Short Stories

[keilj]

I realize I won't be staying much longer....

did you throw tantrums and stomp out of the room when you were a kid too??

[Drkshadow03]

I have been wondering ever since I got here (posting here) which isn't very long, why the same names keep coming up over and over and over again: Bronte, Conrad, Dickens, Hardy, etc., all the stanards of British novelists of the 1800's early 1900's. And the same for American lit: Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, etc. Over and over and over again like there are no other writers in the world before or after. Shakespeare, of course, also coming up over and over again, as if he is the only playwright. Almost no references to anything modern or contemporary, almost no references to writers whose work is not originally written in English. Finally, I think I am beginning to understand that it is about either posters being students, probably most university/college students, or people who have studied literature in high school or college and whose knowledge of literature is based in what they've been taught in classrooms: the standard classics, the famous ones.

Well, I don't know...but for me, though I love and amire and appreciate the classics, I also love and appreciate and admire many, many modern and comtemporary writers. As well, I don't want to just talk about what is best or whatever, it is interesting to just discuss what is interesting and why. That doesn't happen here.

I realize I won't be staying much longer....

You know, I actually read a few of those short stories (the Proulx, the Roth, Tim O'Brien) you listed originally in those pedestrian classrooms. So I think you're making a lot of questionable assumptions there.

Classics will always be talked about more because a wider audience is more familiar with them, for whatever reasons. Modern/contemporary writers might be talented, but they haven't earned their place in history. So they might be worthwhile talking about precisely for that reason, but they also aren't going to be as well known to the larger population here because of they're contemporary.

I guess I'm wondering what exactly you expected and want to see more of on Lit Net? Why don't you start some of those conversations?

[Modest Proposal]

You know, I actually read a few of those short stories (the Proulx, the Roth, Tim O'Brien) you listed originally in those pedestrian classrooms. So I think you're making a lot of questionable assumptions there.

Classics will always be talked about more because a wider audience is more familiar with them, for whatever reasons. Modern/contemporary writers might be talented, but they haven't earned their place in history. So they might be worthwhile talking about precisely for that reason, but they also aren't going to be as well known to the larger population here because of they're contemporary.

I guess I'm wondering what exactly you expected and want to see more of on Lit Net? Why don't you start some of those conversations?

Your points and final suggestion are pretty much what I have said, but Myrna doesn't really seem interested.

I guess it's easier just to say we are all either uneducated or unthinking then it is to actually advocate what he/she thinks.

[blp]

I used to have a great book of Alberto Moravia's short stories, but sadly lost it. Have never found a replacement. Let's see now... No. Still nothing. Oh Amazon.

[blp]

Zelig By Benjamin Rosenblatt

Was this the source for Woody Allen's film? Just checked wikipedia, but there's no mention of the story, only an entry on the film.

[myrna22]

did you throw tantrums and stomp out of the room when you were a kid too??

I am not throwing a tantrum or stomping out of anywhere. That you would respond like that only indicates your limited intellectual ability. I won't stay around because there is nothng worth talking about here. I do not wish to discuss the same authors over and over again ad infinitum, that is what I mean by I won't stay around much longer. There isn't any point. If you feel threatened or insulted by the fact I don't find this place interesting, that is your problem; there is no need to try to insult me with childish remarks.

[myrna22]

Modern/contemporary writers might be talented, but they haven't earned their place in history.

Good writing has absolutely nothing to do with earning a place in history. Let me try an analogy: many people who want to travel want to see Europe, see the great European capitals, the history, art, architecture. That's great. I do that myself. But there is a huge world beyond Europe, also extremely interesting, full of culture, history, etc. I do both, travel to both. I don't dismiss the value of what Europe has to offer, but I also don't dismiss the value of what other places have to offer either, even though they are not 'on the beaten track,' so to speak. Those who are only interested in visiting the well known, well traveled places are missing a lot. It's the same with literature.

[Illini88228]

Who would have thought that my little short story thread was going to turn into such a knock-down drag-out.

I think the important thing to remember is that these are just entertainments. Yes, some of them strive for more than that and some even achieve more than that, but it is never worth alienating friends, or even potential friends, over matters that are essentially subjective evaluations.

Read what you love, what inspires you, or just makes you glad you spent a little of your life with that particular book.

Here's to reading--a passion we can all indulge.

[Drkshadow03]

Good writing has absolutely nothing to do with earning a place in history. Let me try an analogy: many people who want to travel want to see Europe, see the great European capitals, the history, art, architecture. That's great. I do that myself. But there is a huge world beyond Europe, also extremely interesting, full of culture, history, etc. I do both, travel to both. I don't dismiss the value of what Europe has to offer, but I also don't dismiss the value of what other places have to offer either, even though they are not 'on the beaten track,' so to speak. Those who are only interested in visiting the well known, well traveled places are missing a lot. It's the same with literature.

It may be that I'm dense, but I'm not sure I understand what you mean that good writing has nothing to do with being a part of literary history. Are you recommending authors you consider bad writers?

I also seem to be struggling to follow your analogy. Probably my own stupidity; I really can be a dense fellow sometimes. Your analogy implies we should visit Asia, Africa, South America, and all those other wonderful countries, in addition to Europe, but your recommendations pretty much consist of all white guys and women (with the exception of like one Asian writer and a group of Jews). Not to mention your list consists of fairly accepted contemporary writers and Canonical figures (Anderson, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Cather, Faulkner, Parker, Warren, Wright, Welty, Nabokov, Williams, Cheever, O'Connor, Oates, Singer, Proulx, Beatty, etc.).

Zelig By Benjamin Rosenblatt

Little Selves By Mary Lerner

A Jury of Her Peers By Susan Glaspell

The Other Woman By Sherwood Anderson

The Golden Honeymoon By Ring Lardner

Blood-Burning Moon By Jean Toomer

The Killers By Ernest Hemingway

Double Birthday By Willa Cather

Wild Plums By Grace Stone Coates

Theft By Katherine Anne Porter

That Evening Sun Go Down By William Faulkner

Here We Are By Dorothy Parker

Crazy Sunday By F. Scott Fitzgerald

My Dead Brother Comes to America By Alexander Godin

Resurrection of a Life By William Saroyan

Christmas Gift By Robert Penn Warren

Bright and Morning Star By Richard Wright

The Hitch-Hikers By Eudora Welty

The Peach Stone By Paul Horgan

"That in Aleppo Once ..." By Vladimir Nabokov

The Interior Castle By Jean Stafford

Miami - New York By Martha Gellhorn

The Second Tree from the Corner By E. B. White

The Farmer's Children By Elizabeth Bishop

Death of a Favorite By J. F. Powers

The Resemblance Between a Violin Case and a Coffin By Tennessee Williams

The Country Husband By John Cheever

Greenleaf By Flannery O'Connor

The Ledge By Lawrence Sargent Hall

Defender of the Faith By Philip Roth

Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers By Stanley Elkin

The German Refugee By Bernard Malamud

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? By Joyce Carol Oates

The Rotifer By Mary Ladd Gavell

Gold Coast By James Alan McPherson

The Key By Isaac Bashevis Singer

A City of Churches By Donald Barthelme

How to Win By Rosellen Brown

Roses, Rhododendron By Alice Adams

Verona: A Young Woman Speaks By Harold Brodkey

A Silver Dish By Saul Bellow

Gesturing By John Updike

The Shawl By Cynthia Ozick

Where I'm Calling From By Raymond Carver

Janus By Ann Beattie

The Way We Live Now By Susan Sontag

The Things They Carried By Tim O'Brien

Meneseteung By Alice Munro

You're Ugly, Too By Lorrie Moore

I Want to Live! By Thom Jones

In the Gloaming By Alice Elliott Dark

Proper Library By Carolyn Ferrell

Birthmates By Gish Jen

Soon By Pam Durban

The Half-Skinned Steer By Annie Proulx

So since most of your list consists of well-known modern and contemporary authors, I guess I'm still wondering who all these clandestine unknown writers are that we're missing . . .

[myrna22]

It may be that I'm dense, but I'm not sure I understand what you mean that good writing has nothing to do with being a part of literary history. Are you recommending authors you consider bad writers?

I also seem to be struggling to follow your analogy. Probably my own stupidity; I really can be a dense fellow sometimes. Your analogy implies we should visit Asia, Africa, South America, and all those other wonderful countries, in addition to Europe, but your recommendations pretty much consist of all white guys and women (with the exception of like one Asian writer and a group of Jews). Not to mention your list consists of fairly accepted contemporary writers and Canonical figures (Anderson, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Cather, Faulkner, Parker, Warren, Wright, Welty, Nabokov, Williams, Cheever, O'Connor, Oates, Singer, Proulx, Beatty, etc.).



So since most of your list consists of well-known modern and contemporary authors, I guess I'm still wondering who all these clandestine unknown writers are that we're missing . . .

The list of short stories, as clearly explained in my original post, is from an anthology called Best American Short Stories of the 20th Century.

It is not 'my' list. I posted it to make a point. The point was that when anyone posts the question on this sight for recommendations of what is good literature to read, the question is responded to repeatedly with the same authors and works, all classics. This happens over and over again, and it happened in this thread regarding short stories. I was simply suggesting that there are also very good, as good, short stories that are not considered classics because they are modern or contemporary. My analogy was an analogy and not intended to be a literal comparison. I guess I really don't know how you could confuse the concepts. I was not suggesting people read authors from other continents or cultures (non-white), though it is a good idea and something I do. I was making a comparison between limiting oneself to what is a known quantity and what is an unknown quantity. To stepping outside the box, so to speak. Why most everyone here only reads the classics is the question in my mind. And my thought is they do so because they are afraid to set foot outside of known territory into territory that has not already been mapped out for them--another analogy, hope you get it.

My reading is fairly evenly divided amongst the classics, modern, and contemporary literature. It's all well and good to discuss writers and works that are considered classics, but it is extremely limiting to only discuss writers and works that are considered classics.

[mymorningstory]

Big Hemingway fan over here! He basically got me into writing short stories.

[AuntShecky]

You know what would be very nice? It would be very nice if --instead of spending time discussing and/or arguing about the relative tastes of various readers-- we just discussed the stories themselves, telling why an author or a particular story caught our fancy.

Oh, and just " 'cause" my inner grammar geek is irrepressible, the plural of medium is media, not "mediums," the latter word referring to more than one fortune-teller.

[NickAdams]

I find my self returning to the short stories of Ernest Hemingway (In Our Time), Samuel Beckett (More Pricks Than Kicks), Jorge Luis Borges (Collected Fictions) and James Joyce (Dubliners).

[NickAdams]

Big Hemingway fan over here! He basically got me into writing short stories.

Do you have a favorite collection?

[Drkshadow03]

You know what would be very nice? It would be very nice if --instead of spending time discussing and/or arguing about the relative tastes of various readers-- we just discussed the stories themselves, telling why an author or a particular story caught our fancy.

Which is what everyone has been saying to Myrna the entire time.

So anyone talk about some Tim Pratt?