What are the best short stories? I'm looking for something a bit on the darker, heavier, intellectual side of things. I've had my eye on Kafka's short stories, idk if it's worth it.
kafka's good. try the illustrated man by bradbury too. if you're snooty about genre you could read nabokov's shorts which tend to be dark too
A Perfect Day For Bananafish - J. D Salinger
Good Old Neon - David Foster Wallace
Signs and Symbols - Vladimir Nabokov
Boule De Suif - Guy De Maupassant
A Report To An Academy - Franz Kafka
On Exactitude in Science - Jorge Luis Borges
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius - Jorge Luis Borges
Love of a Good Woman - Alice Munro
Flowers - Alice Walker
A Temporary Matter - Jhumpa Lahiri
>>8250089
Any of these in book collections worth buying?
>>8250094
Those are specific stories, but
Salinger is worth it
Kafka is worth it
Borges is worth it (It is all good, however he reuses the same couple of stories over and over so it may be better to read what are considered his best and come back to the rest only now and then over the course of a year. I read the whole thing in a few days and it was disappointing by the end, not because the last stories are bad, but because they are not new)
>>8250094
>Signs and Symbols - Vladimir Nabokov
Not him, but this is in a collection called Cloud Castle Lake, and the title story is much darker and kafkaesque. Usually sells pretty cheap too, and I'd recommend getting it
>>8250053
How could it not be 'worth it'? You could read all of them in like 2 days
>>8250126
I buy books, I don't read on my tablet unless I'm out of town.
>>8250053
The Death of Ivan Illyich
The Dead
The Snows of Killimanjaro
Bradbury has a lot of good dark stories
Tommasso Landolfi - Gogols Wife and other stories
Picked this up today and the praise on the back cover describes him as the Italian Kafka and says his stories are comparable to those of Borges. Judging by how this thread is going I figured it would be a good fit.
>>8250135
>The Death of Ivan Illyich
>short story
>>8251650
>>smugger than thou
>>still fucking wrong
>>8250053
Any story by Poe
Good Country People; Revelation; A Good Man is Hard to Find - O'Connor (really anything by her)
A.V. Laider - Beerbohm
Lost Phoebe - Dreiser
Silent Snow, Secret Snow - Aiken
How Beautiful with Shoes - Steele
Ugliest Pilgrim - Bettes
Bartleby the Scrivener - Melville
The Lottery - Jackson
The Man Who Shot Snapping Turtles - Wilson
Hawthorne, Wharton, and Thurber write magnificent short stories, but I don't know that's what you're looking for. John Collier's stories are also both dark and clever.
Richard Wright's Big Boy Leaves Home is also tremendous, but not necessarily what you're looking for either.
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream written by Harlan Ellison.
Very short and very dark. I read it on a train ride to vienna.
Liars in Love and Eleven Kinds of Loneliness.
The Aurelian by Nabokov fits the bill
>>8250053
Gelee Royale by Roald Dahl
>>8250053
A lot of Kafka's shorts are really really short, so if by worth it you mean worth the time it'll take to read them, then yeah, it's worth it. His complete stories collection is about as long as an average novel.
Raymond Carver is one of the greatest short story writers IMO. People might argue he isn't "intellectual" because wrote in a short, terse, no bullshit style, but there is a lot going on in there. "Tell the Women We're Going" comes to mind as one of his darkest.
>>8250053
The Pedersen Kid by Billiam Gass.
Related question. Any short story collection written by an american that is not 'slice of life' style? Something dark, weird, twisted, not just silly broken marriage stories.
>>8252954
I'm thinking of something like this, any more collections like this one?
>>8252954
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
The Library of Babel by Borges is probably my favorite. What a mind fuck.
>>8252954
also Rust and Bone by Craig Davidson
>>8252999
>American
Great stories though.
