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Best short story

One of my favourite short stories is called 'Oh Whistle and I'll Come To You My Lad", by M R James. His short story, which I think is called 'The Malice of Inanimate Objects", is great too, and "Canon Alberic's Scrapbook". In fact almost anything by MR James is pretty much brilliant. He is probably the most economic short story writer that I have evr read. No sentence is wasted. Most of his short stories take place over around a handful of pages.

I recently read Guts by Palahniuk. Very well written. Nice ending. It made me smile while I was eating my spaghetti bolognese.

I also highly recommend Toby Litt's short stories, even some of his novels. His short story The New Puritans is great. A nice twist. Litt is very sexy, violent and graphic.

A L Kennedy is another great short story writer. I really liked her story Mixing With the Folks Back Home. She is such a talented and gifted writer, who has already achieved many accolades. Its frightening to think that we almost lost her a couple of years ago, when she nearly committed suicide.
 
short story?

i don't know if this really counts as a short story technically, it's certainly a thin book. My nomination would have to be ernest hemmingways "the old man and the sea." especially if you can locate the illustrated edition with the wood block prints. Jean Giono's "the man who planted trees" is good also.

ksky
 
Regarding The old man and the sea: I LOVE Hemingway. He is one of my fav all time authors. He would be second only to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Having said this, I finally got around to reading The Old Man and The Sea last year and I was a little disappointed by it. YES, it's a wonderful story and very well written, but I don't think it's the best thing he has ever written. I don't think it's the best short story I have ever read either. Maybe all the hype about it being the worlds best short story built it up too high?

Regards
SillyWabbit
 
kskyhappy said:
i don't know if this really counts as a short story technically, it's certainly a thin book. My nomination would have to be ernest hemmingways "the old man and the sea." especially if you can locate the illustrated edition with the wood block prints.

ksky
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behind the cover of my "old man..." its written shorter than the shortest novel , longer than the longest short story so i dont think it was quite a short story :)

i liked it. it was soulstirring. thats the only hemmingway i have read so i cant compare. but didnt he get a noble prize , especially for that book?? now thats a good commendation :)
 
This is a hard one. I have lots of favorites and I know I'm forgetting some but I would have to say these for sure:

The Kiss - Anton Chekhov
The Distance of the Moon - Italo Calvino
The Chrysanthamums - John Steinbeck

Plus, I like lots of recent ones I've read by Alice Munro, Charles Baxter and Lorrie Moore.
 
distance of the moon?

is that from cosmicomics? the one about the moon cheese harvesters? that is a good one!

ksky
 
piedro said:
soulstirring
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excellent!
i love hemingway, but i could never finish "Old Man..." Anyway, i definitely recommend "The Anatomy of Desire" by John L'Heureux. It's less than 7 pages, but it's worthy of a quote from Piedro.
Please also try "Dinner Time" by Russell Edson, "A Very Short Story" by Ernest Hemingway, "Tent Worms" by Tennessee Williams....
i love short stories. ;)
 
Hemmingway lover here too, Snows of Kilamanjaro is therefore one of my recommendations.
Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy up there with it though.

Just as a side note, did you know that the origional manuscript for Old Man and the Sea was actually quite long I'm talking several hundreds of pages, and was edited down to that little story.
 
Woah! Tolstoy wrote a short story? No way! How? Sorry, I just finished War & Peace and am a little overloaded with Tolstoy at the moment.

Back to the topic at hand...

The Man Who Sold the Moon and then Requiem by Robert Heinlein. And if you read those two, in that order, you'd be a Heinlein convert.
 
Must mention Raymond Carver; he's written lots of wonderful short stories but "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is sublime.
 
LOVE Raymond Carver, especially his story "Cathedral."

Can't believe I didn't mention Donald Barthelme. He is odd, weird, and wonderful.
 
Ashlea - I love your pic. Waterhouse crystalball, right? I think your pic is not the original, tho. There was a skull and book on the table in the original that one of the earlier owners had painted over. I love Boreas, too. That's one of my favorites by him.

I read a short story once that struck me, but it was so long ago I can't recall the name. It was about a woman who had a strange bone shield structure, she was the product of a governmental military directive. She wasn't the main character, but the supporting one. She was in a college (post military service) and the story was about how her peers reacted to her (used or abused). It was really good. I should read it again
 
Jenem said:
Ashlea - I love your pic. Waterhouse crystalball, right? I think your pic is not the original, tho. There was a skull and book on the table in the original that one of the earlier owners had painted over. I love Boreas, too. That's one of my favorites by him.
Click to expand...

Actually this painting is named Destiny. Very similar to the Crystal Ball one, but the colors are quite different.
 
oh, right - yes, i've seen that one. it was the red dress that made me think it was crystal ball. and the round window
 
I think its called ollala by stevenson. Its about vampires but he writes it in a very tasteful, dark, and subtle way. Its great.
 
"Let's get together" by Isaac Asimov is a very funny tale of Cold War paranoia, but with robots and a twist, so that would be one of my favourites.
 
"Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin. It manages to express what musicians--particularly jazz musicians--feel about music and what they feel as they play better than anything else I've ever read. It's also a painful/wonderful story about two brothers coming to accept and understand each other.
 
Details - China Mieville, after reading this I found myself avoiding looking at carpets, walls and all kinds of other things. Really creeped me out.

Lull - Kelly Link, I do not understand this story at all, but I still loved it. Leaves one feeling woefully inadequate.

Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff - Peter Straub, truely terrifying.
 
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