There's always a few topics about favorite novels, I'd like to also know what everyone's favorite short stories are. I haven't read a ton but you really can't go wrong with The Call of Cthulu.
I enjoy Lovecraft. Among my favorites are Joyce's Dubliners and the collected work of William Trevor. Also, Alistair MacLeod's compilation Island, and Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber.
The Death of Dr. Island, Gene Wolf. It's been made into a kindov' experimental film, but I've never managed to find a venue to see it. It seems like it never got released? Daniel Browning Smith (the contortionist dude that has the show with Stan Lee looking for real life super-humans) plays Nicholas. Follow the link AYOR. There is male and female nudity. http://www.doctorisland.com/index.htm
I like Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber - edgy, dark fairy tales, John Colliers collection - Fancies and Goodnights. He's marvelous and funny - genie's, mannequins, people who turn into flowers. The Middle Stories by Sheila Heti - quiet but packs a wallop. I love her mermaid in a bottle story. Girl Goddess #9 by Francesca Lia Block - she's ya and edgy but her prose is marvelous. Driftglass collection by Samuel R. Delany. His imagery is fantastic.
The first one that jumps to mind is Ernest Hemingway's "The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber." I also like Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question." I'm sure there are many others, but frankly, I haven't read many short stories recently, and I have to dredge up some out of the depths of long-term memory. Oh, and "Leiningen Versus the Ants," by Carl Stephenson. And when I was a kid, I read a story called "The Bamboo Trap" by Robert S. Lemmon, about a man sent to find specimens of a rare, very large spider. He falls into a pit. Good news! It's the spiders' home! Bad news - he can't climb out ... chilling stuff, if your arachnophobic like me.
One of my favorites, and not really because of the story itself, is Hemingway's Big Two-Hearted River. This story pitted me against one of my high school English teachers in an argument that lasted well after the bell. She insisted that whipping a fly rod back and forth was masturbation, unsheathing a knife was phallic, and sticking the knife in the log was a sign of impotence. I insisted she was reading way too much in a story about a guy fishing in his childhood honey hole(no, not sexual). It was my first time to call somebody misandrous.
Bernice Bobs Her Hair by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Hands down. I always wanted to read it, finally did, and re read it!
Wow. What if the MC had been female? She'd still be fly fishing, right? Would it be masturbation in her case? She'd still have to unsheath the knife in order to use it. Would that be phallic? As Freud supposedly said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
Any one of the short stories in Dubliners and Lovecraft, Poe, and MR James are always safe bets for me. I like Hemingway's short stories much more than his novels I must admit, but my favorite? It might actually be 'Up In Michigan' by Ernest Hemingway, and I'm not really sure why. I utterly love the feel of that story though, and I just adore the writing! Either that or 'Country Doctor' by Franz Kafka, which reads like a nightmare but there is something twisted in it that I love. Or 'The Whisperer in Darkness' by H.P. Lovecraft. 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' by Ambrose Bierce is another one I really love, as is 'Bartleby the Scrivener' by Herman Melville. Consider those last two more as honorable mentions.
Two favorites: We Can Get Them for You Wholesale by Neil Gaiman. Included in his book Smoke & Mirrors. The Jaunt by Stephen King. Included in his book Skeleton Crew. I highly recommend this short story if you want a blend of horror and sci-fi.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is one I was thinking about trying to get. Is it worth paying a couple bucks for?
I remember a friend of mine getting into an argument with a colleague in front of his students about the Robert Frost poem 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening'. The teacher was adamant it was about homosexuality, where my friend (quite rightly I think) was adamant it was about death and contemplation of suicide. It's all a matter of perspective I guess. I don't know what a couple of bucks translates out to into pound sterling, but it's a fine short story all the same. It's been very influential if you like the horror genre.
I think Frost said on more than one occasion that it wasn't about death either. For example: (Frost as quoted by Louis Mertens). As late as November 8, 1962, when Frost received the Edward MacDowell Medal before a packed auditorium at Hunter College in New York, Louise Bogan, poetry critic of the New Yorker magazine who was present, reported that Frost insisted that “Stopping by Woods” was NOT concerned with Death, and gave a little scratch to John Ciardi. It’s the tune that counts, he kept saying. Of course, art isn't confined to what the artist intends. What the observer takes is as least as important, if not more so.
Interesting. I must admit, Frost is one of my favourite poets. I just love his work. Sorry, this is getting off topic. Haha, yeah, I'm British. Sorry. If it's not much then I'd go for it, go for it hard and fast and not look back!
"The Interior Castle" by Jean Stafford. She's an underrated short story writer in that a lot of people haven't heard of her. But she did win the Pulitzer, so that's saying something.
Damn. I forgot about Poe! "The Tell-Tale Heart" is one of my favorites, too. As is "A Cask of Amontillado" - wow, that one's creepy. Several of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories make my list as well, especially "The Adventure of the Speckled Band." Scared the daylights out of me when I was eight or so! And "The Musgrave Ritual", "The Adventure of the Second Stain," and others.
I'm not sure if this is even a short story or not but has anyone read The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen? And do you recommend it?
I'm reading a collection of Guy de Maupassant short stories. He's ironically cruel towards his characters, and it's a fun read. I'd recommend "Rust". Also, a Hemingway short story, "The Mother of a Queen", in which he defines, in his own way, what a 'Queen' is. I found it memorably entertaining.
"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" by James Thurber. "The Devil and Daniel Webster" by Steven Vincent Benet I like short stories that either have good wit to them, or something I can relate to.
Call of Cthulhu, Tell-Tale Heart, A Cask of Amontillado, Leiningen Versus the Ants and The Speckled Band have already been covered, and I would like to add (though I am probably forgetting a few) : Poe: the Pit and the Pendulum, the Black Cat Doyle: The Yellow Face, Five Orange Pips, the Blue Carbuncle, Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness, Cool Air, Pickman's Model, The Statement of Randolph Carter Other: the Most Dangerous Game, There Will Come Soft Rains, Hellbound Heart, the Monkey's Paw, the Lady or the Tiger
