Over at Emerging Writers Network, Dan’s been hyping up Short Story Month, and a lot of others are getting in on the action.
Marcel Jolley mentioned mix tapes over there. So I submitted a mix tape for Dan, themed along Fantastic Fiction. Love the concept of mix tapes. Did a bunch on this blog way back (including my SEX mix tape!). If I could rename this blog, I’d call myself Book DJ. Or Story DJ.
Below is another mix tape. I don’t want to call these the best short stories, but these are certainly some of my favorites. Classic favorites, really. I’m thinking about making another list of more recent short story favorites, maybe a Modern Collection of my favorites in the last twenty years.
I tried to avoid being too much like Norton or a syllabus. I tried to choose stories that stuck with me over the years, and also ones that I enjoyed upon multiple re-readings.
While my picks have a lot of chalk in terms of authors, the particular stories might not be what you’d first guess. O’Connor too often gets nailed with “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” and Faulkner gets “Barn Burning.” Kafka always gets stuck with “The Metamorphosis.” The other obvious choice for Carver is “Cathedral,” which is also wonderful and mysterious, but “A Good, Small Thing” crucifies my heart every time, and I love that the story stayed with him so long he had to revise it and add so much more.
All-Time Short Story List:
- “Parker’s Back” Flannery O’Connor
- “The Laughing Man” J.D. Salinger
- “In the Penal Colony” Franz Kafka
- “A Good, Small Thing” Raymond Carver
- “Black Pantaloons” William Faulkner
- “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” Ernest Hemingway
- “The Dead” James Joyce
- “The Garden of Forking Paths” Jorge Luis Borges
But wait! This is not just a randomly collected All-Time Short Story List! There is a secret theme linking all these stories together! Bonus points to anyone who can identify it! Bonus points also to anyone who wants to wildly and roundly criticize some of my suggestions and offer their far superior choices!
Hint: 6 explicitly follow the theme. 2 metaphorically follow the theme.
6 comments
Tattoos?
Oooo, good guess. That encompasses the first three stories, I believe — Tattoos are central to Parker’s Back and Penal Colony, and wasn’t there a tattoo on one of the characters in The Laughing Man?
But not the rest of the stories.
Perhaps I just put those three tattoo stories first to throw you off the scent.
I love A Good, Small Thing. It’s one of my favourite short stories and it marks Carver as a master.
I give up. What’s the link?
Okay, okay. It’s death. Someone’s killed in every story except for Parker’s Back and The Dead.
The Dead, though, pretty well fits with the theme by title alone, and I thought an enormous tattoo of a dead guy on Parker’s back also made that story fit.
So what does my selection say about me? Don’t think about that.
Great selection of short stories and you’ve provided a wealth of links. I’d like to provide a link to this page on my website https://www.best-short-stories.com