Can someone recommend me a good short story? I have to read one and write a paper for a class tomorrow.

Anything by Ray Bradbury is good. O. Henry's 'The Gift of the Magi' is a classic short story, and he's got a few others, such as the 'Ransom of Red Chief.'

What about Poe? 'Tell Tale Heart,' 'Fall of the House of Usher,' 'The Pit and the Pendulum.' You could analyze those three ad nauseum for a good 10 pages.

Ah, thanks, I appreciate it

"The Huntsman" by Chekhov

It's three pages in length but is an incredible, succinct, moving piece of art. Centered around a huntsman, (big surprise I know) and a young woman, the story is concerned with their marriege which is in shambles but the womans idealism blinds her from this important fact and the huntsman is only concerned with well hunting. The delicate imagery in the beginning paragraph reflects this theme as the enviroment, the trees and fields are fading and even as the huntsman rebukes her overture she still stares in his direction earnestly.

The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg - Mark Twain

Cool

I might read that, thanks

The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, is the first one that came to my mind and one of my favorites. It's so funny how she can take a setting so simple and build a suspense so complex into it. It's a good one.

Great idea on Poe. I used to write pages and pages about his character just from what I read in his short stories and poems, for no one but myself. The Pit and the Pendulum was always my favorite when I was younger, but I love The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Murders in the Rue, among others, just as much.

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson is fantastic.

Secret Window - S. King

I was probably too late with my first recommendations, but I really thought one more needs a mention in a short story thread. John Updike's A & P kills me everytime I read it!

"In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits..."

A teenage boy working behind the cash register of a grocery store observes these girls and just analyzes every little part of their appearances. It's so funny how he names them too.

"She had on a kind of dirty-pink - - beige maybe, I don't know -- bathing suit with a little nubble all over it and, what got me, the straps were down. They were off her shoulders looped loose around the cool tops of her arms, and I guess as a result the suit had slipped a little on her, so all around the top of the cloth there was this shining rim. If it hadn't been there you wouldn't have known there could have been anything whiter than those shoulders. With the straps pushed off, there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her, this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light. I mean, it was more than pretty."



I love every little bit of that story. It's so excellent, and I'm a huge fan of Updike's and his style, so it was perfect to me.

I chose The Lottery, thanks guys. Great suggestions and a good choice on my part.

I've read others this semester by Kurt Vonnegut, Flannery O'Conner, and Ambrose Bierce. And some authors I've forgotten already.

Awesome, Matt. I'm glad you did The Lottery, I really love that one. I just recently saw a short film that was made out of it. It was interesting to see it on film, but reading it is more consuming.

Vonnegut and O'Conner are two of my favorites as well. Good choices!

Yea I really should read some more....I'm more a film guy but literature and use of language has always been the true art, aside from music....

I've been reading some Steinbeck here and there lately but its too easy to sit in front of a TV and play a movie or sit in front of this monitor and play music.

Hahaha, I know what you mean! Especially during the school year, I hardly ever get to read unless I'm reading for a literature class or whatever books may be assigned for other courses.

I know how much you love film - I'm the same way. It's amazing how much you've absorbed from cinema, as we've all seen displayed around here in your arguments and thoughts on the movies. You have such a great knowledge of it all and you can still make it personal to you. That's awesome.

As much as I love film and as nutty as I am about all of it, I'm probably better suited to writing and reading, as far as what I can do and what I know, respectively. I think you told me you're taking a producing class, but I'd really love to see you as the cinematographer or director, because you really mastered photography and that's the most important task in directing and obviously, cinematography. I'm not able to do that! - So I put whatever little power I have into the written word.

The thing I miss about books - that is, when I don't have time for them and find solace in music and movies mainly - is how creative I can be. It's like listening to a song without lyrics, because you fill them in yourself (I listen to a lot of classical music and jazz). I love seeing someone else's vision come to life in the movies, but I'm most perplexed by my own visions from a novel or a short story. The amazing thing about a written story is that you consume it and you somehow relate it to yourself, without realizing it. A meaningful character or an interesting narrative really stick to you and, not to sound too cheesy, but it becomes a real part of you. Do you know what I mean?


...Ummm, and that's why short stories are so wonderful! (I realize I got way off topic, but hey, you already chose a story!)

Oh, by the way, Steinbeck is god. He's a good author to read here and there, I would say.

"The Dead," James Joyce. Thread over.

Oh yah. My two faves are The Pit and Pendulum and Cask of Amontillado, with the latter being well underrated. My roommate said something once and made him sound like an ass. I quipped "Shall I show you a cask of amontillado?' He didn't get it.

"The Dead"

I will have to agree with you on that, I mean has there been a more emotional ending to a short story and then the prose, my god man, the prose, what grace, "Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismaly with age."

or

"Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love."

and

"His soul wooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

I love everything James Joyce wrote. Dubliners are some of the greatest short stories ever written! He is wonderful with his imagery especially, that's what gives him his strength. Araby was essentially what A & P was molding itself after. Same idea - a teenage boy watching a woman, or women in the latter's case, observing her villainously, and in the end, each narrator discovers new revelations and take a step out of his bashful innocence of childhood and moves into adulthood. Both brilliant endings.

Araby was so grim because of the setting, but there was a little twinkle of childlike hope, the boy anticipating the bazaar to buy his girl neighbor a present. And then everything was shattered in an epiphany, and the gloomy streets and murky weather were forgotten. "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger."

A & P I enjoyed even more as a whole, but I especially loved how it ended - The nineteen-year-old kid tries to be the hero for the girls when the store manager tells them they're not allowed to be in the store without proper attire. He yells, "I quit!" But the girls keep on going. He gathers up his things, walks outside and looks for the girls who would be waiting for their savior!

"I look around for my girls, but they're gone, of course. There wasn't anybody but some young married screaming with her children about some candy they didn't get by the door of a powder-blue Falcon station wagon. Looking back in the big windows, over the bags of peat moss and aluminum lawn furniture stacked on the pavement, I could see Lengel in my place in the slot, checking the sheep through. His face was dark gray and his back stiff, as if he'd just had an injection of iron, and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter."

That ending was also stunning because it completely contrasted the entire story to that point. Sammy's humorous, childish decadence was vanquished by a determination to rescue and do good, and then he was basically shot down. He had quit his job and risked trouble with his parents to save these girls from embarrassment, and they walked away from him. It's shameful to see a child's ideals ripped away in a moment like that.





Bahahahaha, that's awesome!