What short stories do you admire - or not?
There are lots that I admire, but one that I could name is To Build A Fire by Jack London.
I just learned today (from Wiki) that there are two versions, but it seems that I'm talking about the 1908 story.
The details of the intense cold build up unrelentingly - we share the man's desperation to survive and then ...
By some coincidence I because familiar with this story just recently because the New Yorker Fiction podcast featured a story, Where I'm Calling From, by Raymond Carver, which references To Build a Fire by Jack London. I've never read a word by Jack London.
I highly recommend Ted Chiang's short story collections.
Quote from: Spotted Horses on April 24, 2022, 02:00:07 PM
By some coincidence I because familiar with this story just recently because the New Yorker Fiction podcast featured a story, Where I'm Calling From, by Raymond Carver, which references To Build a Fire by Jack London. I've never read a word by Jack London.
I don't think I read any of the mentioned ones but I had a collection of Jack London stories as a kid (although these were translations and maybe sometimes redacted). I remember only one of them that was quite brutal and cannot say much without spoiling the twist (It was called something like "The lost face"). The only longer book by London I am sure I have read, is "The sea-wolf" (this was made, with some liberties and using more material from London, into a TV series very popular in Germany)
For me, some genres work best as short stories (or sometimes shortish novelllas), e.g. ghost/horror, SciFi, maybe even crime/mystery; even humour (Wodehouse's short stories often seem even better than his novels). So I guess I have read far more "genre" short stories than serious ones.
Sherlock Holmes
Quote from: vandermolen on April 25, 2022, 12:00:35 AM
Sherlock Holmes
One of my favourites too - I remember as a child running upstairs to lock myself in the bathroom with my fingers in my ears so that my brother couldn't reveal the denouement to me. :)
Quote from: Rosalba on April 24, 2022, 12:34:09 PM
There are lots that I admire, but one that I could name is To Build A Fire by Jack London.
I just learned today (from Wiki) that there are two versions, but it seems that I'm talking about the 1908 story.
The details of the intense cold build up unrelentingly - we share the man's desperation to survive and then ...
I remember
To Build a Fire. I read it as a boy, and it was one of my first literary experiences which didn't involve a happy ending. A bit of a surprise, that was.
For my own part,
Inconstant Moon, by Larry Niven is probably the most memorable short story I've ever read.
Quote from: Rosalba on April 24, 2022, 12:33:03 PM
What short stories do you admire - or not?
Funny you should ask. I had dinner with old friends on Easter and I was asked what my favorite Poe stories were. My current faves being "William Wilson" and "The Man of the Crowd."
For you, I'll add Hawthorne's "The Artist of the Beautiful."
Tchekhov and Maupassant are the unsurpassable masters of the genre.
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 25, 2022, 11:29:24 AM
Funny you should ask. I had dinner with old friends on Easter and I was asked what my favorite Poe stories were. My current faves being "William Wilson" and "The Man of the Crowd."
For you, I'll add Hawthorne's "The Artist of the Beautiful."
I remember my brother had a copy of Tales of Mystery & The Imagination at a farmhouse we were staying at on a family holiday in Wales. It was lit only by calor gas & he didn't like reading it in the evening. I read it when I was a little older - I particularly remember The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Fall of the House of Usher. I'll have to reread the last one some time - as a child, I don't think I really got it. :)
Quote from: Rosalba on April 26, 2022, 05:58:44 AM
I remember my brother had a copy of Tales of Mystery & The Imagination at a farmhouse we were staying at on a family holiday in Wales. It was lit only by calor gas & he didn't like reading it in the evening. I read it when I was a little older - I particularly remember The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Fall of the House of Usher. I'll have to reread the last one some time - as a child, I don't think I really got it. :)
The House of Usher is up there among my faves.
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 25, 2022, 11:29:24 AM
Funny you should ask. I had dinner with old friends on Easter and I was asked what my favorite Poe stories were. My current faves being "William Wilson" and "The Man of the Crowd."
Quote from: Rosalba on April 26, 2022, 05:58:44 AM
I remember my brother had a copy of Tales of Mystery & The Imagination at a farmhouse we were staying at on a family holiday in Wales. It was lit only by calor gas & he didn't like reading it in the evening. I read it when I was a little older - I particularly remember The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Fall of the House of Usher. I'll have to reread the last one some time - as a child, I don't think I really got it. :)
I discovered Poe rather early, in an excellent two-volume Romanian translation that I found in my parents's library, featuring both prose and poetry. I must confess that at the time (I must have been in the 6th grade, methinks) I was quite scared by his short stories and if I read them home alone I always had a feeling of fear and avoided leaving my room before one of my parents came home. :D
Later when in high school he was my favorite writer along with Baudelaire.
That being said, I cherish
The Raven above everything else he wrote. An impeccable masterpiece.
Quote from: Florestan on April 26, 2022, 06:16:15 AM
I discovered Poe rather early, in an excellent two-volume Romanian translation that I found in my parents's library, featuring both prose and poetry. I must confess that at the time (I must have been in the 6th grade, methinks) I was quite scared by his short stories and if I read them home alone I always had a feeling of fear and avoided leaving my room before one of my parents came home. :D
Later when in high school he was my favorite writer along with Baudelaire.
That being said, I cherish The Raven above everything else he wrote. An impeccable masterpiece.
When I was in Fifth Grade I committed "The Raven" to memory.
And, separately:
https://www.youtube.com/v/l5_NXPYvmi0
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 26, 2022, 06:26:17 AM
When I was in Fifth Grade I committed "The Raven" to memory.
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Raymond Carver is the first author that comes to mind when I think about short stories, followed by Robert Walser, probably.
Also, I've liked Jn Updike better in short stories than in his novels.
One short story that I regard as brilliantly crafted is Samphire by Patrick O'Brian. The author is a man, but he has perfectly captured the way a young woman would feel who finds herself tied to the most irritating, condescending and inescapable man that ever lived. The story is witty and funny and yet also horrifying, at least for female readers (in my opinion).
Quote from: Florestan on April 26, 2022, 07:48:13 AM
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Sound's like one of my better dates...
Quote from: LKB on April 26, 2022, 12:31:59 PM
Sound's like one of my better dates...
There is also a pallid bust of Pallas...
Quote from: vandermolen on April 25, 2022, 12:00:35 AM
Sherlock Holmes
YES! Definitely. I enjoy the entire canon but my favorites are Hound of the Baskervilles, Six Napoleons, Red Headed League, and Naval Treaty.
One of my favorite short stories that actually had me laughing out loud was "The Night the Bed Fell" by James Thurber.
Quote from: Olias on April 26, 2022, 06:36:53 PM
YES! Definitely. I enjoy the entire canon but my favorites are Hound of the Baskervilles, Six Napoleons, Red Headed League, and Naval Treaty.
I should re-read those.
Quote from: Olias on April 26, 2022, 06:38:58 PM
One of my favorite short stories that actually had me laughing out loud was "The Night the Bed Fell" by James Thurber.
Another classic by Thurber is of course The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I love it - never go off reading it. It's so true - an exaggeration of what we all feel, and particularly good on the psychology of older men. In fact, I love to quote this italicised bit when my husband is driving. :)
Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have her hair done. "Remember to get those overshoes while I'm having my hair done," she said. "I don't need overshoes," said Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag. "We've been all through that," she said, getting out of the car.
"You're not a young man any longer." He raced the engine a little.
Quote from: Olias on April 26, 2022, 06:36:53 PM
YES! Definitely. I enjoy the entire canon but my favorites are Hound of the Baskervilles, Six Napoleons, Red Headed League, and Naval Treaty.
In the past we had some conversations about Holmes' stories in another thread. I used to love them as a teenager and re-read a lot of them about 10 years ago when I also saw the series with Jeremy Brett for the first time. Re-reading them, I still like the atmosphere and some of them hold up well but many others are not really that good neither as stories nor as mysteries. (While not short stories, I think Hound of the Baskervilles is the only one of the 4 longer ones that I'd still recommend, and that one is of course rather dependent on a particular twist one is unlikely to forget, so not great for re-reading...)
Quote from: Jo498 on April 27, 2022, 12:16:57 AM
In the past we had some conversations about Holmes' stories in another thread. I used to love them as a teenager and re-read a lot of them about 10 years ago when I also saw the series with Jeremy Brett for the first time. Re-reading them, I still like the atmosphere and some of them hold up well but many others are not really that good neither as stories nor as mysteries. (While not short stories, I think Hound of the Baskervilles is the only one of the 4 longer ones that I'd still recommend, and that one is of course rather dependent on a particular twist one is unlikely to forget, so not great for re-reading...)
I agree that they don't hold up as crime stories - for example, why when you're dying of shock having seen a deadly creature in your bedroom would you gasp out 'The speckled band' rather than, 'I saw a snake!'? :)
The dialogue and characterisation, however, never fade, nor the atmosphere, as you say.
The speckled band was one of the first I read at 11 or so, and I loved it. I guess there are some that will always remain favorites, I admittedly never thought about the particular implausibility you mention.
(Many of the Father Brown stories are even worse as mysteries (and I think Chesterton admitted this, sometimes having to crank them out quickly in use of money) relying on totally unlikely psychological or attention deficits but by the same token many make great psychological or moral points.)
Quote from: Jo498 on April 27, 2022, 12:50:19 AM
The speckled band was one of the first I read at 11 or so, and I loved it. I guess there are some that will always remain favorites, I admittedly never thought about the particular implausibility you mention.
(Many of the Father Brown stories are even worse as mysteries (and I think Chesterton admitted this, sometimes having to crank them out quickly in use of money) relying on totally unlikely psychological or attention deficits but by the same token many make great psychological or moral points.)
You're so right about Father Brown - my husband loves them, though, and so do I. What makes them so good is the intriguing lesson about life that Fr Brown is able to draw from the strange circumstances of the story. :)
Overall, I'd say that even more like Holmes, the Father Brown stories are quite uneven. Both series are, I think, still entertaining enough to recommend and one can read them all and decide oneself.
A short story which I find very powerful but which may not appeal to men as much as it does to women is D. H. Lawrence's Tickets Please.
Spoiler Alert: In this story, set during the First World War, the central female figure Annie co-opts her fellow bus conductresses to take revenge on the inspector (exempted from conscription) who's jilted them all as soon as they've developed feelings for him. They beat him up and say that he must choose one - but he turns the tables by choosing Annie, showing that he recognises that she is the instigator and the one whose love is most passionate. That moment of understanding between them both humiliates her utterly.
I'm not a big fan of Lawrence, who had a violent streak & generally has some very daft views on sex and gender, but he certainly understands how angry a jilted woman feels here - it shocks me a little how much I root for the conductresses when they're beating him up! It's a well-constructed story, very powerful, and has a lot to say about human relationships.
Quote from: Olias on April 26, 2022, 06:36:53 PM
YES! Definitely. I enjoy the entire canon but my favorites are Hound of the Baskervilles, Six Napoleons, Red Headed League, and Naval Treaty.
'Charles Augustus Milverton' is one of my favourites (from 'The Return of Sherlock Holmes'). Holmes and Watson become burglars.
Quote from: vandermolen on April 28, 2022, 03:11:20 AM
'Charles Augustus Milverton' is one of my favourites (from 'The Return of Sherlock Holmes'). Holmes and Watson become burglars.
I hate the way that innocent people
die when Holmes is on the case though - Sophia's poor brother in The Greek Interpreter and Hilton Cubitt the loving husband in The Adventure of the Dancing Men.
During lockdown I did a great deal of reading of fiction, much of it revisiting old favourites.
I read the complete Sherlock Holmes, here much of it was completely new to me and the ones I had read before I had almost completely forgotten. The adventures I could remember were from the TV series with Jeremy Brett.
I read or re-read the complete works (more or less) of Dashiel Hammett and Raymond Chandler. It was mainly their short stories, especially Hammett, that were new to me; as in the past I greatly preferred Chandler.
When I read the two above before I must have been bingeing on American Literature as I recall reading some Philip K Dick at about the same time. I remember finding PKD rather frustrating. He had a brilliant imagination and each novel or even short story had enough ideas for three but the plotting or storyline was shambolic.
Finally, for the moment, my all-time favourite short story writer is Saki (H H Munro) - I read and re-read his works numerous times and still return to them when I need cheering up.
Quote from: Biffo on April 28, 2022, 04:06:40 AM
During lockdown I did a great deal of reading of fiction, much of it revisiting old favourites.
I read the complete Sherlock Holmes, here much of it was completely new to me and the ones I had read before I had almost completely forgotten. The adventures I could remember were from the TV series with Jeremy Brett.
I read or re-read the complete works (more or less) of Dashiel Hammett and Raymond Chandler. It was mainly their short stories, especially Hammett, that were new to me; as in the past I greatly preferred Chandler.
When I read the two above before I must have been bingeing on American Literature as I recall reading some Philip K Dick at about the same time. I remember finding PKD rather frustrating. He had a brilliant imagination and each novel or even short story had enough ideas for three but the plotting or storyline was shambolic.
Finally, for the moment, my all-time favourite short story writer is Saki (H H Munro) - I read and re-read his works numerous times and still return to them when I need cheering up.
Cheering up!?!
The Saki stories I've read remained with me for years but not for that reason. :)
Quote from: Biffo on April 28, 2022, 04:06:40 AM
When I read the two above before I must have been bingeing on American Literature as I recall reading some Philip K Dick at about the same time. I remember finding PKD rather frustrating. He had a brilliant imagination and each novel or even short story had enough ideas for three but the plotting or storyline was shambolic.
I have read a bunch of PK Dick, although he wrote such a lot that it is probably only a fraction of his output. I agree that it can be a frustrating experience. He has some of the most brilliant and provoking ideas of any (SciFi) writer. AFAIR the volume with short stories was mostly very good but among his most famous pieces are novellas/short novels and many of these lose steam/focus towards the end. Supposedly Dick often worked extremely fast with "help" of amphetamines and when their effect wore off he somehow finished the book but often in an incoherent or just weird way. (IIRC "The man in the high castle" is such a book with a totally weird ending, although at least it has some shock value, others just peter out.)
One of my favorites is perhaps an obvious choice, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," first published in The New Yorker in 1948. Sometime last fall, the magazine republished the story, with a stunningly understated illustration. I hadn't read it in decades, and had forgotten how powerfully the story emerges from Jackson's quiet language. And needless to say, it all seems very appropriate for the present day.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1948/06/26/the-lottery
--Bruce
Quote from: Brewski on April 28, 2022, 10:06:24 AM
One of my favorites is perhaps an obvious choice, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," first published in The New Yorker in 1948. Sometime last fall, the magazine republished the story, with a stunningly understated illustration. I hadn't read it in decades, and had forgotten how powerfully the story emerges from Jackson's quiet language. And needless to say, it all seems very appropriate for the present day.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1948/06/26/the-lottery
--Bruce
Thank you for that, especially for including the link - I enjoyed reading the story and thought it very well-crafted, though I have to admit that I saw the finale coming. (Not that it made it any less effective.) It is also very thought-provoking - as you say, still relevant to the present time. In fact, timeless.
It reminded me - not that the plot or style is similar at all - of another short story I found very memorable (I only read it once decades ago) and which has a very powerful build-up and disturbing denouement. It was in an anthology of science fiction stories and was called Lot - written by Ward Moore in 1953.
I wonder if anyone else has read it, or has a penchant for other short stories in the Science Fiction genre?
Hemingway: in our time, charpter III, all of it:
We were in a garden at Mons. Young Buckley came in with his patrol from across the river. The first German I saw climbed up over the garden wall. We waited till he got one leg over and then potted him. He had so much equipment on and looked awfully surprised and fell down into the garden. Then three more came over further down the wall. We shot them. They all came just like that.
The speckled band was actually Doyle's personal favorite from his Holmes stories.
I meant to add a comment about Edgar Allan Poe in my previous post but forgot. I read Tales of Mystery and Imagination when I was a teenager. Hop-Frog gave me nightmares for years after - still makes me queasy.
Quote from: Ganondorf on April 30, 2022, 04:58:00 AM
The speckled band was actually Doyle's personal favorite from his Holmes stories.
Artists and authors are not necessarily the best judges... :)
I enjoy reading the story but agree with the poster (Jo498) who pointed out that the Sherlock Holmes stories don't work all that well as crime puzzles; they have other good qualities which I actually value more, such as characterisation, humour, pace and atmosphere.
Quote from: Rosalba on April 30, 2022, 07:29:10 AM
Artists and authors are not necessarily the best judges... :)
I enjoy reading the story but agree with the poster (Jo498) who pointed out that the Sherlock Holmes stories don't work all that well as crime puzzles; they have other good qualities which I actually value more, such as characterisation, humour, pace and atmosphere.
When Conan Doyle wrote his Sherlock Holmes stories the crime/detective novel was still in its infancy and you could argue that he developed the genre. The 1920s and 30s seem to be regarded as a golden age for crime fiction but a lot of it is rather ropey - some of Agatha Christie's plots are rather creaky and I personally think Conan Doyle is superior in 'characterisation, humour, pace and atmosphere'.
Quote from: Biffo on April 30, 2022, 07:51:09 AM
When Conan Doyle wrote his Sherlock Holmes stories the crime/detective novel was still in its infancy
One can safely make the case for
E. T. A. Hoffmann's
Mademoiselle de Scudéri being the very first crime/detective novel --- featuring a female detective no less.
E. A. Poe comes second chronologically.
Quote from: Florestan on April 30, 2022, 08:17:12 AM
One can safely make the case for E. T. A. Hoffmann's Mademoiselle de Scudéri being the very first crime/detective novel --- featuring a female detective no less.
E. A. Poe comes second chronologically.
I am sure you are right but I made no claim to primacy for Conan Doyle. In our insular way we regard
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins as the first detective novel. I will have to dig out my volume of Hoffman.
Quote from: Biffo on April 30, 2022, 08:25:06 AM
I am sure you are right but I made no claim to primacy for Conan Doyle.
Oh, I didn't imply that at all. I just took up "still in its infancy" (correct) and worked my way backward from there. :)
Quote
In our insular way we regard The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins as the first detective novel.
AFAIK, this is correct too. ;)
Quote from: Biffo on April 30, 2022, 07:51:09 AM
When Conan Doyle wrote his Sherlock Holmes stories the crime/detective novel was still in its infancy and you could argue that he developed the genre. The 1920s and 30s seem to be regarded as a golden age for crime fiction but a lot of it is rather ropey - some of Agatha Christie's plots are rather creaky and I personally think Conan Doyle is superior in 'characterisation, humour, pace and atmosphere'.
Agreed.
There's nothing controversial in what you say and nothing that contradicts my earlier comments.
A writer having a favourite among his stories doesn't mean that it must
be the best artistically. That will always be a matter of opinion.
(Conan Doyle also thought that his historical fiction was superior to Sherlock Holmes, but I've tried them and like many if not most readers, I disagree.)
Even if Writer A develops a genre, and even if Writer B is worse, I am allowed to criticise Writer A's plotting. :)
Plus, I've already said that I love Sherlock Holmes stories and think that they have wonderful dialogue, characterisation, atmosphere & humour - it's simply that I don't find the plot of The Speckled Band very realistic.
But what of that? Many of the Sherlock Holmes stories have bizarre plots and it's arguably part of the appeal.
Doyle himself came to dislike the fact that he was famous mostly/only for the Holmes stories. I have yet to read the medieval stories (Sir Nigel, White Company) but I read some of the Professor Challenger years ago; they are also pretty good.
As I said, it had never occurred to me that one central point in "The speckled band" was rather implausible but when I re-read the stuff decades after my teenage years, I found them overall a rather mixed bag. It might have been that I had just been such a huge fan as a young teenager.
In hindsight, I'd say that Doyle in Holmes explored a lot of different terrain and what later became the "classic" crime mystery was only one aspect.
Whereas I was postively surprised when I re-read a handful of Agatha Christie stories/novels two years ago, I wanted to throw these old pbcks away but eventually kept them. They were obviously also all not at the same level but I found even the maybe most contrived (Ten little.../Then they were none) quite fascinating and "Mrs McGinty? is dead" has great humour and characterization of section of British ca. 1950 rural society with pampered Poirot suffering a lot because of poor food and accomodation, although the actual solution of the case is also rather contrived.
I am no expert in golden era crime but I could easily admit that several of the contrived puzzles in Ellery Queen and Dickson Carr (the first who come to my mind for "impossible puzzles") have hardly any atmosphere or characterization.
IMO the best writer as writer in the "classic" era is Dorothy Sayers but she is sometimes a bit too smart/educated for her own good. Apart from Wimsey, the unrealistic superman, there is a bit too much social commentary, too many details of train schedules, code cracking and Virgil quotations.
(Chesterton is also a good writer but maybe not at his best in the Father Brown, and he admitted himself that many of them aren't very good as crime mysteries.)
When I made my posting I was going from memory, I read The Moonstone (and its Introduction several decades ago. Wikipedia suggests the 'some' commentators regard it as the first modern detective novel. Detectives and crime solving had appeared before then. In Balzac's A Harlot High and Low a magistrate, aided by some rather seedy police spies, track down the master criminal Vautrin but this is only one thread of the novel.
Quote from: Jo498 on May 01, 2022, 01:06:20 AM
Doyle himself came to dislike the fact that he was famous mostly/only for the Holmes stories. I have yet to read the medieval stories (Sir Nigel, White Company) but I read some of the Professor Challenger years ago; they are also pretty good.
As I said, it had never occurred to me that one central point in "The speckled band" was rather implausible but when I re-read the stuff decades after my teenage years, I found them overall a rather mixed bag. It might have been that I had just been such a huge fan as a young teenager.
In hindsight, I'd say that Doyle in Holmes explored a lot of different terrain and what later became the "classic" crime mystery was only one aspect.
Whereas I was postively surprised when I re-read a handful of Agatha Christie stories/novels two years ago, I wanted to throw these old pbcks away but eventually kept them. They were obviously also all not at the same level but I found even the maybe most contrived (Ten little.../Then they were none) quite fascinating and "Mrs McGinty? is dead" has great humour and characterization of section of British ca. 1950 rural society with pampered Poirot suffering a lot because of poor food and accomodation, although the actual solution of the case is also rather contrived.
I am no expert in golden era crime but I could easily admit that several of the contrived puzzles in Ellery Queen and Dickson Carr (the first who come to my mind for "impossible puzzles") have hardly any atmosphere or characterization.
IMO the best writer as writer in the "classic" era is Dorothy Sayers but she is sometimes a bit too smart/educated for her own good. Apart from Wimsey, the unrealistic superman, there is a bit too much social commentary, too many details of train schedules, code cracking and Virgil quotations.
(Chesterton is also a good writer but maybe not at his best in the Father Brown, and he admitted himself that many of them aren't very good as crime mysteries.)
I don't rate Agatha Christie as highly as Conan Doyle, but I enjoy her writing - The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is very well-crafted and there's a lot of humour in the dialogue. I once read a novel she published as Mary Westmacott, Absent in the Spring, and I thought it was an excellent exploration of a selfish woman's psyche and had to lot to say about the decisions we take in life.
My husband enjoys Professor Challenger. I haven't read any Dorothy Sayers but her novels were a colleague's favourite crime novel. When I tried one, I found the style a little affected, but they do dramatise very well and I've enjoyed some Sayers TV serials.
I've never given much time to short stories, but I have a few collections sitting around that I still like to leaf through every once and a while:
Nathanial Hawthorne: A rill from the town pump. This captured my attention as a young person in school as it was from the perspective of the town pump.
Sherwood Anderson: Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small-Town Life
O. Henry Short Stories: Of which, Gift of the Magi is perhaps the most well known.
Roald Dahl Omnibus: The Great Automatic Grammatizator stands out along with the wicked Lamb to the Slaughter.
Ian Fleming: For Your Eyes Only & Octopussy collections, although I preferred the James Bond novels over these.
T. Coraghessan Boyle: Greasy Lake. His mid-to-late 20th Century pop-culture references remind me of composer Michael Daugherty.
I guess I have liked short stories that deal with small-town life or ones with a wry twist.
VS
Thanks, @VonStupp - some interesting points.
I remember reading O. Henry's Witches' Loaves and finding it funny but almost unbearably poignant.
There are too many and too many I do not remember well enough. I got two or three fat volumes with anthologies of American and British short stories, starting with the tale of the headless Hessian horseman (that is actually humorous but was turned into a scary movie).
As I said above, I think some genres like Ghost (MR James was maybe the greatest, I got an Omnibus, but the story I'll never forget because it scared me considerably as a kid of 11 or so is "The room in the tower" by Benson), Horror (Lovecraft is better for me in small doses) and SciFi work best in Short stories (or sometimes novellas). I tended to prefer Asimiov's Robot short stories to several of his novels (although both Caves of Steel and Naked Sun are pretty good, too). A good one I read recently after having heard about it before is "The man who came early" (about a GI who lands by a time warp in 10th cent. Iceland). Another cool one is Arthur Clarke's "9 billion names of God".
One of Roald Dahl's I remember is about a man who learned from some Indian guru to see through cards and went on to bust the banks of casinos.
I recently got a collection by TC Boyle but the first? story was already so depressing (while getting drunk with new acquaintance a man tells the tale how his son died from a freak accident after a fraternity drinking game), I stopped reading... ;)
Quote from: Ganondorf on April 30, 2022, 04:58:00 AM
The speckled band was actually Doyle's personal favorite from his Holmes stories.
It's definitely one of the best.
Chesterton's Father Brown stories. A mix of logic and surreal humour.
Romanian literature has some excellent writers of short stories. My top 5 are:
I. L. Caragiale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Luca_Caragiale)
I. A. Bassarabescu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ioan_A._Bassarabescu)
Emil Gârleanu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_G%C3%A2rleanu)
Anton Bacalbașa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Bacalba%C8%99a)
Anton Holban (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Holban)
Short Stories for children can be very funny or evocative too.
In the first category, I love the collection of northern-grit first person stories by George Layton, especially the title-story for the anthology, which is called The Balaclava Story, about a boy who can't join his classmates' boys' club of The Balaclava Boys because his Mum, a single parent, can't afford extras. So he steals a balaclava from the school cloakroom on impulse, and from there it all goes pear-shaped. It's poignant but also very funny, as are the other stories in the collection.
In the 'evocative' category, I love a short story by Philippa Pearce, who wrote the children's classic Tom's Midnight Garden. This is called The Great Blackberry Pick, and is about a girl trapped in a family with a very autocratic father. I can identify with that - and also with the forced family blackberry picking - but the story also features a contrasting household, warm and libertarian, to which the girl briefly escapes. This was a great story to read aloud to my high-school English students and then start a discussion.
Jorge Luis Borges is another master of the genre.