What are your favourite authors of short stories? Favourite stories?
What do you like/dislike about short story writing as a form?
Are their any authors known for their novels who have underrated short fiction?
Short fiction General
Angel Hughes
Michael Mitchell
Alice Munro for me is head and shoulders above anyone else. Her stories are very introspective and deal with daily life though, and they sort of taper off the way events do in real life, without big conclusions or dramatic events. Hell, even when dramatic events happen as they do in some, it is broken down and described with such matter of fact detail that it is still not sensational the way another author would present it. This is something you either appreciate/get or don't. But her psychological insight is, to me, absolutely unrivaled. My favorite story of hers is probably the Love of a Good Woman.
Chekhov has some amazing ones, obviously, but also some I didn't care for. I appreciate his more lifelike stories like the Lady with the Lapdog and the Kiss over his more absurdist/trippy ones. He is a great, understated stilist and evokes an emotional and physical world with very few pages.
I prefer Hemingway's stories over his novels, Hills like White Elephants and the one about the bull fighting to me hit the core of what he tries for in his work as well as any prose of his.
Really enjoyed Arlene Heyman's Scary Old Sex. Warm-blooded, cinematic stories about personal relationships (romantic and familial, in most stories mixed) and growing older. I loved the story about Marilyn and her geriatric mother, I forgot the title, both touching and very funny. You can tell she relishes in describing the old woman's quirks and obnoxiousness.
Family Dancing from David Leavitt is a fine collection. I love the first one the most, again don't remember the title, but it's about a young man bringing his first (male) partner home to meet his mother, but really it is more about the awkwardness of establishing yourself as a (sexual) adult to your parents and finding your place in life, coming to terms with your childhood having ended.
Some say Truman Capote did his best work in short stories, honestly I never read one of his novels so I can't compare but his short stories did not impress me much.
I loved Florida by Lauren Groff, she can definitely go a little overboard here and there but her prose is very lush and fresh in a way, with sensual descriptions and a feeling of nearing dread. At times her writing evokes associations of fantasy or mythology, it is very colorful.
Roald Dahl's short stories are also amazing, very sharp and unforgiving/bleak about people's flaws and less admirable inclinations. Very very funny too. Many of his stories deal with older couples whose love (if ever present) turned to resentment and cold hate over time.
I love short stories, as you can tell, I love the energy of stepping into a new setting again and again. I also don't really care for drawn out storylines that are worked out in perfect detail. I read novels for the use of language, the atmosphere, how accurately they can portray people/a culture/a time, and you can do all of that within a short story just fine.
Jason Myers
Based short story lover
Noah Turner
Very educated and informed. Thanks for posting.
Blake Adams
civilwarland in bad decline by george saunders is exceptional
Gabriel Edwards
Danke
Caleb Edwards
Nabokov, Ligotti, Faulkner, Barthelme, Ballard and many others.
Jeremiah Lewis
Brokeback Mountain is a remarkable achievement.
Jason Scott
Flannery O'Connor legit changed my life. Good Country People is one of the best portrayals of the elitist city dwelling academics that I have ever read or seen.
Another one is A Good Man Is Hard To Find that portrays the hypocrisy of southern evangelicals to a point that is still accurate today.
However, my favorite one is The Enduring Chill, which made me think of all you dumb motherfuckers on Yea Forums that believe that catholicism places you above the redneck evangelicals only because many of the greatest writers were catholics or their literature was influenced by catholicism, when in reality, you lack faith and are not even able to grasp the tedious aspects of the religion such as going to mass.
Overall, reading this woman's short stories changed my life as they helped me get out of a fedora phase and find the presence of god in different aspctes of my daily life.
Alexander Collins
how can someone be rough-mannered and stoic at the same time?
Jackson King
>presence of god in different aspctes of my daily life.
bjorn again christian....just kys
Adrian Rivera
I'm not what you think I am. I just happen to be in touch with the spiritual side of my life, and be grateful of the blessings my creator has put in my path.
Ayden Morgan
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons" is a great one.
Jaxon Jones
I’ve read the first two stories in the Munro collection and both were just so upsetting I’m gonna need a bit before I come back to it. Both had just such a profound underlying sadness.
Oliver Richardson
Munro is trash general.
Hunter Smith
Though I’m not a huge fan of all his novels, TC Boyle’s short stories, particularly his collections “stories” and “if the river was whisky” have always been some of my favorite short story collections
Logan Hughes
>Some say Truman Capote did his best work in short stories, honestly I never read one of his novels so I can't compare but his short stories did not impress me much.
Miss Bobbit was great. And his novels are good, specifically Breakfast and Blood. Munro sounds boring tbqh
Liam Robinson
Alice Munro seems very reminiscent of Tolstoy/Chekhov
Chekhov is amazing but he produced hundreds of short stories so it’s no surprise that not all are good. I find him and Guy de Maupassant the masters of short, emotional realism. My two favorite short story writers I think.
Nathaniel Foster
What's so special about Chekhov for you guys? He always leaves me feeling a vague sort of melancholy, but does nothing more. Borges on the other hands makes me think for days.
Also, Breece D'J Pancake is my favorite. Even though he wrote only a handful.
Josiah Reed
I like some of Mark Twain's short stories more than The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
William Watson
PKD has some great shit.
biblioklept.org
Easton Lewis
Some others not yet mentioned.
Henry James and Edith Wharton are always overlooked. Wharton's short stories are - to me and with the exception of Age of Innocence - uniformly better than her novels. James is just forced to hold to pacing in short stories - which is ideal if you enjoy his style and depth but find he drags on.
Robert Louis Stevenson never comes up as a short story writer. His New Arabian Nights are proto Holmes and proto Chesteron. They're fun and far more influential than anyone remembers now.
G.K. Chesterton, especially The Club of Queer Trades. He is just charming.
Guy de Maupassant is the absolute master. Don't just read selections of the most famous - you won't get anything like the full range he hits.
Marcel Schwob is forgotten by all but hardcore Borges fans but his Vies Imaginaires - I think there's a new Imaginary Lives translation in English - is unforgettable. They are short biographical sketches of mostly real, sometimes imaginary people but all based on imaginative efforts to get to the root of them. The preface alone is perfect.
Saki. If you have a soul, any refinement of learning, and any sense of humor you will love Saki.
Ryunosuke Akutagawa. He basically took the western short story of the James/Wharton/Maupassant style and did it in Japan
William Evans
Chekhov has a clear, unencumbered style, he has an eye for detail like Tolstoy, and he express deep psychology and emotions through subtlety.
I love Borges too but he is mainly a writer of ideas and spectacles, not of characters. Chekhov’s characters feel like real people I could meet on the street.
“The Kiss” is one entry level story that I think captures two of Chekhov’s strengths, the rich interior life of his characters, the realism of their inner monologues and thoughts, and his adept ability at picking out very specific details of a scene that give me a beautiful mental image or overall tone to a story.
Elijah Ward
Schulz, obviously. Nescio. Also like Tournier.
Jacob Lopez
Carver was probably the greatest American short-story writer of the 20th century.
Carter Parker
Those stories are so good it got me to read Wise Blood last year.
Boyle’s short stories got me back into reading again. The Descent Of Man is the funniest short story I’ve ever read. The one about being in giant condomd as lovers, then the one about the shooter at the abortion clinic were all genius.
Kayden Robinson
Ahhhh. *This* is why I keep coming back here. What a great post user, thank you.
I have the Roald Dahl omnibus, love the shirt stories so much. The one where the guy turned his wife I to a bee or some shit was great.
I think I'll order the Alice Munro in OP based on your rec. Curiously, Norm MacDonald said that she and Cormac mcCarthy are his favorite authors.
Gabriel Moore
Norm is actually the based god not lil B, although he gets honorable mention. He’s much smarter than he portrays himself, which is a smart thing to do.
Jacob Fisher
>What is your favorite author of short stories?
O.Henry
Jonathan Lopez
Yep, she's really depressing but totally bereft of sentimentality, which is exactly what other authors' stories suffer from. And her stories are so large I feel so exhausted, as if I lived a entire life, so I can't read any more than one of her stories in a day.
Jacob Bell
This.
Oliver Sullivan
Juan Rulfo - The plain in flames
Stanislaw Lem - Cyberiad, Pirx, all Ijon Tichy books etc.
Julio Cortazar - Blow-up and other stories
Nikolai Gogol - The overcoat, the nose etc.
Oliver Campbell
W. Somerset Maugham
The man could write a six page short story that would make you re-think your entire life. He was a master but for some reason he's not Yea Forums fodder, maybe not enough of a meme or something
James Edwards
What short story collection of Alice Munro should one start with?
Jose Sanders
Thanks, user. I ordered some anthologies of short stories to get more of them under my belt.
I'm more partial to American fiction myself, so I got the granta American anthologies, and also the Oxford book of short stories. Hope to keep reading more about what you like about short fiction.
Juan Nguyen
Just get these two. They're drawn from each of collections.
Camden Nelson
The Best American Short Stories is a great series, I highly recommend. Pic related, I own most of them after '84.
Owen Ross
That's really cool. I remember getting the best American Essays 1988 edition because it had a foreword by Annie Dillard. I didn't know there was also a fiction series. Thanks for the tip.
Charles Sullivan
Clive Barker, Harlan Ellison, Joe R. Lansdale
John Price
Quality post.
I never rated Canadian lit very highly when studying it before I read Munro. She is truly on another level from the rest of us.
I'm going to add Turgenev to the list because he hasn't been mentioned yet. For my money no one writes as naturally as he does, reading him is like breathing.
Logan Bailey
this guy can be trusted
btw does anyone know the short stories in pic related? worth downloading a pdf?
Adam Brown
S A K I:
“None of my children have been brought up to play card games,” said Mrs. Eggelby; “draughts and halma and those sorts of games I encourage. Eric is considered quite a wonderful draughts-player.”
“You are strewing dreadful risks in the path of your family,” said Clovis; “a friend of mine who is a prison chaplain told me that among the worst criminal cases that have come under his notice, men condemned to death or to long periods of penal servitude, there was not a single bridge-player. On the other hand, he knew at least two expert draughts-players among them.”
“I really don’t see what my boys have got to do with the criminal classes,” said Mrs. Eggelby resentfully. “They have been most carefully brought up, I can assure you that.”
“That shows that you were nervous as to how they would turn out,” said Clovis. “Now, my mother never bothered about bringing me up. She just saw to it that I got whacked at decent intervals and was taught the difference between right and wrong; there is some difference, you know, but I’ve forgotten what it is.”