cousin to collections of short fictional stories that are interrelated. The latter are frequently called composite novels and a half dozen other names.
With the help of Ms. Internet, and a (MFA?) thesis written by Melanie Fried, I've prepared a list of fourteen composite novels. I will pursue this list until either a gopher or squirrel crosses my path or I muster the motivation to repair the swing set in my backyard.
Some composite novels:
1. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
2. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
3. Love Machine by Louise Erdrich
4. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
5. The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
6. Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner
7. Cane by Jean Toomer
8. Dubliners by James Joyce
9. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
10. There There by Tommy Orange
11. Girl, Women, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
12. Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
13. Legends of the Province House by
Nathaniel Hawthorne
14. The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
15. A Hunger Artist: Four Stories by Franz Kafka
Note: The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien isn't on this list because I've already read it.
Oh, look! Did you see that cute little lizard?
January 1, 2014
The Art of the Short Story
Authors: Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn
Pearson-Longman, 2006
I really liked the layout of the book. There were fifty-two (52) authors presented, with sixty-three (63) short-stories. The authors were arranged in alphabetical order. For each author there was biographical information, a short-story (some had more than one story), and an “author’s perspective.” There is a diverse group of accomplished authors from many countries.
The “author’s perspective” is an interesting way Gioia and Gwynn used to share more intimate knowledge about the 52 authors. Sometimes the perspective was about the short-story presented. However, often the author shared their thoughts about writing, race, gender, or about themselves.
I was personally unfamiliar with many of the authors. The exposure to new authors was an added benefit to reading this book.
Some of my favorite authors in the book are Sherwood Anderson, Margaret Atwood, James Baldwin, Anton Chekhov, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Franz Kafka, D.H. Lawrence, Alice Munro, and Leo Tolstoy.
The last section of the book covers “the elements of short fiction,” “writing about fiction,” and “critical approaches to literature.”
I recommend this book to anyone interested in short-stories.
Authors: Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn
Pearson-Longman, 2006
I really liked the layout of the book. There were fifty-two (52) authors presented, with sixty-three (63) short-stories. The authors were arranged in alphabetical order. For each author there was biographical information, a short-story (some had more than one story), and an “author’s perspective.” There is a diverse group of accomplished authors from many countries.
The “author’s perspective” is an interesting way Gioia and Gwynn used to share more intimate knowledge about the 52 authors. Sometimes the perspective was about the short-story presented. However, often the author shared their thoughts about writing, race, gender, or about themselves.
I was personally unfamiliar with many of the authors. The exposure to new authors was an added benefit to reading this book.
Some of my favorite authors in the book are Sherwood Anderson, Margaret Atwood, James Baldwin, Anton Chekhov, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Franz Kafka, D.H. Lawrence, Alice Munro, and Leo Tolstoy.
The last section of the book covers “the elements of short fiction,” “writing about fiction,” and “critical approaches to literature.”
I recommend this book to anyone interested in short-stories.
November 8, 2020
There are a lot of great classic stories here. It's very focused on classics in general. There's some light writing advice at the end that I appreciated, and some literary criticism advice that's a good minor introduction too.
I read this hoping for some guidance on how to write better short stories. I don't feel like I necessarily got that, but I did enjoy each short piece of author wisdom at the end of each story.
Overall, I think books like this depend on what you're reading them for. If you want to read some famous stories and get a glimpse at how the short story form has changed over time, here you go. But if you're looking for serious guidance on how to write, you're probably better off at least reading something more recent to see what people are doing today.
I read this hoping for some guidance on how to write better short stories. I don't feel like I necessarily got that, but I did enjoy each short piece of author wisdom at the end of each story.
Overall, I think books like this depend on what you're reading them for. If you want to read some famous stories and get a glimpse at how the short story form has changed over time, here you go. But if you're looking for serious guidance on how to write, you're probably better off at least reading something more recent to see what people are doing today.
Currently reading
September 15, 2024Contains the stories:
Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne - 5/5 - a young married man in Puritan Salem, MA becomes disillusioned by the duality of man
The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne - 3/5 - husband becomes obsessed with his wife's birthmark and the imperfections inherent in humanity
The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol - 5/5 - multi-layered absurdist social commentary make this story one of Russia's most influential
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe - 3/5 - I admire this story more than I actually "like" it
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe - 5/5 - Poe's classic tale of suspense in which the narrator collapses under the weight of guilt
Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville - 5/5 - I could discuss this story more, but I prefer not to
A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert - 4/5 - a woman and her (eventually) stuffed parrot
The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy - 3/5 - existential angst
The Real Thing by Henry James - 4/5 - what to do with the unproductive British aristocracy in the modern age?
The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant - 4/5 - “How strange and changeful is life! How small a thing is needed to make or ruin us!”
The Storm by Kate Chopin - 4/5 - a sudden, tempestuous affair that passes quickly
The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin - 4/5 - probably not fair to compare eras but I felt the same way when my divorce was finalized
The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad - 5/5 - doppelganger story of a young ship's captain
The Lady with the Little Dog by Anton Chekhov -
Misery by Anton Chekhov -
The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman -
Roman Fever by Edith Wharton -
The Open Boat by Stephen Crane -
Paul’s Case by Willa Cather -
Hands by Sherwood Anderson -
To Build a Fire by Jack London - 5/5 - 75°-below ain't nothing to mess with
Araby by James Joyce - 4/5 - a boy attempts to purchase a gift from a bazaar for a girl with whom he is smitten
The Dead by James Joyce -
A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf -
Before the Law by Franz Kafka -
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka - 5/5 -
The Odour of Chrysanthemums by D.H. Lawrence -
The Rocking Horse Winner by D.H. Lawrence - 4/5 - I wanna rock
Miss Brill by Katherine Mansfield -
The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield -
Flowering Judas by Katherine Anne Porter -
Sweat by Zora Neale Hurston -
Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald -
Barn Burning by William Faulkner -
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner -
The Garden of the Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges - 4/5 -
A Clean Well-Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway -
Gimpel the Fool by Isaac Bashevis Singer -
Why I Live at the P.O. by Eudora Welty - 4/5 - hilarious family bickering
The Swimmer by John Cheever -
The Guest by Albert Camus -
A Party Down at the Square by Ralph Ellison -
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson - 4/5 - classic scapegoat story that is often taught in school
A Woman on A Roof by Doris Lessing -
A Company of Laughing Faces by Nadine Gordimer -
Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin -
Patriotism by Yukio Mishima -
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor - 5/5 -
Revelation by Flannery O'Connor - 4/5 -
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel García Márquez -
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin; - 4/5 -
Dead Men's Path by Chinua Achebe -
How I Met my Husband by Alice Munro -
Separating by John Updike -
Cathedral by Raymond Carver -
A Small, Good Thing by Raymond Carver -
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates -
Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood -
Shiloh by Bobbie Ann Mason -
Everyday Use by Alice Walker -
The Man to Send Rain Clouds by Leslie Marmon Silko -
Barbie-Q by Sandra Cisneros - 3/5 - short vignette about a young girl looking at toys at a flea market
Saboteur by Ha Jin - 4/5 - driven mad by injustice, a man becomes what he is accused of being
Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne - 5/5 - a young married man in Puritan Salem, MA becomes disillusioned by the duality of man
The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne - 3/5 - husband becomes obsessed with his wife's birthmark and the imperfections inherent in humanity
The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol - 5/5 - multi-layered absurdist social commentary make this story one of Russia's most influential
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe - 3/5 - I admire this story more than I actually "like" it
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe - 5/5 - Poe's classic tale of suspense in which the narrator collapses under the weight of guilt
Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville - 5/5 - I could discuss this story more, but I prefer not to
A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert - 4/5 - a woman and her (eventually) stuffed parrot
The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy - 3/5 - existential angst
The Real Thing by Henry James - 4/5 - what to do with the unproductive British aristocracy in the modern age?
The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant - 4/5 - “How strange and changeful is life! How small a thing is needed to make or ruin us!”
The Storm by Kate Chopin - 4/5 - a sudden, tempestuous affair that passes quickly
The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin - 4/5 - probably not fair to compare eras but I felt the same way when my divorce was finalized
The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad - 5/5 - doppelganger story of a young ship's captain
The Lady with the Little Dog by Anton Chekhov -
Misery by Anton Chekhov -
The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman -
Roman Fever by Edith Wharton -
The Open Boat by Stephen Crane -
Paul’s Case by Willa Cather -
Hands by Sherwood Anderson -
To Build a Fire by Jack London - 5/5 - 75°-below ain't nothing to mess with
Araby by James Joyce - 4/5 - a boy attempts to purchase a gift from a bazaar for a girl with whom he is smitten
The Dead by James Joyce -
A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf -
Before the Law by Franz Kafka -
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka - 5/5 -
The Odour of Chrysanthemums by D.H. Lawrence -
The Rocking Horse Winner by D.H. Lawrence - 4/5 - I wanna rock
Miss Brill by Katherine Mansfield -
The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield -
Flowering Judas by Katherine Anne Porter -
Sweat by Zora Neale Hurston -
Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald -
Barn Burning by William Faulkner -
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner -
The Garden of the Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges - 4/5 -
A Clean Well-Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway -
Gimpel the Fool by Isaac Bashevis Singer -
Why I Live at the P.O. by Eudora Welty - 4/5 - hilarious family bickering
The Swimmer by John Cheever -
The Guest by Albert Camus -
A Party Down at the Square by Ralph Ellison -
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson - 4/5 - classic scapegoat story that is often taught in school
A Woman on A Roof by Doris Lessing -
A Company of Laughing Faces by Nadine Gordimer -
Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin -
Patriotism by Yukio Mishima -
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor - 5/5 -
Revelation by Flannery O'Connor - 4/5 -
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel García Márquez -
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin; - 4/5 -
Dead Men's Path by Chinua Achebe -
How I Met my Husband by Alice Munro -
Separating by John Updike -
Cathedral by Raymond Carver -
A Small, Good Thing by Raymond Carver -
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates -
Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood -
Shiloh by Bobbie Ann Mason -
Everyday Use by Alice Walker -
The Man to Send Rain Clouds by Leslie Marmon Silko -
Barbie-Q by Sandra Cisneros - 3/5 - short vignette about a young girl looking at toys at a flea market
Saboteur by Ha Jin - 4/5 - driven mad by injustice, a man becomes what he is accused of being
June 25, 2023
Working on review
I've been reading this excellent anthology of 60 short stories with the Short Story Club for the past year, and we should be finished in July. The authors chose a good selection of 19th and 20th Century stories. The book includes a short biography and the author's perspective on the writing process for each of the 52 authors. There are also several longer essays about writing short fiction, literary criticism, and a glossary of terms in another part of the anthology.
I've written short reviews weekly for the stories as the group has been reading them in chronological publishing order for 60 weeks.
LIST OF AUTHORS AND SHORT STORIES:
CHINUA ACHEBE, NIGERIAN.
Dead Men's Path.
Author's Perspective: Achebe on Modern Africa as the Crossroads of Culture.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON, AMERICAN.
Hands.
Author's Perspective: Anderson on Words Not Plot Give Form to a Short Story.
MARGARET ATWOOD, CANADIAN.
Happy Endings.
Author's Perspective: Atwood on the Canadian Identity.
JAMES BALDWIN, AMERICAN.
Sonny's Blues.
Author's Perspective: Baldwin on Race and the African-American Writer.
JORGE LUIS BORGES, ARGENTINE.
The Garden of Forking Paths.
Author's Perspective: Borges on Literature as Experience.
ALBERT CAMUS, FRENCH, Born in Algeria.
The Guest.
Author's Perspective: Camus on Revolution and Repression in Algeria.
RAYMOND CARVER, AMERICAN.
Cathedral.
A Small Good Thing.
Author's Perspective: Carver on Commonplace but Precise Language.
WILLA CATHER, AMERICAN.
Paul's Case.
Author's Perspective: Cather on Art as the Process of Simplification.
JOHN CHEEVER, AMERICAN.
The Swimmer.
Author's Perspective: Cheever on Why I Write Short Stories.
ANTON CHEKHOV, RUSSIAN.
The Lady with the Pet Dog.
Misery.
Author's Perspective: Chekhov on Natural Description and “The Center of Gravity.”
KATE CHOPIN, AMERICAN.
The Storm.
The Story of an Hour.
Author's Perspective: Chopin on Her Writing Method.
SANDRA CISNEROS, AMERICAN.
Barbie-Q.
Author's Perspective: Cisneros on Style.
JOSEPH CONRAD, POLISH, Naturalized British.
The Secret Sharer.
Author's Perspective: Conrad on the Condition of Art.
STEPHEN CRANE, AMERICAN.
The Open Boat.
Author's Perspective: Crane on The Sinking of the Commodore.
RALPH ELLISON, AMERICAN.
A Party Down at the Square.
Author's Perspective: Ellison on Race and Fiction.
WILLIAM FAULKNER, AMERICAN.
Barn Burning.
A Rose for Emily.
Author's Perspective: Faulkner on The Human Heart in Conflict with Itself.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, AMERICAN.
Babylon Revisited.
Author's Perspective: Fitzgerald on His Own Literary Aims.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, FRENCH.
A Simple Heart.
Author's Perspective: Flaubert on the Labor of Style.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, COLOMBIAN.
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.
Author's Perspective: García Márquez on His Beginnings as a Writer.
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860-1935), AMERICAN.
The Yellow Wallpaper.
Author's Perspective: Gilman on Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
NIKOLAI GOGOL, RUSSIAN.
The Overcoat.
Author's Perspective: Gogol on Realism.
NADINE GORDIMER, SOUTH AFRICAN.
A Company of Laughing Faces.
Author's Perspective: Gordimer on How the Short Story Differs from the Novel.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, AMERICAN.
Young Goodman Brown.
The Birthmark.
Author's Perspective: Hawthorne on the Public Failure of His Early Stories.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY, AMERICAN.
A Clean Well-Lighted Place.
Author's Perspective: Hemingway on One True Sentence.
ZORA NEALE HURSTON, AMERICAN.
Sweat.
Author's Perspective: Hurston on Eatonville When You Look at It.
SHIRLEY JACKSON (1919-1965), AMERICAN.
The Lottery.
Author's Perspective: Jackson on the Public Reception of the Lottery.
HENRY JAMES, AMERICAN.
The Real Thing.
Author's Perspective: James on the Mirror of a Consciousness.
HA JIN, BORN IN CHINA, Resident American.
Saboteur.
Author's Perspective: Jin on sources of His Fiction.
JAMES JOYCE, IRISH.
The Dead.
Araby.
Author's Perspective: Joyce on Epiphanies.
FRANZ KAFKA, AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN.
Before the Law.
The Metamorphosis.
Authors Perspective: Kafka on Discussing “The Metamorphosis.”
D. H. LAWRENCE, ENGLISH.
The Rocking-Horse Winner.
Odour of Chrysanthemums.
Author's Perspective: Lawrence on the Novel Is the Bright Book of Life.
URSULA K. LE GUIN, AMERICAN.
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.
Author's Perspective: Le Guin on “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”
DORIS LESSING, RHODESIAN, Naturalized British.
A Woman on a Roof.
Author's Perspective: Lessing on “My Beginnings as a Writer.”
JACK LONDON, AMERICAN.
To Build A Fire.
Author's Perspective: London Defending the Factuality of “To Build a Fire.”
KATHERINE MANSFIELD, NEW ZEALANDER.
The Garden-Party.
Miss Brill.
Author's Perspective: Mansfield on “The Garden-Party.”
BOBBIE ANN MASON, AMERICAN.
Shiloh
Author's Perspective: Mason on Minimalist Fiction.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT, FRENCH.
The Necklace.
Author's Perspective: Maupassant on the Realist Method.
HERMAN MELVILLE, AMERICAN.
Bartleby, the Scrivener.
Author's Perspective: Melville on Hawthorne and American Literature.
YUKIO MISHIMA, JAPANESE.
Patriotism.
Author's Perspective: Mishima on the Japanese Code.
ALICE MUNRO, CANADIAN.
How I Met My Husband.
Author's Perspective: Munro on How I Write Short Stories.
JOYCE CAROL OATES, AMERICAN.
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Author's Perspective: Oates on Productivity and the Critics.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR, AMERICAN.
A Good Man Is Hard to Find.
Revelation.
Author's Perspective: O'Connor on the Element of Suspense in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.”
EDGAR ALLAN POE, AMERICAN.
The Tell-Tale Heart.
The Fall of the House of Usher.
Author's Perspective: Poe on the Tale and Its Effect.
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER, AMERICAN.
Flowering Judas.
Author's Perspective: Porter on Writing Short Stories.
LESLIE MARMON SILKO, AMERICAN.
The Man to Send Rain Clouds.
Author's Perspective: Silko on the Basis of “The Man to Send Rain Clouds.”
ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER, YIDDISH (born in Poland) Naturalized American.
Gimpel the Fool.
Author's Perspective: Singer on the Character of Gimpel.
LEO TOLSTOY, RUSSIAN.
The Death of Ivan Ilych.
Author's Perspective: Tolstoy on the Moral Responsibilities of Art.
JOHN UPDIKE, AMERICAN.
Separating.
Author's Perspective: Updike on Why Write?
ALICE WALKER, AMERICAN.
Everyday Use.
Author's Perspective: Walker on the Black Woman Writer in America.
EUDORA WELTY, AMERICAN.
Why I Live at the P.O.
Author's Perspective: Welty on the Plot of the Short Story.
EDITH WHARTON, AMERICAN.
Roman Fever.
Author's Perspective: Wharton on the Subject of Short Stories.
VIRGINIA WOOLF, ENGLISH.
A Haunted House.
Author's Perspective: Woolf on Women and Fiction.
I've been reading this excellent anthology of 60 short stories with the Short Story Club for the past year, and we should be finished in July. The authors chose a good selection of 19th and 20th Century stories. The book includes a short biography and the author's perspective on the writing process for each of the 52 authors. There are also several longer essays about writing short fiction, literary criticism, and a glossary of terms in another part of the anthology.
I've written short reviews weekly for the stories as the group has been reading them in chronological publishing order for 60 weeks.
LIST OF AUTHORS AND SHORT STORIES:
CHINUA ACHEBE, NIGERIAN.
Dead Men's Path.
Author's Perspective: Achebe on Modern Africa as the Crossroads of Culture.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON, AMERICAN.
Hands.
Author's Perspective: Anderson on Words Not Plot Give Form to a Short Story.
MARGARET ATWOOD, CANADIAN.
Happy Endings.
Author's Perspective: Atwood on the Canadian Identity.
JAMES BALDWIN, AMERICAN.
Sonny's Blues.
Author's Perspective: Baldwin on Race and the African-American Writer.
JORGE LUIS BORGES, ARGENTINE.
The Garden of Forking Paths.
Author's Perspective: Borges on Literature as Experience.
ALBERT CAMUS, FRENCH, Born in Algeria.
The Guest.
Author's Perspective: Camus on Revolution and Repression in Algeria.
RAYMOND CARVER, AMERICAN.
Cathedral.
A Small Good Thing.
Author's Perspective: Carver on Commonplace but Precise Language.
WILLA CATHER, AMERICAN.
Paul's Case.
Author's Perspective: Cather on Art as the Process of Simplification.
JOHN CHEEVER, AMERICAN.
The Swimmer.
Author's Perspective: Cheever on Why I Write Short Stories.
ANTON CHEKHOV, RUSSIAN.
The Lady with the Pet Dog.
Misery.
Author's Perspective: Chekhov on Natural Description and “The Center of Gravity.”
KATE CHOPIN, AMERICAN.
The Storm.
The Story of an Hour.
Author's Perspective: Chopin on Her Writing Method.
SANDRA CISNEROS, AMERICAN.
Barbie-Q.
Author's Perspective: Cisneros on Style.
JOSEPH CONRAD, POLISH, Naturalized British.
The Secret Sharer.
Author's Perspective: Conrad on the Condition of Art.
STEPHEN CRANE, AMERICAN.
The Open Boat.
Author's Perspective: Crane on The Sinking of the Commodore.
RALPH ELLISON, AMERICAN.
A Party Down at the Square.
Author's Perspective: Ellison on Race and Fiction.
WILLIAM FAULKNER, AMERICAN.
Barn Burning.
A Rose for Emily.
Author's Perspective: Faulkner on The Human Heart in Conflict with Itself.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, AMERICAN.
Babylon Revisited.
Author's Perspective: Fitzgerald on His Own Literary Aims.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, FRENCH.
A Simple Heart.
Author's Perspective: Flaubert on the Labor of Style.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, COLOMBIAN.
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.
Author's Perspective: García Márquez on His Beginnings as a Writer.
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860-1935), AMERICAN.
The Yellow Wallpaper.
Author's Perspective: Gilman on Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
NIKOLAI GOGOL, RUSSIAN.
The Overcoat.
Author's Perspective: Gogol on Realism.
NADINE GORDIMER, SOUTH AFRICAN.
A Company of Laughing Faces.
Author's Perspective: Gordimer on How the Short Story Differs from the Novel.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, AMERICAN.
Young Goodman Brown.
The Birthmark.
Author's Perspective: Hawthorne on the Public Failure of His Early Stories.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY, AMERICAN.
A Clean Well-Lighted Place.
Author's Perspective: Hemingway on One True Sentence.
ZORA NEALE HURSTON, AMERICAN.
Sweat.
Author's Perspective: Hurston on Eatonville When You Look at It.
SHIRLEY JACKSON (1919-1965), AMERICAN.
The Lottery.
Author's Perspective: Jackson on the Public Reception of the Lottery.
HENRY JAMES, AMERICAN.
The Real Thing.
Author's Perspective: James on the Mirror of a Consciousness.
HA JIN, BORN IN CHINA, Resident American.
Saboteur.
Author's Perspective: Jin on sources of His Fiction.
JAMES JOYCE, IRISH.
The Dead.
Araby.
Author's Perspective: Joyce on Epiphanies.
FRANZ KAFKA, AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN.
Before the Law.
The Metamorphosis.
Authors Perspective: Kafka on Discussing “The Metamorphosis.”
D. H. LAWRENCE, ENGLISH.
The Rocking-Horse Winner.
Odour of Chrysanthemums.
Author's Perspective: Lawrence on the Novel Is the Bright Book of Life.
URSULA K. LE GUIN, AMERICAN.
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.
Author's Perspective: Le Guin on “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”
DORIS LESSING, RHODESIAN, Naturalized British.
A Woman on a Roof.
Author's Perspective: Lessing on “My Beginnings as a Writer.”
JACK LONDON, AMERICAN.
To Build A Fire.
Author's Perspective: London Defending the Factuality of “To Build a Fire.”
KATHERINE MANSFIELD, NEW ZEALANDER.
The Garden-Party.
Miss Brill.
Author's Perspective: Mansfield on “The Garden-Party.”
BOBBIE ANN MASON, AMERICAN.
Shiloh
Author's Perspective: Mason on Minimalist Fiction.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT, FRENCH.
The Necklace.
Author's Perspective: Maupassant on the Realist Method.
HERMAN MELVILLE, AMERICAN.
Bartleby, the Scrivener.
Author's Perspective: Melville on Hawthorne and American Literature.
YUKIO MISHIMA, JAPANESE.
Patriotism.
Author's Perspective: Mishima on the Japanese Code.
ALICE MUNRO, CANADIAN.
How I Met My Husband.
Author's Perspective: Munro on How I Write Short Stories.
JOYCE CAROL OATES, AMERICAN.
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Author's Perspective: Oates on Productivity and the Critics.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR, AMERICAN.
A Good Man Is Hard to Find.
Revelation.
Author's Perspective: O'Connor on the Element of Suspense in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.”
EDGAR ALLAN POE, AMERICAN.
The Tell-Tale Heart.
The Fall of the House of Usher.
Author's Perspective: Poe on the Tale and Its Effect.
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER, AMERICAN.
Flowering Judas.
Author's Perspective: Porter on Writing Short Stories.
LESLIE MARMON SILKO, AMERICAN.
The Man to Send Rain Clouds.
Author's Perspective: Silko on the Basis of “The Man to Send Rain Clouds.”
ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER, YIDDISH (born in Poland) Naturalized American.
Gimpel the Fool.
Author's Perspective: Singer on the Character of Gimpel.
LEO TOLSTOY, RUSSIAN.
The Death of Ivan Ilych.
Author's Perspective: Tolstoy on the Moral Responsibilities of Art.
JOHN UPDIKE, AMERICAN.
Separating.
Author's Perspective: Updike on Why Write?
ALICE WALKER, AMERICAN.
Everyday Use.
Author's Perspective: Walker on the Black Woman Writer in America.
EUDORA WELTY, AMERICAN.
Why I Live at the P.O.
Author's Perspective: Welty on the Plot of the Short Story.
EDITH WHARTON, AMERICAN.
Roman Fever.
Author's Perspective: Wharton on the Subject of Short Stories.
VIRGINIA WOOLF, ENGLISH.
A Haunted House.
Author's Perspective: Woolf on Women and Fiction.
July 14, 2023
Edited July 14, 2023
I read one story a week in chronological order with “The Short Story Club.” I am so glad the group did it this way as I saw how the short story grew and changed over time. The anthology is heavily weighted with American authors 31/52. Also it does not have as many translated works or authors of color as I would have liked. However most of the stories were very good selections of the featured authors. I did not read many short stories before this anthology and it was a good introduction. I discovered many authors that I would like to explore further. I’m looking forward to reading many more short stories in the future. This book and this group made me a fan of the genre!
Ratings- I rated each individual story. Most were either a four or a five with only very few threes. Out of 63 stories, I rated 23 five stars. Here are the stories I loved so much I rated them five stars:
James Baldwin Sonny's Blues
Jorge Luis Borges The Garden of Forking Paths
Albert Camus The Guest
Kate Chopin The Storm
William Faulkner Barn Burning
F. Scott Fitzgerald Babylon Revisited
Gabriel Garcia Marquez A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Yellow Wallpaper
Nikolai Gogol The Overcoat
Nadine Gordimer A Company of Laughing Faces
Shirley Jackson The Lottery
James Joyce Araby and The Dead
Ursula K. LeGuin The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Katherine Mansfield Miss Brilland The Garden Party
Herman Melville Bartleby the Scrivener
Joyce Carol Oates Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Flannery O’Connor A Good Man Is Hard To Find
Katherine Anne Porter Flowering Judas
Isaac Bashevis Singer Gimpel the Fool
Alice Walker Everyday Use
Eudora Welty Why I Live at the P.O. and Other Stories
More statistics-After reading Fionnuala’s review, she made me curious to look back at a couple of things. After every eight stories, our moderator Leonard conducted a poll asking members for their favorite story. In three of the eight polls , I chose the same favorite story as the majority of the group: Bartleby the Scrivener, The Yellow Wallpaper, and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. In one of the polls, I was the only vote Barn Burning. My other number one choices were Araby, Miss Brill, and Sonny's Blues.
Looking at these more narrowed down choices, I see the stories I truly loved and I recognize that I am an emotional reader who connects with stories due to feeling what the characters are experiencing and recognizing my own similar circumstances in theirs.
Also , I recognized several of the stories, however, I reread all and appreciated them more. I had read 27 out of the 63 stories. I have read novels by several other of the authors.
Based on the fact that the stories in this anthology kept me reading and enjoying it for over a year, that the majority of the stories were either four or five stars, that it engendered a love of the short story genre in me, that I found many new authors that I love— I am comfortable with giving it a five star. The only hesitancy is the lack of diversity among the authors, however I know that I can seek these out. Others will disagree, but I wanted to have a party when I finished this book- it was such a long and worthwhile and enjoyable project.
I read one story a week in chronological order with “The Short Story Club.” I am so glad the group did it this way as I saw how the short story grew and changed over time. The anthology is heavily weighted with American authors 31/52. Also it does not have as many translated works or authors of color as I would have liked. However most of the stories were very good selections of the featured authors. I did not read many short stories before this anthology and it was a good introduction. I discovered many authors that I would like to explore further. I’m looking forward to reading many more short stories in the future. This book and this group made me a fan of the genre!
Ratings- I rated each individual story. Most were either a four or a five with only very few threes. Out of 63 stories, I rated 23 five stars. Here are the stories I loved so much I rated them five stars:
James Baldwin Sonny's Blues
Jorge Luis Borges The Garden of Forking Paths
Albert Camus The Guest
Kate Chopin The Storm
William Faulkner Barn Burning
F. Scott Fitzgerald Babylon Revisited
Gabriel Garcia Marquez A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Yellow Wallpaper
Nikolai Gogol The Overcoat
Nadine Gordimer A Company of Laughing Faces
Shirley Jackson The Lottery
James Joyce Araby and The Dead
Ursula K. LeGuin The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Katherine Mansfield Miss Brilland The Garden Party
Herman Melville Bartleby the Scrivener
Joyce Carol Oates Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Flannery O’Connor A Good Man Is Hard To Find
Katherine Anne Porter Flowering Judas
Isaac Bashevis Singer Gimpel the Fool
Alice Walker Everyday Use
Eudora Welty Why I Live at the P.O. and Other Stories
More statistics-After reading Fionnuala’s review, she made me curious to look back at a couple of things. After every eight stories, our moderator Leonard conducted a poll asking members for their favorite story. In three of the eight polls , I chose the same favorite story as the majority of the group: Bartleby the Scrivener, The Yellow Wallpaper, and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. In one of the polls, I was the only vote Barn Burning. My other number one choices were Araby, Miss Brill, and Sonny's Blues.
Looking at these more narrowed down choices, I see the stories I truly loved and I recognize that I am an emotional reader who connects with stories due to feeling what the characters are experiencing and recognizing my own similar circumstances in theirs.
Also , I recognized several of the stories, however, I reread all and appreciated them more. I had read 27 out of the 63 stories. I have read novels by several other of the authors.
Based on the fact that the stories in this anthology kept me reading and enjoying it for over a year, that the majority of the stories were either four or five stars, that it engendered a love of the short story genre in me, that I found many new authors that I love— I am comfortable with giving it a five star. The only hesitancy is the lack of diversity among the authors, however I know that I can seek these out. Others will disagree, but I wanted to have a party when I finished this book- it was such a long and worthwhile and enjoyable project.
July 29, 2015
I'm so proud of myself I finished my required reading *pat on the back* for 9th grade. I deserve a cookie.
I'll probably have to read the other short stories later, but for now I'm proud of myself. My favorite short stories in this book are The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson.
I'll probably have to read the other short stories later, but for now I'm proud of myself. My favorite short stories in this book are The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson.
March 4, 2016
When I bought this book it had a front and back cover.
Three years ago, a lifetime ago, I thought I would spend more than an hour a year writing. I looked into writing classes and saw this book on the syllabus for one online class. I didn't take the class, but I've been reading this book since then.
I discovered so many writers. Sherwood Anderson, Joseph Conrad, James Baldwin! Shirley Jackson, Jorge Luis Borges, Albert Camus, Alice Munro to name a few.
My readings inspired more readings. I subscribed to The New Yorker, I tried reading James Joyce (god, what a headache-inducing exercise). I meandered off to read Stein on Writing and (Gardner's) The Art of Fiction. I began to understand what the editors meant when they referred to different literary styles employed by the writers, slowly I came out my haze of ignorance. I began to recognize what it is the masters were doing, I began to write more self-consciously. Writing self-consciously is exhausting. I stopped writing.
I guess I got the education I wanted, after all. Now, I think, it's time to unlearn it all and get back to writing.
Three years ago, a lifetime ago, I thought I would spend more than an hour a year writing. I looked into writing classes and saw this book on the syllabus for one online class. I didn't take the class, but I've been reading this book since then.
I discovered so many writers. Sherwood Anderson, Joseph Conrad, James Baldwin! Shirley Jackson, Jorge Luis Borges, Albert Camus, Alice Munro to name a few.
My readings inspired more readings. I subscribed to The New Yorker, I tried reading James Joyce (god, what a headache-inducing exercise). I meandered off to read Stein on Writing and (Gardner's) The Art of Fiction. I began to understand what the editors meant when they referred to different literary styles employed by the writers, slowly I came out my haze of ignorance. I began to recognize what it is the masters were doing, I began to write more self-consciously. Writing self-consciously is exhausting. I stopped writing.
I guess I got the education I wanted, after all. Now, I think, it's time to unlearn it all and get back to writing.
September 9, 2016
I think I read 55ish of the 61 stories in here. The editors tried as hard as white men can to provide an array of diversity in authors but I still felt stifled, perhaps because the overwhelming majority of the stories seemed to come from the 1920s - 60s. I would have ordered things differently, and not included a picture of goddamn Ernest Hemingway at the introduction.
Several selections were exactly what I'd desired: pieces that say something new and profound by authors who excel at their craft but who have been mostly overlooked. Ha Jin, Katherine Mansfield, and Yukio Mishima especially stuck out. Unfortunately I first had to trudge through Stephen Crane, F. Scott Fitzgerald (whom I no longer respect), John Cheever, Hawthorne, Hemingway, London, etc.
This is one of the few books I purchased rather than got from the library because of its size and scope, but also because of its -- ultimately empty -- promise of "advice from 52 of the world's most acclaimed writers" on plot, character, style, and suspense. Yeah, no. More like ramblings on life philosophies, responses to critics (#dontcare), and meaningless drivel in the vein of "when plot becomes the outward manifestation of the very germ of the story, then in its purest -- then the narrative thread is least objectionable, then it is not in the way" (Eudora Welty).
Still, they did include Borges, Joyce's The Dead, and opened me up to the magnificent D.H. Lawrence. Also, although her spiel was supposedly on suspense and offered no advice about that specifically, I loved this gem from Flannery O'Connor: "...in my own stories I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace."
So this compilation has its pros and cons and when all is said and done seems above average, but the Goodreads ratings overall are too generous.
Several selections were exactly what I'd desired: pieces that say something new and profound by authors who excel at their craft but who have been mostly overlooked. Ha Jin, Katherine Mansfield, and Yukio Mishima especially stuck out. Unfortunately I first had to trudge through Stephen Crane, F. Scott Fitzgerald (whom I no longer respect), John Cheever, Hawthorne, Hemingway, London, etc.
This is one of the few books I purchased rather than got from the library because of its size and scope, but also because of its -- ultimately empty -- promise of "advice from 52 of the world's most acclaimed writers" on plot, character, style, and suspense. Yeah, no. More like ramblings on life philosophies, responses to critics (#dontcare), and meaningless drivel in the vein of "when plot becomes the outward manifestation of the very germ of the story, then in its purest -- then the narrative thread is least objectionable, then it is not in the way" (Eudora Welty).
Still, they did include Borges, Joyce's The Dead, and opened me up to the magnificent D.H. Lawrence. Also, although her spiel was supposedly on suspense and offered no advice about that specifically, I loved this gem from Flannery O'Connor: "...in my own stories I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace."
So this compilation has its pros and cons and when all is said and done seems above average, but the Goodreads ratings overall are too generous.
September 4, 2023
Worked our way through this splendid anthology as part of The Short Story Club, a group here on Goodreads (sorry, don't know how to link it).
Now the group is starting Black Water: The Anthology of Fantastic Literature, which also promises much excitement!
Now the group is starting Black Water: The Anthology of Fantastic Literature, which also promises much excitement!
June 13, 2019
It’s more than just a wonderful short story collection. It opens the front gate to a literary mansion and lights up a driveway paved with the “author’s perspectives.” These inspiring insights from writers distinguish it from other short story anthologies. Gioia and Gwynn deserve some credit for this approach, (if they stole it from elsewhere or if it’s a common editorial technique, then excuse my ignorance, but if it’s as original as it now seems to me, then well done Sirs) which is a masterful way to inspire readers and writers and is quite an accomplishment.
Practical considerations: the anthology is ordered alphabetically by author’s name, everything about the book from a consumer’s point of view is adequate, it has a good binding and spine. It held up to daily schlepping and the size is thick but manageable. It has the author and story name as the running headers. The biographies are practical, straightforward and of appropriate length, the Literary Criticism introductions are satisfactory. It’s close to a perfect book for some introductory writing class like Shariann Lewitt’s MIT OCW.
Was I inspired? Yes.
I found Alice Munro moving through stories like she moves “through a house,” watching Bobby Ann Mason place a “jug of flowers” in John Updike’s kitchen where he sits as a child under the “swollen orb of his excitement” aspiring to be a “transparent” “pencil.” He bellows and echoes from a cave shaped like a mouth and enriches my understanding of the writer as a “conduit.” Ha Jin might be in that kitchen too, with his wife refusing to let him open rejection letters because he reworks them until there is nothing left to do but “send it out.”
The ‘perspectives’ portray the authors as real people more so than mini-bios are capable of doing and so we find hard-working Willa Cather “sacrificing a dozen fairly good stories” for one “first-rate story,” and more-than-hard-working Flaubert making my simple heart cry as I sit in my grey cubicle longing to try his version of “drudgery.”
Tolstoy admonishes the “peaceful cooperation of all mankind” and I think Yes Leo, you’re right, “only art can accomplish this,” but then I see Camus and Faulkner smiling at our naivety, pointing at Kafka.
Kafka “is a dead end.”
Beep, beep, beep.
In the 21st century, our machinery backs up with a sound I reckon Kafka could use to wake an entire generation up in a sweating nightmare.
Camus is tragically serious in his conclusions about the price of victory and Faulkner too is serious as an atom bomb when pointing at the mushroom cloud in a writer's heart as the source of good writing.
Yet inspiration comes from not only from the hardworking and serious folks but also from the cute: Chopin’s “integrity of crudities” is a marvelous lesson about trusting yourself. The 3 by 5 card found in the excerpt of Raymond Carver’s On Writing was enough to send me looking for the rest of the 3 by 5 cards sticking to his wall, and on that google search, I stumbled across The Paris Review’s The Art of Fiction series which I fully intend to dive into. Along those lines, after The Swimmer, cheeky Cheever challenges novelists by sneaking a brilliant little story into Why I Write Short Stories and saying “You can’t.” Ursula Le Guin “forgets Dostoevsky and reads road signs backwards.” She strikes a challenging, flirtatious tone as she asks her gushing literary first dates, “Where else?” where I imagine literary thieves like Fitzgerald sit in her audience, mischievously interviewing themselves, hoping to steal not only technique but the very source of inspiration. Borges also has an interview, as do Cisneros, Garcia Marquez, Silko, Singer, Walker, and Oates, but only the Borges excerpt does its job and sent me searching for the real thing (that’s not a comment on the authors, it’s on the strength or weakness of Gioia’s selections).
The irritable Shirley Jackson looks rather like Sisyphus to Camus, pushing that damn baby stroller up an eternal hill; stoned in life as Cheever’s Mr. Hartshore, we hope to mull over the absurd as found in Jackson, Camus, and Poe rather than descend to writing damning letters. Perhaps Hawthorne will lead us in a nada prayer that Jackson, Poe, and Camus aren’t in his version of hell, or even in his earthly unheated house writing with “numb fingers.” Hemingway deigns to say more than nada in A Moveable Feast, its servings include ‘one true sentence’ and ‘when to stop,’ both of which are jam-packed into this appetizing excerpt.
(In case you were wondering, the prayer didn’t work, Kafka is objecting to gold lettering on leather-bound volumes, and insisting he’s still a dead end, we’ll have to back up again.)
This literary driveway is so inviting, intoxicating really, and urges me (successfully) to continue reading more and more short stories, I’m so grateful to Gioia and Gwynn for the book; however, I have to object to the selection from Melville. Bartleby is magnificent and most appreciated, but I’d prefer not to be subjected to this excerpt from Hawthorne and His Moses. Why do Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn serve us the cold leftovers of 19th-century patriotism? I daresay this is the weakest page in the book. Could you not find any suitable scrap of Melville’s writing? Does the world in 2005 (at the time of publication) gain anything at all from the inclusion of this admonition to nurture American writers? What benefit do readers get from a sour tart lauding American superiority and the duties of nationalism? It is the only ‘author’s perspective’ piece that is actually destructive. What room is there in this book for bygone patriotism of this type?
Overall, I’m impressed, and heartily recommend the book, it cost me $16 new, it’s worth the purchase, especially if you found it like I did, perusing free creative writing classes, MOOCs, open courses, etc.
One last item, Flannery O’Connor’s notion of a “gesture” indicating the “real heart of the story” stuck with me. I find ‘gestures’ in short stories, movies, plays, and novels; life, like literature, also has ‘gestures.’ I describe this book as a front gate and a driveway, it is a welcoming gesture to me, in it I see an embrace, from all these stories, their authors, and their readers, to join the literary journey.
Practical considerations: the anthology is ordered alphabetically by author’s name, everything about the book from a consumer’s point of view is adequate, it has a good binding and spine. It held up to daily schlepping and the size is thick but manageable. It has the author and story name as the running headers. The biographies are practical, straightforward and of appropriate length, the Literary Criticism introductions are satisfactory. It’s close to a perfect book for some introductory writing class like Shariann Lewitt’s MIT OCW.
Was I inspired? Yes.
I found Alice Munro moving through stories like she moves “through a house,” watching Bobby Ann Mason place a “jug of flowers” in John Updike’s kitchen where he sits as a child under the “swollen orb of his excitement” aspiring to be a “transparent” “pencil.” He bellows and echoes from a cave shaped like a mouth and enriches my understanding of the writer as a “conduit.” Ha Jin might be in that kitchen too, with his wife refusing to let him open rejection letters because he reworks them until there is nothing left to do but “send it out.”
The ‘perspectives’ portray the authors as real people more so than mini-bios are capable of doing and so we find hard-working Willa Cather “sacrificing a dozen fairly good stories” for one “first-rate story,” and more-than-hard-working Flaubert making my simple heart cry as I sit in my grey cubicle longing to try his version of “drudgery.”
Tolstoy admonishes the “peaceful cooperation of all mankind” and I think Yes Leo, you’re right, “only art can accomplish this,” but then I see Camus and Faulkner smiling at our naivety, pointing at Kafka.
Kafka “is a dead end.”
Beep, beep, beep.
In the 21st century, our machinery backs up with a sound I reckon Kafka could use to wake an entire generation up in a sweating nightmare.
Camus is tragically serious in his conclusions about the price of victory and Faulkner too is serious as an atom bomb when pointing at the mushroom cloud in a writer's heart as the source of good writing.
Yet inspiration comes from not only from the hardworking and serious folks but also from the cute: Chopin’s “integrity of crudities” is a marvelous lesson about trusting yourself. The 3 by 5 card found in the excerpt of Raymond Carver’s On Writing was enough to send me looking for the rest of the 3 by 5 cards sticking to his wall, and on that google search, I stumbled across The Paris Review’s The Art of Fiction series which I fully intend to dive into. Along those lines, after The Swimmer, cheeky Cheever challenges novelists by sneaking a brilliant little story into Why I Write Short Stories and saying “You can’t.” Ursula Le Guin “forgets Dostoevsky and reads road signs backwards.” She strikes a challenging, flirtatious tone as she asks her gushing literary first dates, “Where else?” where I imagine literary thieves like Fitzgerald sit in her audience, mischievously interviewing themselves, hoping to steal not only technique but the very source of inspiration. Borges also has an interview, as do Cisneros, Garcia Marquez, Silko, Singer, Walker, and Oates, but only the Borges excerpt does its job and sent me searching for the real thing (that’s not a comment on the authors, it’s on the strength or weakness of Gioia’s selections).
The irritable Shirley Jackson looks rather like Sisyphus to Camus, pushing that damn baby stroller up an eternal hill; stoned in life as Cheever’s Mr. Hartshore, we hope to mull over the absurd as found in Jackson, Camus, and Poe rather than descend to writing damning letters. Perhaps Hawthorne will lead us in a nada prayer that Jackson, Poe, and Camus aren’t in his version of hell, or even in his earthly unheated house writing with “numb fingers.” Hemingway deigns to say more than nada in A Moveable Feast, its servings include ‘one true sentence’ and ‘when to stop,’ both of which are jam-packed into this appetizing excerpt.
(In case you were wondering, the prayer didn’t work, Kafka is objecting to gold lettering on leather-bound volumes, and insisting he’s still a dead end, we’ll have to back up again.)
This literary driveway is so inviting, intoxicating really, and urges me (successfully) to continue reading more and more short stories, I’m so grateful to Gioia and Gwynn for the book; however, I have to object to the selection from Melville. Bartleby is magnificent and most appreciated, but I’d prefer not to be subjected to this excerpt from Hawthorne and His Moses. Why do Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn serve us the cold leftovers of 19th-century patriotism? I daresay this is the weakest page in the book. Could you not find any suitable scrap of Melville’s writing? Does the world in 2005 (at the time of publication) gain anything at all from the inclusion of this admonition to nurture American writers? What benefit do readers get from a sour tart lauding American superiority and the duties of nationalism? It is the only ‘author’s perspective’ piece that is actually destructive. What room is there in this book for bygone patriotism of this type?
Overall, I’m impressed, and heartily recommend the book, it cost me $16 new, it’s worth the purchase, especially if you found it like I did, perusing free creative writing classes, MOOCs, open courses, etc.
One last item, Flannery O’Connor’s notion of a “gesture” indicating the “real heart of the story” stuck with me. I find ‘gestures’ in short stories, movies, plays, and novels; life, like literature, also has ‘gestures.’ I describe this book as a front gate and a driveway, it is a welcoming gesture to me, in it I see an embrace, from all these stories, their authors, and their readers, to join the literary journey.
September 14, 2013
Very staid and safe selection primed for intro courses and extremely limited in anything not from the English. Still, it's a good introduction if you've been feeling guilty about not reading any short stories, especially if you know which authors to skip straight to. There are some five star stories in here despite their reputations. And lookie how lucky you are that I did all the leg work: (4 stars)
The best, without further commentary:
1. "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker
2. "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin
3. "Roman Fever" by Edith Wharton
4. "A Small, Good Thing" by Raymond Carver
5. "Babylon Revisted" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
7. "The Storm" by Kate Chopin
8. "The Garden of Forking Paths" by Jorge Luis Borges
9. "The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane
10. "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield
HM: "The Necklace" by Guy Maupassant, "Why I Live at the P.O." by Eudora Welty
The worst, or it's not you, it's thegaping metaphorical vagina that swallows a house* evil Puritans:
1. "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
2. "The Secret Sharer" by Joseph Conrad
3. "The Real Thing" by Henry James
4. "A Haunted House" by Virginia Woolf
5. "Araby" by James Joyce
*I changed my mind on "The Fall of the House of Usher", because I can't deny that it is decent camp read.
The best, without further commentary:
1. "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker
2. "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin
3. "Roman Fever" by Edith Wharton
4. "A Small, Good Thing" by Raymond Carver
5. "Babylon Revisted" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
7. "The Storm" by Kate Chopin
8. "The Garden of Forking Paths" by Jorge Luis Borges
9. "The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane
10. "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield
HM: "The Necklace" by Guy Maupassant, "Why I Live at the P.O." by Eudora Welty
The worst, or it's not you, it's the
1. "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
2. "The Secret Sharer" by Joseph Conrad
3. "The Real Thing" by Henry James
4. "A Haunted House" by Virginia Woolf
5. "Araby" by James Joyce
*I changed my mind on "The Fall of the House of Usher", because I can't deny that it is decent camp read.
August 9, 2012
This massive (926 pages) collection of short stories by 52 different authors includes biographical notes plus short essays by each author on the writing process. Clearly intended as a textbook (with a literary terms glossary, examples of how student papers should be written, and examples from many different types of literary criticism following the stories), it is still a great way for a writer or reader to familiarize or reacquaint themselves with the classics of the form. I'm always happy to reread Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find," Jack London's "To Build a FIre," or Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," but I was even happier to be introduced for the first time to Katherine Mansfield's "The Garden-Party," Edith Wharton's "Roman Fever," and Sandra Cisneros's "Barbie-Q." Even if it meant suffering through Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych." Recommended.
February 13, 2013
I have been reading short-story anthologies searching for a collection that might serve as a single text for an undergraduate course covering short fiction. This collection by Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn is by far the best candidate. This lengthy text contained stories I have taught like Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" and Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" but also collects some unknown gems--at least, unknown to me--by authors better known for their long fiction. For instance I was unaware of William Faulkner's gem," A Rose for Emily" or Gabriel Garcia Marquez's example of magical realism, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings." Both were unexpected reading delights, delights I will share in the class-room. Finally, the didactic portion of the book was, well, short. However, perhaps with a bit of supplement this might be all that is necessary. And, with so much excellent short prose on offer, a short critique section is probably appropriate.
March 4, 2020
Favorite short stories:
"Happy Endings" - Margaret Atwood
"Sonny's Blues" - James Baldwin
"The Guest" - Albert Camus
"Misery" - Anton Chekhov
"The Story of an Hour" - Kate Chopin
“The Secret Sharer” - Joseph Conrad
"A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" - Gabriel García Márquez
"The Yellow Wallpaper" - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
"The Lottery" - Shirley Jackson
"Before the Law" - Franz Kafka
"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" - Ursula K. Le Guin
"The Death of Ivan Ilyich" - Leo Tolstoy
“A Haunted House” - Virginia Woolf
"Happy Endings" - Margaret Atwood
"Sonny's Blues" - James Baldwin
"The Guest" - Albert Camus
"Misery" - Anton Chekhov
"The Story of an Hour" - Kate Chopin
“The Secret Sharer” - Joseph Conrad
"A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" - Gabriel García Márquez
"The Yellow Wallpaper" - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
"The Lottery" - Shirley Jackson
"Before the Law" - Franz Kafka
"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" - Ursula K. Le Guin
"The Death of Ivan Ilyich" - Leo Tolstoy
“A Haunted House” - Virginia Woolf
Want to read
November 4, 2011I don't know if I want to get this specific book or just keep it in mind as a list of important short stories to get to. Many of these are from such important authors that I might prefer an anthology from each of them. (And I've read a ton of them already.)
Here's the table of contents.
And don't forget to read James Baldwin.
Here's the table of contents.
And don't forget to read James Baldwin.
April 25, 2008
This book is an excellent short story collection, but what I like the most is that the selections are paired with reflections in the writers' own works about their writing and philosophy of writing. The back of the book has some excellent ancillary material that is helpful to students. Highly recommended.
January 2, 2022
I was considering to set this as DNF (Did Not Finish) since I couldn't find this book when I needed it (6 months ago) and instead had to settle with extracts from it, since it was course literature.
But, that wouldn't be fair. I use DNF for books I don't think is worth finishing, and I have actually ordered this book now, since it is back in print.
I found the excerpts that I read brilliant, and very inspiring. While this is a course book, giving you tools needed for writing (if you don't have them already) I think it's greatest strength is as motivation. I didn't learn much new from it (but I have read a bunch of books on writing before this) but it motivated me, inspired me, got me to write even those weeks when I felt like I was overloaded with work.
So, I recommend this to any aspiring writer, especially if you write in English. I also recommend this to any writer who wants to focus more on short stories or writers who "only" needs inspiration and/or motivation.
It is also a course book that you can actually read from start to end, just as enjoyment.
But, that wouldn't be fair. I use DNF for books I don't think is worth finishing, and I have actually ordered this book now, since it is back in print.
I found the excerpts that I read brilliant, and very inspiring. While this is a course book, giving you tools needed for writing (if you don't have them already) I think it's greatest strength is as motivation. I didn't learn much new from it (but I have read a bunch of books on writing before this) but it motivated me, inspired me, got me to write even those weeks when I felt like I was overloaded with work.
So, I recommend this to any aspiring writer, especially if you write in English. I also recommend this to any writer who wants to focus more on short stories or writers who "only" needs inspiration and/or motivation.
It is also a course book that you can actually read from start to end, just as enjoyment.
April 12, 2022
This has been a great introduction to some of the great short story writers.
I didn’t read the entire book, only selections.
Amazing essays too.
I didn’t read the entire book, only selections.
Amazing essays too.
October 1, 2021
[Recommended via Neil Gaiman's Masterclass]
This rating is more for the editing of the book rather than the contents itself. Some of the inclusions were great examples of the short story form, while others left me wondering why it was necessary to include them at all (some veered more on the novella side of things, others were just downright longwinded and boring). As someone who went into this wanting to learn more about the nuts and bolts of the short story format, I can say that, after slogging through this, there wasn't anything remarkably ground breaking that isn't already available on the internet. Furthermore, the "insights on writing" that was promised on the front cover failed to deliver.
This rating is more for the editing of the book rather than the contents itself. Some of the inclusions were great examples of the short story form, while others left me wondering why it was necessary to include them at all (some veered more on the novella side of things, others were just downright longwinded and boring). As someone who went into this wanting to learn more about the nuts and bolts of the short story format, I can say that, after slogging through this, there wasn't anything remarkably ground breaking that isn't already available on the internet. Furthermore, the "insights on writing" that was promised on the front cover failed to deliver.
May 9, 2012
In the spirit of Emerson who said "First we read, then we write", I picked up The Art of the Short Story. I'm learning so much from all who have gone before me. It can be intimidating, how can I hope to follow...? My favourite thing about this book is that each author is presented in three parts: a Biographical Sketch; an example of their work; and their perspective on why and how they write, the difficulties and pain involved... This section gives me hope. Everyone struggles, no-one finds it easy, every "great" was once a novice who looked to the "greats" before them...
October 31, 2008
Another fantastic collection of short stories by short story masters--some that you expect to find in such a collection, others off the beaten path. The book also includes several essays by many of the authors on their writing processes. Which I like to see.
February 19, 2019
All the "classic" short stories writing teachers ever need to teach are compacted into one convenient anthology. What I find most convenient are the author's brief biographies and the ideas and inspirations behind the short stories.
Both authors and titles are listed on the blurb page.
Both authors and titles are listed on the blurb page.
December 11, 2017
This was the reader that went along with my Intermediate Fiction Writing class this semester. We would read a story a week and respond to it. I really enjoyed the stories anthologized here and was definitely introduced to some new authors whose writing I really enjoy!
June 22, 2011
The masters of short story writing from Sherwood Anderson to Virginia Woolf. Each story comes with an article or essay written by the author. A true inspiration to my own writing.
October 17, 2019
My personal taste in fiction leans toward the middlebrow. I like some great literature that's been canonized, but most of that great literature was either underrated in its own time or mostly ignored, dismissed with a haughty sniff as adventure fiction or pulp.
High literature, that scaffolding upon which people build careers as critics and theorists, is usually aggressively about nothing, or at least anti-plot in my opinion. A detective gets an assignment from a beautiful woman to find her missing husband = hardboiled, and I'm in. A vignette in the "New Yorker" about a man battling prostate cancer and struggling to fit a storm window in its sash is literature, and I'd rather chew mothballs to powder while getting kicked in the crotch for an hour by a strident feminist than read three-thousand words of that. A rocket is sent to a newly-discovered planet to decipher what is either an encrypted message from an alien race or might just be solar activity = a solid science fiction story that I look forward to reading; a story about an ageing English professor infatuated with one of the undergrads in his poetry seminar who succumbs to his temptation while picking apples with said-girl on a stroll through the New England countryside is literature, and is the kind of thing I would genuinely read only under duress, for a grade as a young man or when nothing else was available in the doctor's office waiting room.
I front-loaded that overlong explication of my philistinism as a way to emphasize how little I expected to enjoy this volume, and how rewarding I found it, from cover to cover. There are adventure stories by Joseph Conrad and horror stories by Poe, but there are also offerings by masters of picking apples, complaining about their prostates and foisting themselves on wide-eyed undergrads. And you know what? These sorts of stories I would usually find tiresome are well-picked enough by the editors of this volume, and well-written enough by the authors, that my appreciation for this sort of literary writing grew as I read. I went from tolerating such excursions to enjoying them.
As I read through the collection (which clocks in at a little more than 900 pages) I found myself issuing silent mea culpas to the ghosts of John Cheever, John Updike, John Gardner (a lot of Johns) and to a host of living literary writers whose works I had dismissed or avoided (see John Irving), seemingly from a lack of pretension, but in reality, owing to a host of my own closely-held prejudices no less rigid than those held by the most staid apple-picking, undergrad-wooing, corduroy-jacketed, Meerschaum-pipe-smoking English Lit professor cossetted away behind the high stone walls of the Ivies.
Anything that can break up such calcified and long-held prejudices is great. Even better would be to get this kind of book in the hands of a future writer or critic when they're relatively young and not quite as (mal)formed as yours truly. Biographical sketches, a glossary of terms, and an overview of various literary concepts make it clear that the pair who put this thing together were one step ahead of me in this department.
A fellow philistine friend of mine once said that friends don't recommend books over 500 pages to fellow friends, but let me transgress, walk from the rooming-house back onto the campus greens one last time, and say, "Highest recommendation." Don't tell my friend I told you so.
High literature, that scaffolding upon which people build careers as critics and theorists, is usually aggressively about nothing, or at least anti-plot in my opinion. A detective gets an assignment from a beautiful woman to find her missing husband = hardboiled, and I'm in. A vignette in the "New Yorker" about a man battling prostate cancer and struggling to fit a storm window in its sash is literature, and I'd rather chew mothballs to powder while getting kicked in the crotch for an hour by a strident feminist than read three-thousand words of that. A rocket is sent to a newly-discovered planet to decipher what is either an encrypted message from an alien race or might just be solar activity = a solid science fiction story that I look forward to reading; a story about an ageing English professor infatuated with one of the undergrads in his poetry seminar who succumbs to his temptation while picking apples with said-girl on a stroll through the New England countryside is literature, and is the kind of thing I would genuinely read only under duress, for a grade as a young man or when nothing else was available in the doctor's office waiting room.
I front-loaded that overlong explication of my philistinism as a way to emphasize how little I expected to enjoy this volume, and how rewarding I found it, from cover to cover. There are adventure stories by Joseph Conrad and horror stories by Poe, but there are also offerings by masters of picking apples, complaining about their prostates and foisting themselves on wide-eyed undergrads. And you know what? These sorts of stories I would usually find tiresome are well-picked enough by the editors of this volume, and well-written enough by the authors, that my appreciation for this sort of literary writing grew as I read. I went from tolerating such excursions to enjoying them.
As I read through the collection (which clocks in at a little more than 900 pages) I found myself issuing silent mea culpas to the ghosts of John Cheever, John Updike, John Gardner (a lot of Johns) and to a host of living literary writers whose works I had dismissed or avoided (see John Irving), seemingly from a lack of pretension, but in reality, owing to a host of my own closely-held prejudices no less rigid than those held by the most staid apple-picking, undergrad-wooing, corduroy-jacketed, Meerschaum-pipe-smoking English Lit professor cossetted away behind the high stone walls of the Ivies.
Anything that can break up such calcified and long-held prejudices is great. Even better would be to get this kind of book in the hands of a future writer or critic when they're relatively young and not quite as (mal)formed as yours truly. Biographical sketches, a glossary of terms, and an overview of various literary concepts make it clear that the pair who put this thing together were one step ahead of me in this department.
A fellow philistine friend of mine once said that friends don't recommend books over 500 pages to fellow friends, but let me transgress, walk from the rooming-house back onto the campus greens one last time, and say, "Highest recommendation." Don't tell my friend I told you so.
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