best short story author of all time?
His editor maybe
Nabokov or Flannery O'Connor
jorgeluisborges
Borge Luis Jorges
>>8149661
better than carver. HAH!
>>8149660
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/05/gordon-lish-books-interview-editing-raymond-carver
>>8149674
sick I wish I had a dope editor like that.
Kjell Askildsen is the best I've read so far. You guys should give him a try before he dies/gets the Noble prize.
The short story is literally a format for plebeians unless it's Dubliners or Go Down, Moses
>>8149707
nice bait mate
chekov
alice munro
Which patrician writers don't use editors then?
Kafka
>>8149714
>bait
Short stories are, 90% of the time, inconsequential bourgeois ditties done by hacks who can't write novels.
Lish confirmed a(((utism)))sperger
<but that quote is right
Edgar Allan Poe
>>8149760
>>8149760
Agreed, but at least 98% of novels are bourgeois or worse ditties done by hacks who shouldn't have written a novel.
Short stories are a good way to exercise at a quick rate of output the components for writing a longer work, or to develop ideas that may later take form as a novel... Plus, short stories are often easier to publish, and most people prefer that if you do a reading at a open mic or whatever venue, you read the entirety of a work, instead of an excerpt from a novel.
Jorge Luis Borges has the most immense and captivating short stories ever written, he uses every resource available to him as an author willing to subvert the reader without mercy. He refers to both books that exist and books that don't exist, even going so far as to quote these nonexistent books, quote nonexistent critics' opinions on these nonexistent books, and even place them among books with recognizable titles. He refers to people who don't exist outside of his story, but within settings weve seen and during times we can recall, interacting with familiar names, establishing magical realism that literally touches upon the fringe of true reality. His knowledge can only be described as encyclopedic and his most famous work that many consider a favorite, The Circular Ruins is five fucking pages. Five pages and he covers pagan religion, sacred ruins, psychological aspects of his characters, the geographical setting, and spirituality.
and on top of that he went blind and still wrote stories by dictating them.
everybody else is just fighting for second place because he reinvented the short story.
Flannery O'Connor, of course
>>8149707
Go Down, Moses is trash.
>>8149802
Sorry I didn't mean to blow my load just now, but you guys can probably figure out who gets my vote
>>8149815
Nah senpai good post you convinced me to pick up his work and take a good look at it
>>8149649
Carver is good, but nah.
>>8149732
The issue isn't that Carver had an editor, it's just that Lish does a lot more than just edit, he basically rewrote it for Carver. Just compare early drafts of his work to the Lish edits. Beginners and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is the best example.
If you look at the work of any of his other writers he edits, they are strikingly similar.
>>8149822
joee?
>>8149763
kek Aside from Carver, he mostly edits women, and they tend to be pretty and have the will,will,will to fuck him.
>>8149824
Alice Munro
>>8149830
angel was by favorite song of 1998. broken bones by love inc. a close second.
>>8149819
oh cool.
Check out Ficciones(notable works The Circular Ruins, The Library of Babel, Garden of Forking Paths). That's probably about 25 pages combined but they're potent pages.
I just read The Immortals today and it's a definite must-read as well.
>>8149849
>reading translations
>>8149656
>Nabokov
wat, his short stories suck
>>8149858
(trans. by N.T. di Giovanni) as close to the original spanglish as it gets, since Based Borges was working close with him.
>>8149921
I always wondered how the translator dealt with such obscure and esoteric words and phrases. neato.
Barthelme is up there and I'm disgusted he hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet.
Gogol, turgenev, pushkin are ace for russians.
>>8149802
This. No one comes close to Borges. I had the privilege of being able to read his works in Spanish and I just laugh when /lit/ is so caught up in anglo literature that they don't even realize the world that there is outside the English language. Borges had the greatest literary mind for short stories that ever existed, bar none.
>>8149654
This desu
His editor's notorious for taking the "omit needless words" approach too far
>>8149787
Well said.
>>8150076
+ Chekhov
>>8149649
dude alcohol lmao
>>8149688
But who was epub.
There's only "A Great Deserted Landscape"
>>8150381
Is that Anita Sarkisian ?
Harlan Ellison and Roald Dahl.
/lit what makes, in your opinion, a good story?
Vonnegut:
>>Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
>>Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
>>Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
>>Every sentence must do one of two things–reveal character or advance the action.
>>Start as close to the end as possible.
