I feel like short-stories are a very under-appreciated genre, with people often dismissing them as lacking enough complexity, depth, and substance. However, they’re amongst my favorite things to read, when done well, that is.
They allow me to read more works and explore more authors in a shorter period of time, and they’re the best content to read during commutes imo.
I’m curious as to what short stories have stuck with you, and why you think they’re that great
by inferache
6 Comments
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
I am not a fan of horror but was a fan of the writer Harlan Ellison (it’s complicated), but this is pure horror.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream?wprov=sfti1
Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve made cry by Christine Snead.
Where I’m Calling From by Raymond Carver.
There is some classic story about a challenge between Hemingway and Fitzgerald about who could write the best short story in six words. I’m not sure how the story goes exactly but I remember the end is that Hemingway won.
His six word story was “Baby shoes for sale. Never worn.”
A short story can be great and complex and make me sigh and weep and haunt me for years.
James Joyce’s The Dead was one. Raymond Carver has a couple for me “A Small, Good Thing.” But especially one where some people watch their neighbors apartment while they go on vacation. It’s called “Neighbors”. I first read it twenty years ago and the feelings that it captured so well, of trying to fill this missing piece that you don’t have, of trying to claim something of loneliness and fear and then losing it. Woooweee. Now I gotta go read it again.
Who is dismissing them? Some short stories are extremely well regarded.
Fwiw, my favorite is The Last Question by Asimov https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html
Oh gosh, most of Ted Chiang short stories. Some really golden ones in Exahaltion.
My absolute favourite is “–And the Moon be Still as Bright”, from Ray Bradbury’s *The Martian Chronicles*.
“Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” and “The Body”, both from Stephen King’s *Different Seasons*. More novella than short story, they’re still some of the best I’ve read, and a nice departure from his typical horror.
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s *Tales of the Jazz Age*. I had not yet seen the film when I read the story. Having seen the film since, I can say they were almost nothing alike whatsoever. Fitzgerald’s story was hilarious. The film was good, but super sad.
One of my favorite collections is *The Pacific and Other Stories* by Mark Helprin. All of the stories are good, because Helprin’s writing is gorgeous, but there are two that I still think about years later: “Monday”, which is about a contractor in NYC who is remodeling the apartment of a recent widow, and *A Brilliant Idea and His Own”, about a paratrooper stranded and wounded behind enemy lines during WW2. They’re great because they’re less than 30 pages, but they pack an emotional punch in a way you don’t often see in short stories.
Other collections I love are *The Bazaar of Bad Dreams* by Stephen King (because his short stories are often scarier than his novels); *Three Moments of an Explosion* by China Mieville (they’re bite-sized versions of his weirdness, and they’re all trippy); and *Her Body and Other Parties* by Carmen Maria Machado (creepy stories, excellent writing).