I originally deleted this post but I decided to post it anyway.
I recently read Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation” for a religion class of mine. I caught the bug and I checked out A Good Man is Hard to Find. I’m half-way through it now.
I love Flannery O’Connor, especially how she was so chronically religious and chronically sick (lupus) and incorporated so many religious messages in with her stories. I identify with her a lot and I wish she hadn’t died so young because she could have written so much more. All my favorite writers seem to have been very very sick and died young.
Anyway, do you have any other personal favorite short stories, short story collections, or short story authors?
And what is your opinion on the short story format? I’ve fallen in love because I can read it all at once (which I guess is the point).
Flannery O’Connor is one of my favorite people ever. I went and bought The Complete Stories and I’ve probably read it through three or four times, now. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (the story) is awe-inspriring, as is “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” And you’ll probably get a kick out of “The River.”
When you’re talking American short stories, the Great Triumvirate consists of Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, and Flannery O’Connor. I love them all.
My absolute favourite short story has to be “First Confession” by Frank O’Connor. He’s not a woman. He’s not even Irish! He’s American! But his stories have a convincing Irish flavour. Very good short stories, all the same.
Any collection by Kipling. He’s not a woman either.
Lately finished a collection by Eudora Welty. She’s a woman. Nicely written.
Kate Mansfield always seemed a bit too artistic. I always wondered what I’d just read, when I’d finished.
Recently I picked up a book of Short Stories by Irish Writers from 1970s.
The first half-dozen stories were all by women and were all concerning rape. I thought I’d picked up something from the Women’s Press. (I like the Women’s Press! - Especially “The Adventures of Alyx” by Joanna Russ. But this was seriously creepy.) Then there were some by men, and stories dealing with other issues. Eeep.
Katherine Anne Porter is brilliant, in my opinion. “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” comes to mind (though I’m not sure you’d like the theme, Cran); her other stories are great, too.
Thank you people (especially to Carol, I will look for her upon my return to Kentucky).
The thing I think I love most about Flannery O’Connor’s stories is how real they are to my own experiences in the rural South. I grew up in the rural South in a mix-raced (and pretty sharply segregated) apathetically religious family. This is what O’Connor wrote about.
Whenever I read reviews or critical pieces about Flannery O’Connor, they invariably speak of her and her stories in the vein of “how things were,” especially with the use of the word nigger being thrown around so much so casually. But they’re all wrong.
Her stories do not show how things were in the South, they show how they still are. I think that’s why I get captured so much. Flannery O’Connor only died a few decades ago and precious little has changed in the rural South. I find it kind of strange that the people who write about her and talk about the way things “were” seem to reside in New York or Atlanta. LOL.
I almost feel bad saying this, but I don’t care for Mr. Hardy’s writing at all. I’ve read Jude the Obscure, and a good deal of his poetry as well, and none of it has struck me as particularly interesting or inspired. Let me try this “Withered Arm,” then, just to see.
If you enjoy Saki (Hector Hugh Munroe) you will enjoy Marcel Aymé. Not a whole lot of his stuff was translated into English, but what there is is worth finding. If your French is good enough, it’s worth reading in the original.
Look for “The Green Unicorn”, “The Walker-through-Walls”, “The Seven-League Boots”,
and “Contés du Chat Perché” which literally means “Tales of the Perching Cat”, but more idiomatically translates as
“Off-the-Ground Tag Stories”.
Dubh Linn’s mention of Arthur Conan Doyle reminds me of H.G.Wells - wonderful short stories, with a Science-fiction bent.
Conan Doyle wrote a lot of other stories without mention of Sherlock Holmes, but in his later life got a bee in his bonnet about Spiritualism, and his later stories get obsessional and preachy. Some of Wells’ stories have a curiously Spiritualistic mood. No question but it was a late Victorian Fashion.
And the MASTER of English storytelling: Somerset Maugham. Look for “Rain”. This one will have your jaw drop when you read it for the first time.
And of course the (American) source of my signature: Damon Runyon.
One of the best short story writers of the last century,
Ernest Hemingway, in a way re-invented the short story
genre. Whatever you think of him, the sheer craftsmanship
is extraordinary. Some of his best stories are
‘The Killers’ and ‘The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife.’
These are some of his ‘Nick Adams’ stories,
quasi-autobiographical.
Another very great Hemingway story is
The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio.
Stephen Crane’s ‘The Open Boat’ is one of the
best short stories I have ever read.
Another is Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Gimpel the Fool.
The short story genre is considered very difficult,
I believe, because one has to create a persuasive
world and persuasive people in very limited space.
You have to cut to the chase; people get revealed
in action.
