What are the best short story collections? Who are the best short story writers?
>>7314516
Borges
Kafka
Salinger is way better than people give him credit
Fitzgerald was great at short stories too
>>7314516
Pic unrelated OP?
>>7314526
Pic very related.
>>7314536
>Haha I am a psychopathic ephebophile now listen as I lie about some fish!
Dubliners
>>7314525
>best short story collections
>Borges
this meme needs to die
>>7314516
William Saroyan is a short story god.
this thread is just as vague as asking people to post their favorite novels. The ones that come to mind immediately are Cathedrals, No Sweetness Here, The Little Disturbances of Man, Cosmicomiche, and of course Dubliners
>>7314858
?? I am monitoring this thread, actually. i enjoy short stories, and never know which collections to read.
>>7314858
There's totally nothing wrong with this thread, just like there's nothing wrong with asking people what their favorite novel is. OP, I would check out Self Help by Lorrie Moore, shes one of the best American Short Story writers imo.
Cheever is so great.
>>7314516
Definitely Nine Stories. One of the best. Find "Ocean Full of Bowling Balls" if you can. It's by Salinger and as good as the stories in that collection.
Dubliners is great, but some stories aren't amazing. Definitely read "The Dead."
William Saroyan - Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze - Especially "Seventy Thousand Assyrians" and the title story. (the first two of the book I believe)
Wendell Berry - That Distant Land - This is probably Berry's best work. Some of the best stories I've come across. All take place in a fictitious Kentucky town, Port William.
Flannery O'Connor's complete short stories, specifically "A Good Man Is Hard to Find."
My favorite collection of short stories is Breece D'J Pancake's collection. He only has one book because he killed himself at age 26. He would've been one of the U.S.'s best writers. He's from West Virginia.
Of course there are the short stories of Carver, Hemingway, Chekhov, Twain, Poe, Kafka, Tolstoy, Fitzgerald, and so many others.
>>7314946
Specifically I would recommend "How to become a writer" Here's a link:
www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/20/specials/moore-writer.html
Faulkner collections
Sherwood Anderson - "Winesburg, Ohio" and "The Egg & other stories".
You probably all got him shoved down your throats in school, but the story "the egg" is perhaps the best short story i've ever read.
>>7314950
Agreed. "The Chaste Clarissa" and "Torch Song" are all-time favorites.
Donald Barthelme
>>7314946
Nothing wrong with either, it's just not discussion. Agreed on Lorrie Moore, though most start with Birds of America
Julio Cortázar
>>7314640
>disregarding the other EIGHT stories
Probably bait, but whatever.
>>7314525
What's a good Fitzgerald story? I have a few collections but read Benjamin Button, Cut Glass Bowl and The Four Fists - all were complete trash. What story should I read that would change my opinion?
Salinger and Kafka are boss too. Haven't read any Borges yet.
>>7314966
Good list. Breece D'J Pancake is so good, I'm trying to post his name on this board as often as I can.
My Favourite collections are probably
Nine Stores - Salinger
Bliss - Katherine Mansfield
Dance of the Happy Shades - Alice Munro
East, West - Salman Rushdie
Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson
The Prussian Officer - DH Lawrence
![91pdVbX7zLL[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/GdIR16m.jpg "91pdVbX7zLL[1].jpg")
This book still hasn't become a /lit/ staple so I'll keep posting it.
who else has read this? i think it's excellent.
>>7316181
me. its good, like all delillo.
>>7314809
u need to die T B H, F A M.
Bruno Schulz is the best and his collection is the best!
>>7314966
What did you like about O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to FInd"?
Shirley Jackson's collections are usually good. Get the one with the lady holding the purse on the cover.
Garcia Marquez has a really good one called Eyes of a Blue Dog. dark and somber stories.
H. Murakami has some easy and entertaining stuff too.
George Saunders is the best writer of short fiction alive today. Tenth of December is probably his best.
Other criminally underrated short story writers: Lorrie Moore, Aimee Bender, Charles Yu, Ben Marcus.
Can't go wrong with DFW or Borges though
>>7315031
I have never heard anyone here on /lit/ talk about The Egg, but I agree 100% with you. Such a fucking amazing story.
>>7316989
It goes well with I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility.
the garden party is great stuff
I liked Wolfe, Bocaccio and Chekhov the most. I also found Poe to be quite interesting
>>7314516
Seriously? Is no-one going to mention W. Somerset Maugham?
Plebs...nothing but plebs....
I recently read The Martian Chronicles and really enjoyed them.
Bradbury was inspired by Winesburg, Ohio, actually.
UKL wrote a collection of short stories inspired by Winesburg, Ohio, too, but can't think of the name right now.
>>7314516
People who don't like Bannafish are most often those who have gotten sick of the New Yorker type story. What they don't realize is that Bannafish pretty much inspired that form.
How the fuck has no one mentioned Mark Twain.
>father of all modern american literature
>last great humour writer
His short stories are the only pieces of writing that have actually made me laugh out loud instead of just grinning.
>>7317458
Is there a definitive collection of Twain's short stories?
>>7317483
I have 'the complete short stories' by Everyman's Library
>>7314516 (OP)
Mary Gaitskill is great.
Tobias Wolff, Harold Brodkey, Robert Coover, Denis Johnson.
Lydia Davies
>>7318572
*davis
>>7314966
A Good Man is kind of rudimentary and uninteresting. The sort of story that works great in a class room, but doesn't end up being terribly compelling if you read it on your own will in bed one night and don't have to go talk about it in class the next morning.
Good post, but I don't know why you picked that one out of her many far better, but less popular stories. Very misleading.
SHOUTOUTS
>>7315313
>>7314966
>>7316987
>>7314950
My list, off the cuff and in no particular order:
Raymond Carver
John Cheever
Donald Barthelme
Raymond Carver
Breece D'J Pancake
Annie Proulx
George Saunders
George Saunders
Raymond Carver
Tobias Wolff
Sherman Alexie
David Foster Wallace
Flannery O'Connor
Karen Russell
Raymond Carver
George Saunders
Ernest Hemingway
>>7314809
Fuck off.
>>7314809
>using the phrase ephebophile unironically
Yikes mate you got some stuff on your computer you don't want the government to see?
I dig on:
Barry Hannah
Andre Dubus
Hemmingway
Munro
Pancake
Salinger has some gems
Lorrie Moore has some gems
Sounds like I gotta check out Saunders again. Tried him very early on in my illustrious reading career and quickly put it down.
Come jump on the decameron's dick
>>7314516
the martian chronicles by ray bradbury was surprisingly simple and brilliant. just throwing out a recommendation that might not have been said yet. (amongst his other SS collections)
>>7314966
where doth one find the ocean full of bowling balls, old friend?
>>7320544
http://www.alwayssometimesanytime.com/always/2013/11/read-three-unpublished-short-stories-by-jd-salinger
>>7320548
thanks m7
Du Maurier is very good.
Lesbians=Best prose stylists.
>>7314516
The King in Yellow
Richard Yates
How am i supposed to take anyway called DJ Pancake seriously?
saki
>>7314516
What happened at the end of Teddy?
>>7322159
He kills Beebop
Twice-Told Tales
Mosses from the Old Manse
>>7314516
There hasn't been a single mention of Gogol yet. Disgraceful /lit/.
The Petersburg Tales are among the greatest short stories of all time.
Borges takes the cake for intellectual stimulation though.
>>7319717
Check out the good taste on this one.
katherine mannsfield
Frank Kafka is good if you like creepy stories
>>7323661
a girl asked me to read some of his others, and having read like 7 at this point, I agree.
>>7322159
teddi is kill
Zweig
Walser
Akutagawa
Gombrowicz
Henry James
Lawrence
Pavese
Pirandello
Kleist
>>7322246
Was reading this thread and thinking exactly the same. A Short Story thread without a mention of Gogol is not a thread worthy of its intentions
>>7316987
You like (like, then maybe?) George [Saunders] (maybe, I thought at first, he could, possibly be, but I didn't think of, as gay*---- Who knows!) is "the best writer of short fiction alive" ... today?
You strange bird, you strange strange bird He thought --- No, she couldn't have possibly interrupted himself again, or maybe he could have? He (who? him?) only knows... Said the [one]...
His story about Lars Farf was genuinely funny, but I can't help but suspect that the reason he gets more attention than any of the other good writers is that he shamelessly slathers his pages in his own compulsions a-a-a-and-d-dd-d tics. It's not interesting, it's repetitive and dull. The only story that had substance in [Tenth] of December (? {maybe} ) was "Sticks", and it also happens to be the shortest and least bombarded by convoluted subject-predicate-(Oh my! Which [one]?)hissy-fits.
>Cortázar
With Borge's permisson, the most talented short-story write in Spanish that I have encountered.
Carta a una señorita en París, Autopista sur, un lugar llamado Kindberg... Bestiario is a good collection to start I think. It kinda pisses me off that many people here decide to read Rayuela instead of his shorter works, because he really shines at those.
>Chekhov
The student, the kiss.
>Borges
His prose is sometimes too cerebral for my liking, but the man was an absolute genius.
The lottery of Babel and the Library are the ones that stuck the most with me
>O'Henry
The dream, Magi's gift
>Joyce
Dubliners, nuff said.
If you like flash fiction, I urge you to check out this book. It's a collection of the best short-short stories (most of them not even a page long) of all literary traditions accross the globe. You will find fables, folk tales, parables and legends from China, India, America, the Arab world...
The collection was personally curated and edited by Borges and Bioy Casares, and also includes texts from Kafka, O'henry, Baroja and a long etc.
>>7323969
Also, why is it that whenever someone mentions Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" is the only story mentioned of her short stories? Was it required reading in a large number of high schools? There are what, 32 stories in The Complete Stories, and everyone only read one of them? "The Train" left a vivid impression on me, as well as "The Barber", to the point where I have re-read "The Barber" several times because I enjoyed it so much. I read "A Good Man Is Hard To Find", as well and other than the turn, the story didn't move me all that much. I understand why it could be seen as shocking to some, but the build up felt disingenuous, like she just wanted to surprise the reader but didn't have a compelling reason to.
Does anyone else share my experience? Are my words falling on deaf ears? I would like to know.
