The Short Story Discussion Thread

I read them alongside other things, and order's not important unless the collection actually depends on being read in order (if there's a common thread running through the whole thing, like that Palahniuk book a while back). I haven't sought out many collections like I should, because they make for great bus reading due to brevity.

How are the Best American Nonrequired Reading books?

I told you already-
http://www.librarything.com/work/253157/details

Guh! It's like you don't even hear me anymore!

I focus on novels much more than short stories, but Ron Hansen's Love and Hydrogen was a pretty great collection.

A couple years ago I was given T. C. Boyle's collection, "Stories" in a beautiful hardback edition. It's massive (he's got smaller collections, pretty sure), and I've still only gotten around to a 3rd of it, but I generally pick it up and jump in randomly when I'm undecided what novel to pull off the shelf next. A big fan of Boyle's short stories, even moreso than his novels (which are also usually great). Two favorites in there are "Greasy Lake," which pretty much put Boyle on the literary map, and especially "56-0," which may be my favorite sports story, period.

I'm about 5 or 6 years behind the annual "Greatest American Short Stories" anthologies, but those are usually a good bet (a professor of mine made it into one in the early 90s! bask in my reflected glory). Find a year with a guest editor whose own fiction you like, and dive in.

Oh, well then. If you want to nitpick.

I have the attention span of a small dog, so I tend to stick to short stories more than novels.

Clive Barker's Books of Blood is a must have. So much imagination on display, it's unbelievable. Even if you aren't a fan of horror, you have to check out this magnificient collection.

I'm also a fan of Julio Cortázar's "Blow-Up and Other Stories" (which was titled "The End of the Game and Other Stories before Antonioni's film came out). He's got a very unusual writing style and the story "House Taken Over" moves me in particular for reasons I can't quite explain.

Other short stories I love:

The Body Politic by Clive Barker
Roman Fever by Edith Wharton
The Catbird Seat by James Thurber
A Clean, Well Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway
Judas by Frank O'Connor
Neighbours by Raymond Carver
They're Not Your Husband by Raymond Carver

"The Stories of Ray Bradbury." Best collection ever.

If you liked Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, you should dig Diaz's collection DROWN. I think it was recently rereleased in paperback.

For fans of horror lit that doesn't suck:
20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
Dark Water by Koji Suzuki

And here's some free classic stuff from Victorian ghost writer MR James.

Bradbury is overrated. I like Mars Chronicles and all, but he's sooooo heavy handed.

Oh yes.

Opens with one of my favorite puns: "We're all books of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red."

William Faulkner's Collected Stories is a must-have. Most aren't nearly the hard work his novels are but are just as rewarding. If you were never assigned "A Rose For Emily" in any lit class, check out one of the creepiest bits of southern gothic put to pen. It shows up in the occasional horror anthology for good reason. The man had a hell of a comic touch, too, and not always so dark, that comes out clearer in his short stories.

I adore Ray Bradbury's stories. He's very flowery so he's not for everyone but he's a gorgeous writer. He's easily one of my favorites.

Richard Yates writes some great short stories too.

What? Rath didn't mention John Cheever?

Since Clive Barker's been mentioned: In the Hills, the Cities.

Repeat after me: In the Hills, the Cities.

In the Hills, the Cities.

I just read McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, which is a bunch of authors like Jonathan Lethem, Margaret Atwood, and China Mieville trying their hand at genre short stories. They were mostly pretty mediocre, and it's a skippable book in many regards, but Joyce Carol Oates has a pretty kickass Edgar Allen Poe homage called The Fabled Light House of Vina-Del-Mar. It even goes a bit Lovecraft at the end.

I know Letham is a lit nerd favorite, but I'm not crazy about him.
That said, Super Goat Man is fantastic.
When Super Goat Man moved into the commune on our street, I was ten years old. Though I liked superheroes, I wasn’t familiar with Super Goat Man. His presence didn’t mean much to me or to the other kids in the neighborhood. For us, as we ran and screamed and played our secret games on the sidewalk, Super Goat Man was only another of the guys who sat on stoops in sleeveless undershirts on hot summer days, watching the slow progress of life on the block. The two little fleshy horns on his forehead didn’t make him especially interesting. We weren’t struck by his fall from grace, out of the world of comic-book heroes, among which he had been at best a minor star, to land here in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, in a single room in what was basically a dorm for college dropouts, a hippie group shelter, any more than we were by the tufts of extra hair at his throat and behind his ears. We had eyes only for Spider-Man and Batman in those days, superheroes in two dimensions, with lunchboxes and television shows and theme songs. Super Goat Man had none of those.

I guess I'll be the first to drop the "K" word. Both Night Shift and Skeleton Crew are terrific reads, if you can get past the fact that about half the stories have been made into shitty films.

I usually skip around. However some collections are designed to be read front to back for thematic reasons.

It never occurred to me that skipping around was an option. You open a book, start at the beginning, and proceed.

I'll add Terry Southern's Red-Dirt Marijuana and other Tastes to the mix. 24 stories dealing with counter culture and the would be hipsters who gravitated towards it, along with some of the deeper pockets of Americana.

I know Orson Scott Card is pretty hated on these boards, but he's got some great short stories. I'm about a quarter of the way through Maps in a Mirror, and I'm really enjoying it.

Joe R. Lansdale tells a great short story.

Yes, sir. I second the Joe Hill recommendation!

Another guy I've been reading a lot of recently is Robert Charles Wilson. He released a hard-to-find sci-fi/horror collection called "The Perseids and Other Stories" in 2000.

http://www.amazon.ca/Perseids-Storie.../dp/0312873743

If you can get your hands on a copy, there are a few gems in there. He's one of my favourite contemporary science fiction authors (read his novel "Spin",) and he's got some great moody pieces in that short collection.

Word to the Faulkner mention. As good as A Rose For Emily is, my favorite of his is Barn Burning. Just amazing, and to me is (out of what Faulkner I've read) the epitome of the theme of difficult, but essential moral revelation that runs throughout his work.

Also, The Swimmer by John Cheever might be, if not the full-on greatest American short story of the last century, the best example of the form of it. His collection is essential.

Carver, as has been mentioned, is also essential. I think a lot of Chewers would really delve into Flannery O'Connor's stuff, especially is they like the novels of Cormac McCarthy (similar in the way they deal with themes, not so much the prose)A Good Man Is Hard To Find is as chilling as any of the horror stuff mentioned here (also a fan of the Books Of Blood series).

Finally, let me give a shout out to Ian McEwan's first collection: First Love, Last Rites. Some good, disturbing portraits of the grotesqueness that people both hide and display, and the shocking results of how this can bear itself to fruition. I think people only familiar with McEwan as the guy who wrote the book that Atonement was based on would be pretty blown away by this collection.

Wait--one I forgot to mention, but would be remiss if I didn't: The Conversion of the Jews by Philip Roth. Not only a perfect short story, but a great introduction to the man who may be the greatest living American writer.

While I'm here and mentioning stories I failed to five minutes ago: Hemingway. The Killers. Hills Like White Elephants. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. Not mentioning anything anyone who's ever taken a lit class probably isn't aware of, but for those who might be rather new to the form, read these.

If nothing else, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find", the short story, is essential.

Raymond Carver is great. He's tricky because he has three "phases", the early stories, the minimalist phase, and the wider, deeper, later stories.

If you're into more literary stuff, you can't go wrong with Alice Munro. I know, I know, old white woman writing about white women, but just try reading "Dance of the Happy Shades" or "Walker Brothers Cowboy" or "Runaway" or "Silence" without being amazed. She writes about the Wal-Mart crowd moreso than the creamy upper class, so I can relate. And she always, always somehow writes powerful endings which are surprising and moving in a really mysterious way. Can't quite put my finger on it.

Joyce Carol Oates writes incredible short stories. Her language, characters, and plots are always thrilling, yet never overstay their welcome.

There's one story in which a female jogger is described in vivid detail in one long sentence, and the story ends with "you raise a .22 pistol, aim at her head, and pull the trigger." Chilling and fun!

I hihgly recommend The Assignation and I Am No One You Know. The former has stories rarely longer than 6 -7 pages. The later is one of her latest collections.

Michael Swanwick writes really neat sci-fi/fantasy shorts. I'm probably forgetting a dozen or so other greats...

The New Yorker Fiction podcast and the Pseudopod podcast have resparked my love of the short story. Some stand-outs include "The Identifier" by Mark Patrick Morehead, "Turning The Apples" by Tina Connolly and "The Man of the World" by Frank O'Connors. Frank O'Connors is the author of "My Oedipus Complex", is just amazing at writing stories about growing up.