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I would love to hear recommendations anyone might have. Generally I like literary stuff that manages to avoid being in the "bad Raymond Carver" subgroup. My favorite SS collection of all time is Michael Chabon's "A Model World."
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Aug 22, 2016 12:08
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I mean I know it's fairly obvious, but I'm reading a collection of Ernest Hemingway's short stories, which are all excellent. It includes all of In Our Time, a short story collection in and of itself with a unified sort of theme going that may be the best of the bunch. Another excellent collection is Death in Midsummer by Yukio Mishima. A very fascinating look at Japanese culture, the mindset of an extremely unique man, and how that mindset was shaped by the culture.
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Aug 22, 2016 18:58
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I just finished Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich. It was an absolutely amazing story, but it gives such an incredible and honest look at death that it is pretty uncomfortable in a lot of ways.
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Aug 22, 2016 20:01
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Everyone should read Cheever, Chekhov and George Saunders. Salinger, Updike and Vonnegut are all primarily novelists who also produced at least one collection of short stories. I really like Stephen Crane's short stories, as well. The Blue Hotel and In the Boat, in particular. Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' might as well be classified as a short story, as well. It's a great story that deserves its reputation. Company K by William March is one of my favorite collections of stories. It's a series of 113 vignettes of World War I written by a distinguished veteran of WWI. It's remarkable in that it is concise yet vivid and at times unsettling in its detachment. If you're primarily concerned with increasing your literary prestige, read Barthelme's everything. There's a story about a balloon. rest his guts fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Aug 22, 2016 |
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Aug 22, 2016 20:47
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rest his guts posted:
Jumping off this - Conrad is one of my favorite authors, and I've read quite a bit of his work. I recently read "Falk: A Reminiscence". If I could recommend that you read 5 particular pages out of the 50-60 that make it up, please do. What makes "Falk: A Reminiscence" interesting is that it was written very soon after "Heart of Darkness", soon enough to be brought up alongside it frequently in conversation. There is a story in "Falk: A Reminiscence" that matches the twisted and dark intensity of "Heart of Darkness". It's thrilling, unrelenting and hosed up. Sadly, this story is the aforementioned 5 pages. The rest is taken up by a boring framing story describing some weird pedestrian dispute among docked captains. Had Conrad written that one brilliant chunk as a full length story itself? I think it would be up there with "Heart of Darkness" or Nostromo as one of his absolute classics. As it is now? It's just a very interesting spark in the middle of a real chore of a read.
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Sep 1, 2016 20:32
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Nic Pizzolato (the writer and creator of True Detective) came out with a surprisingly good and literary collection of short stories called "Between Here and the Yellow Sea" back around 2010, before he went into TV writing. It's nowhere near as pulpy as you'd expect coming from the creator of a popular TV show and mostly focuses on short, character driven pieces. I particularly recommend the story "1987, The Races", which features a young boy spending the day at the horse races with his father (back in 1987, though this is one of those stories that probably could have been set any time in the last 100 years). The bulk of the story is concerned with the boys dawning realization that his Dad is a loser, based largely on the boy observing how his father interacts with the other adults (though the story isn't quite so on-the-nose about this). There isn't much plot here to get in the way of the characterizations, but the story leaves you with a strong sense of the darker side of growing up and how it changes the way you see the people around you. Also, while it's not a short story I'd give a shout out to his novel "Gavelston", which is set up like a pulp crime novel but veers into a very different direction after the first couple chapters and then seems to go out of its way to provide the reader with the kind of conclusion they were expecting. While she isn't quite my cup of tea, it's probably worth name dropping Alice Munroe. I struggle to get into her stories but drat if she isn't good at what she does. When it comes to tracing personal biographies, or linking character and place, or unpacking all the weird and petty cruelties of small town life, marriages, affairs, illnesses, etc. she's really at the top of her game. I admit I tend to find myself admiring her craft rather than really viscerally enjoying her writing but it'd be remiss not to mention her in a book dedicated to short stories. I thought her story "Five Points" was pretty good as far as an introduction might go and I'd recommend it to anyone curious about how dismal life as a Canadian can be. And while people are mentioning Hemmingway I'll just say that "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" may be over assigned in English classes but it's a classic for a reason, though if you find Hemmingway's persona obnoxious you may find the story quite irritating.
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Sep 5, 2016 01:12
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I've worked my way through a collection of short stories called A Flock of Swirling Crows, by Denji Kuroshima (Or Kuroshima Denji). He's wrote short stories and essays in the 1920's during a brief period of tolerance by the increasingly right wing and Fascistic government. Most of his stories are about life in the countryside during a period of transition or based on his time as a conscript in Siberia. His last and longest work Militarised Streets was written about an early incident between Japan and China and is about the brutalities inflicted upon the Chinese by Japanese and local warlord domination, and how war bludgeons even the population of the victors. He was close to the Communist Party for a time and most of his stories are really about exploitation and authority. Sadly he's very obscure and more popular in English because his works were suppressed by the Militarist government, and then denied a reprinting by the American occupation. Fortunately copies of his writings were sent to Japanese friends in Hawaii, and were later translated by the University press. I think he might be my new favourite Japanese author, if your interesting in stories about living life, or militarism or the 1920's period in the east you should give him a read.
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Sep 6, 2016 22:24
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 16:01 |
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Helsing posted:While she isn't quite my cup of tea, it's probably worth name dropping Alice Munroe. I struggle to get into her stories but drat if she isn't good at what she does. When it comes to tracing personal biographies, or linking character and place, or unpacking all the weird and petty cruelties of small town life, marriages, affairs, illnesses, etc. she's really at the top of her game. I admit I tend to find myself admiring her craft rather than really viscerally enjoying her writing but it'd be remiss not to mention her in a book dedicated to short stories. I thought her story "Five Points" was pretty good as far as an introduction might go and I'd recommend it to anyone curious about how dismal life as a Canadian can be.
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Sep 9, 2016 13:29
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