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Post by callipygias on Jan 2, 2011 3:27:24 GMT -5
#24 Goldfish(1936) Raymond Chandler[/center][/color] It's great that the worthy old pulp fiction, as it holds up over time, is getting its due. When I first got my book of Chandler's short stories I enjoyed it, but it wasn't until I got to the point where he started first-person narrative that he took the leap over all the rest for me. I can open up to any random spot in his stories after that point and find something so quotable I'll want to read it aloud to anyone close enough to hear. If only I could do Bogie. "Rhythm" is a useful word to describe some writers' styles, and for my money Chandler is the rhythmest. Not just in his famous phrasing, but overall, including his fantastic sense of humor. The hardest I've laughed because of a book in recent memory is the opening sentence to chapter five of Goldfish: "So far I had only made four mistakes." Here are some favorite cut-outs from the climactic scene: She started to fall. Slowly, like a slow motion picture, she fell. There was something silly about it. Mrs. Sype got the Colt and shot her in the back. ...The slug from the Colt knocked the girl forward as though a door had whipped in a high wind. ...Something thumped against my chest -- her head. Then she was a huddled thing on the floor at my feet, small, deadly, extinct, with redness coming out from under her, and the tall quiet woman behind her with the smoking gun. Madder shot Sype twice. Raymond Chandler
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Post by callipygias on Jan 2, 2011 18:18:40 GMT -5
#23 Death and the Child(1898) Stephen Crane[/center][/color] It starts with a village of Greek peasants fleeing the advancing Turkish army down a mountain trail. But hey, what doesn't? It was as if fear was a river, and this horde had simply been caught in the torrent, man tumbling over beast, beast over man, as helpless in it as the logs that fall and shoulder grindingly through the gorges of a lumber country.
(And I wonder if Crane had something special in mind with the line below) ...This brown stream poured on with a constant wastage of goods and beasts. In the rush a small child is left behind in the village. He's playing farmer with sticks and stones and imagination, ignoring the battle in the valley below him which at that distance sounds like ocean surf. "His tranquility in regard to the death on the plain was as invincible as that of the mountain on which he stood. ...The stick in his hand was much larger to him than was an Army corps of the distance." But most of the story deals with Peza, a journalist who is incited to join the Greeks' fight against the Turks. His enthusiastic, blustering trip through the Greek lines as he searches for a position best fit to employ his freshly aroused and surely heroic battle-lust. During his trip he becomes more and more convinced of his courage despite being mocked by soldiers and despite his terror of and refusal to help carry to safety a Greek whose jaw had been shot off. Like Red Badge, Death and the Child is full of Crane's hatred for war, his awe of the men who fight it, and his complete astoundment at its effect on nature. A large pointed shell flashed through the air and struck near the base of a tree with a fierce upheaval, compounded of earth and flames. ...The missiles were flying into the breast of an astonished nature.
...The right-flank gun of the battery thundered; there was a belch of fire and smoke; the shell flung swiftly and afar was known only to the ear which rang a broadening hooting wake of sound. The Howitzer had thrown itself backward convulsively, and lay with its wheels moving in the air as a squad of men rushed toward it. ...The guns were herded and cajoled and bullied interminably. One by one, in relentless program, they were dragged forward to contribute a profound vibration of steel and wood, a flash and a roar, to the important happiness of man. Stephen Crane
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Post by callipygias on Jan 2, 2011 23:23:29 GMT -5
#22 In the Penal Colony(1914)Franz Kafka[/center][/color] I avoided Kafka for the longest time because I assumed he was some kind of hyper-loquacious, dull-as-hell philosopher type. Mostly because of the image I have of shiny party-goers with cocktails and sparkly jewelry using the word "Kafkaesque" a lot. MAN was I wrong. Kafka is one crazy-ass sumbitch! That's my review of him: one crazy-ass sumbitch. (Speaking of which, don't expect to see The Metamorphosis on the list as I set a roughly forty-page limit to be considered a short story.) In the Penal Colony is not one of his more crazy-ass sumbitch stories, though. It's about a torture device designed to scribe the offender's sin and/or sentence deep into their skin over the course of about a half-day or so, until they die. There are just four characters: the traveler, who is some kind of big shot dignitary visiting the prison; the officer who runs "the machine" and pretty well worships its creator, the penal colony's dead former Commandant; the soldier, who does what he's told; and the condemned, a... stupid fellow. The Machine is the focus of the story, though. We see the horror of it as the traveler sees it for the first time, and we see... well, the beautiful horror of it as the officer experiences it for the last time. Franz Kafka
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Post by callipygias on Jan 5, 2011 23:59:36 GMT -5
#21 The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber(1936)Ernest Hemingway[/center][/color] Hemingway seems to be out of style. Not completely out of style, but... mostly out of style. Like rhododendrons or white bread. Maybe not, but it seems that way to me. I'm not crazy about many of his short stories myself--especially his bickering dialogue, like in Snows of Kilimanjaro or The Sea Change--but Short Happy Life is a short happy exception. It's head and shoulders above the rest, in my opinion (though now that I'm reading about it online I see I'm hardly unique in that). Not many stories can boast one character as well drawn, as truthfully drawn, as any of the three in Short Happy Life. Macomber himself, wealthy professional man with intense insecurities (justified, apparently); Macomber's wife, Margaret, who despises her husband for his insecurities and his weakness, yet is completely dependent on them so that she has something to rub in his face; and Wilson, guide on their African hunting safari, extraordinarily confident, under-impressed with Macomber but encouraging (when he isn't sleeping with his wife), frustratingly even-keeled: British. After proving himself a coward on a lion hunt, and after being repeatedly humiliated by his wife because of it, Macomber finds his inner hairy man when he stands a buffalo's charge. It's his coming of age and the beginning of a new life for Francis Macomber, and Margot is not happy about that. Just how happy wasn't she?... Ernest Hemingway
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Post by Mr. Atari on Jan 6, 2011 0:56:25 GMT -5
In the spirit of this thread, I dusted off my copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold.
Does that count as a short story? Or is it a novella?
Whatever you call it, I call it good griddlecakes.
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Post by Mr. Atari on Jan 6, 2011 1:06:19 GMT -5
Kafka is one crazy-ass sumbitch! That's my review of him: one crazy-ass sumbitch. I once referred to Kafka in a college paper as, "Poe, after dropping acid." Which is okay by me; I like my literature crazy-ass and twisted.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Jan 6, 2011 10:12:58 GMT -5
His short stories are definitely strange. But it's The Trial and The Castle where the normal world falls apart so thoroughly that even your memories of what normal used to be seem weird.
Perfectly amazing writer.
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Post by callipygias on Jan 7, 2011 0:08:05 GMT -5
I just remembered my introduction to Kafka. I was browsing Borders at lunch, and for whatever reason I finally decided to pick up his "Collected Stories." I opened it to what looked like a half-page story, so I gave it a shot. It's still the best half-page story I've read, but more importantly it got me reading him. I searched for it online until I realized I could type it out faster than find it.
Rejection, Franz Kafka
When I meet a pretty girl and beg her: "Be so good as to come with me," and she walks past without a word, this is what she means to say: "You are no duke with a famous name, no broad American with a Red Indian figure, level, brooding eyes and a skin tempered by the air of the prairies and the rivers that flow through them, you have never journeyed to the seven seas and voyaged on them wherever they may be, I don't know where. So why, pray, should a pretty girl like myself go with you?" "You forget that no automobile swings you through the street in long thrusts; I see no gentlemen escorting you in a close half-circle, pressing on your skirts from behind and murmuring blessings on your head; your breasts are well-laced into your bodice, but your thighs and hips make up for that restraint; you are wearing a taffeta dress with a pleated skirt such as delighted all of us last autumn, and yet you smile -- inviting mortal danger -- from time to time." "Yes, we're both in the right, and to keep us from being irrevocably aware of it, hadn't we better just go our separate ways home?"
Ouch. Definitely falls under the "things best not thought" category.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Jan 7, 2011 11:58:50 GMT -5
Heh. He has a lot of good tiny ones like that. Nowadays, we'd call them "flash fiction."
I think my favorite short story of his, though, is "A Country Doctor." So many of his short stories seem to just become surreal (although in a good way), but that one to me seems to hang on to a kind of dream logic.
And The Cure turned a couple of his tiny pieces into songs. Here's one for "At Night":
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Post by callipygias on Jan 9, 2011 14:45:05 GMT -5
#20 Wickedness(1989)Ron Hansen[/center][/color] One of three stories in the top twenty I found through anthologies. Deserves to be in the top ten; it's a humdinger. I fell in love with this story from the first sentence: At the end of the nineteenth century a girl from Delaware got on a milk train in Omaha and took a green wool seat in the second class car. I reread it several times before going on to the rest of the story. The massive vagueness of "end of the nineteenth century" followed with the comparatively ridiculous specifics of "green wool seat" and "second class car" was strange and... colossal, somehow. Something about relative priorities, I don't know. Anyway, as I found out later, it perfectly set the mood for the entire story. Still in the opening paragraph, a heavy gunny-sacked package is set on a seat across the aisle from her: Soon, however, there was a juggling movement and the gunnysack slipped aside, and she saw an old man sitting there, his limbs hacked away, and dark holes where his ears ought to have been, the skin pursed at his jaw hinge like pink lips in a kiss. Later a doctor sits down next to her and explains that the man (well, the head 'n torso) had been a carpenter in Genoa who'd been killed by the great blizzard of 1888, and asks if she has heard of it. From there the story is a series of vignettes from the blizzard that took more than 500 lives. Here are some crammed-together pieces of reviews that describe Hansen's style a whole lot better than me could: Part Hemingway and part Gabriel Márquez — a fabulist in the native grain. Ron Hansen's stories are powered by inexorable currents of fate ... we hear the sound of time passing, the rumble of destiny. [Wickedness] is an absolutely stunning portrayal of a physical place on Earth. Nebraska takes on the attributes of a living force, a character in itself, and the effect is a powerful, almost supernatural personification of geography and human culture. I wonder if there are people out there for whom our Great Plains are a kind of literary Mecca. Cather, Crane, Proulx, Hansen, etc., many amazing stories have come from there, often with the Plains... themselves? itself? as a prominent character--sometimes as the dominant character, as with Wickedness. Ron Hansen
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Post by callipygias on Jan 9, 2011 16:19:51 GMT -5
In order to shorten the posts for numbers 11-19 just a tiny bit I'll say now that every one of them deserves to be in the top ten. Most of them actually have been in the top ten at some point, but there are just too many great stories. Number 19, in fact, was in the top 5 when I first started writing the list out, if I remember right.
Listing favorite short stories was WAY harder than novels.
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Post by callipygias on Jan 9, 2011 19:25:51 GMT -5
#19 An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge(1890)Ambrose Bierce[/center][/color] Bierce's prose is among the best America has produced. Like Poe, he can turn a ghost story into literature -- BUT, couple his skills with their perfectly fit subject: war, and you have high art. A good example of that from Occurrence is when Peyton Farquhar, self-made civilian spy for the Southern cause, having been ensnared by the treacherous Northern army and summarily hanged, incredibly, escapes (it's not a spoiler that the rope breaks because it happens early in the story). Then, racing downstream in the river under Owl Creek Bridge, musket fire hitting the water all around him, suddenly An appalling plash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound, diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps! A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As great as the first reading of Occurrence is, subsequent readings are even better. Pretty amazing, considering. What Bierce does with time is inky awesomeness. This passage is from just before Farquhar's aforementioned incredible escape. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by--it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and--he knew not why--apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer, the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch. And it's followed by the mother of all flashbacks; great not for its length, or even for its importance to the story (though it is important), but for its separating one moment in Peyton Farquhar's life from the next for us, the people of Rhythm Nation. Ambrose Bierce
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Post by callipygias on Jan 12, 2011 17:54:32 GMT -5
#18 Head and Shoulders(1920)F. Scott Fitzgerald[/center][/color] Apparently many feel (or one felt and others latched on) that Head and Shoulders is immature Fitzgerald, but I say ptooey! I guess those who want him more broody and romantic (romantic in style, I mean) would feel that way, but it sure doesn't jive with the general opinion of his novels, where the lively, crackley Fitzgerald of Gatsby is most everyone's favorite. Head and Shoulders is lively and crackley too. It's the liveliest and crackliest story in the world! And part one is among my favorite stretches of dialogue anywhere--novels included. H & S is a story in five parts about wonderboy Horace Tarbox: stodgey, abstract philospher and all-around genius; and Marcia Meadows: actress and fast-talking flapper who takes a liking to Horace. They team up. Horace the brains, Marcia the "shoulders" as she supports them with her act until Horace can get things started. Life happens though, and there's some role reversal. It's a little punny and cutesy regarding the title, but it's also an extremely fun story, and it has two very lovable main characters. F. Scott Fitzgerald & Zelda
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Post by callipygias on Jan 21, 2011 17:55:37 GMT -5
Honorable Mention Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?(1965)Joyce Carol Oates[/center][/color] Originally this was right around here, seventeenish, on my list. It would still be up there, but I decided to google the "For Bob Dylan" dedication on the story. Big mistake. A link led me to the lyrics for Dylan's It's All Over Now, Baby Blue, and that wiped out much of the mystery of this extraordinarily mysterious story. It didn't explain it, just de-mysterious'd it somewhat. I still love the story, but it's somewhere in the fifties until I'm over the trauma. It's like how a brat throws a tantrum at one of his dolls another kid played with. It's exactly like that. Don't question me. Then again, I think I read somewhere that this is the most frequently anthologized American short story, period. To be in the running for #1 among... millions, probably (including amateurs, anyway), says a ton more about the story than I could. Even with my perfectly sensible, spot-on analogies. Before MST made me aware JCO was a writer I think I assumed she hosted a daytime variety show. When I found out she was a writer I assumed she must be an author of cookbooks or romance novels or something. I'm not sure why I thought that. When I'm ninety I'll probably think she's a breakfast cereal. France Nguyen Joyce Carol Oates
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Post by callipygias on Jan 22, 2011 16:07:55 GMT -5
#17 The Lottery(1948)Shirley Jackson[/center][/color] If you polled the entire country for their favorite short story I don't think there's any doubt that The Lottery would demolish all comers and reign supreme, year in and year out; it's the Stairway to Heaven of short stories. Jackson is another I limited to one spot on the list. Pretty obvious what the one had to be. She's also probably the author whose style most confuses me. <thirty minute pause> I've been looking for something to quote that would adequately explain it, but the best I could find were a couple things from the New York Times: "This review of Shirley Jackson ...properly begins with the confession that I am not sure of anything except [her] almost unflagging interest..." and "Jackson has made it even more difficult for a reviewer to seem pertinent; all he can do is bestow praise." She wrote another story called The Villager (I desperately wish I could find the text online because it's the perfect example of how her style can be inexplicably... grotesque is the word folks seem to use) that is nothing more than a woman showing up at a couple's apartment to look at the furniture they're selling. Nothing happens, yet it's one of my favorites. The sellers aren't even home! She allows herself to be mistaken for the owner by another prospective buyer, that's it, but it's somehow as unsettling as the best Diane Arbus photograph, and in a way that feels very similar. Shirley Jackson
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