The Art of the Short Story
I. Stories Precursors to the Short Story Aesop (c. 620E-560 B.C.): "The Fox and the Grapes," "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse" The Old Testament, King James Version: "The Creation of the World" Chuang Tzu (c. 369-268 B.C.): "A Butterfly's Dream," From "Discussion on Making All Things Equal" Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1342-1400): "The Wife of Bath's Tale" Marie de France (c. 1150): "Guigemar" Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm (1785-1863); (1786-1859): "Godfather Death" Delia Oshogay (Traditional): "Oshikikwe's Baby" Plato (c. 427-347 B.C.): "The Parable of the Cave" The Nineteenth-Century Short Story (1800-1899) Emilia Pardo Bazan (1851-1921): "The Heartlover" Ambrose Bierce (1842- c.1914): "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," Related Critical Essay: Roy Morris Junior, from Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company Anton Chekhov (1860-1904): "The Darling," "The Lady with the Dog" Stephen Crane (1871-1900): "The Open Boat" Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881): "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930): "A Scandal in Bohemia" Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852): "The Overcoat" Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864): "Rappacini's Daughter," "Young Goodman Brown," Related Critical Essay: Edgar Allan Poe, "Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales" Washington Irving (1783-1859): "Rip Van Winkle" Henry James (1843-1916): Daisy Miller, "The Real Thing," Related Essay: Henry James, "The Art of Fiction" Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909): "A White Heron" Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893): "The Necklace" Herman Melville (1819-1891): "Bartleby, the Scrivener," Related Critical Essay: Elizabeth Hardwick, "Bartleby in Manhattan" Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849): "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Purloined Letter" Mary Shelley (1797-1851): "The Mortal Immortal" Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910): "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" Mark Twain (1835-1910): "Jim Baker's Blue Jay Yarn," "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," "War Prayer" Oscar Wilde (1854-1900): "Lord Arthur Saville's Crime" Nineteenth-Century Cluster: Domestic Fictions Kate Chopin (1851-1904): "Desiree's Baby," "The Story of an Hour" Mary Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930): "A New England Nun," "The Revolt of 'Mother'" Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935): "The Yellow Wallpaper" Martha J. Cutter: "Frontiers of Language: Engendering Discourse in "The Revolt of 'Mother'" Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar: From The Madwoman in the Attic Leah Blatt Glasser: From In a Closet Hidden: The Life and Work of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman The Modern Short Story (1900-1969) Chinua Achebe (1930- ): "Dead Men's Path," Related Critical Essay: Chinua Achebe, "The Novelist as Teacher" Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941): "The Triumph of the Egg" James Baldwin (1924-1987): "Sonny's Blues," Related Critical Essay: Pancho Savery, "Baldwin, Bebop, and Sonny's Blues" Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986): "Emma Zunz" Albert Camus (1913-1960): "The Guest" Willa Cather (1873-1947): "Paul's Case," Related Critical Essay: Sharon O'Brien, from Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice John Cheever (1912-1982): "The Enormous Radio," "The Swimmer" Colette (1873-1954): "The Other Wife" Haroldo Conti (1925- ): "Lost" Julio Cortazar (1914-1984): "Continuity of Parks" Ralph Ellison (1914-1994): "Battle Royal" William Faulkner (1897-1962): "A Rose for Emily," Related Critical Essay: Judith Fetterley, "A Rose for 'A Rose for Emily'" F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940): "Babylon Revisited" Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961): "Hills Like White Elephants," Interview: Ernest Hemingway, Interviewed by George Plimpton Shirley Jackson (1919-1965): "The Lottery," Related Critical Essay: Shirley Jackson, "Biography of a Story" James Joyce (1882-1941): "Araby," Franz Kafka (1883-1924): "A Hunger Artist" D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930): "The Rocking-Horse Winner" Doris Lessing (1919- ): "To Room Nineteen" Clarice Lispector (1925?-1977): "The Smallest Woman in the World" Jack London (1876-1916): "To Build a Fire" Bernard Malamud (1914-1986): "The Magic Barrel" Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923): "The Garden Party" Yukio Mishima (1925-1970): "Patriotism" Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964): "Good Country People," "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," Related Essay: Flannery O'Connor, "Writing Short Stories" Frank O'Connor (1903-1966): "Guests of the Nation" Tillie Olsen (c. 1912- ): "I Stand Here Ironing" Anna Maria Ortese (1914-1998): "A Pair of Glasses" Dorothy Parker (1893-1967): "Big Blonde" Luigi Pirandello (1876-1936): "The Jar" Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980): "Theft" Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980): "The Room" Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966): "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" John Steinbeck (1902-1968): "The Chrysanthemums" John Updike (1932- ): "A & P," "Separating" Luisa Valenzuela (1938- ): "A Famile for Clotilde," Interview: Luisa Valenzuela, Interviewed by Marie-Lise Gazarian Gautier Eudora Welty (1909-2001): "Why I Live at the P.O." Edith Wharton (1862-1937): "Roman Fever," Related Critical Essay: Dale M. Bauer, "Edith Wharton's 'Roman Fever': A Rune of History" E. B. White (1899-1985): "The Second Tree from the Corner" Richard Wright (1908-1960): "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" Modern Cluster: The Harlem Renaissance Arna Bontemps (1902-1973): "A Summer Tragedy" Langston Hughes (1902-1967): "Cora Unashamed" Zora Neale Hurston (c.1901-1960): "Drenched in Light," "Sweat" Dorothy West (1907-1998): "The Typewriter" Langston Hughes: "When the Negro Was in Vogue," "Harlem Literati," "Downtown" David Kuperman: "Dying: The Shape of Victory in 'A Summer Tragedy'" The Contemporary Short Story (1970-Present) Isabel Allende (1942- ): "And of Clay Are We Created," Interview: Isabel Allende, Interviewed by Farhart Iftekharuddin Margaret Atwood (1939- ): "Happy Endings," Related Critical Essay: Margaret Atwood, "Reading Blind" Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995): "The Lesson" T. C. Boyle (1948- ): "Sinking House" Kate Braverman (1950- ): "Hour of the Fathers" Robert Olen Butler (1945- ): "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain" Ethan Canin (1960- ): "Emperor of the Air" Raymond Carver (1938-1988): "Cathedral," "A Small, Good Thing," Related Essay: Raymond Carver, "On Writing" Sandra Cisneros (1954- ): "Barbie-Q" Peter Ho Davies (1966- ): "What You Know" Louise Erdrich (1954- ): "American Horse," "The Red Convertible," "The Shawl," Interview: Louise Erdrich, Interviewed by Robert Spillman Richard Ford (1944- ): "Rock Springs," Interview: Richard Ford, Interviewed by Ned Stuckey-French Mary Gaitskill (1954- ): "Tiny Smiling Daddy" Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1928- ): "I Only Came to Use the Phone," "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" Alan Gurganus (1947- ): "He's at the Office" Patricia Henley (1947- ): "The Secret of Cartwheels" Gish Jen (1956- ): "In the American Society" Le Minh Khue (1949- ): "The Distant Stars," Related Critical Essay: Dana Sachs, "Small Tragedies and Distant Stars: Le Minh Khue's Language of Lost Ideals" Jamaica Kincaid (1949- ): "Wingless" Jhumpa Lahiri (1967- ): "A Temporary Matter," Related Essay: Jhumpa Lahiri, "The Author of Interpreter of Maladies Interprets Herself" Andrew Lam (1964- ): "Show and Tell" Ursula K. LeGuin (1929- ): "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" David Leavitt (1961- ): "Houses" Bobbie Ann Mason (1940- ): "Shiloh" Toni Morrison (1931- ): "Recitatif" Alice Munro (1931- ): "Floating Bridge," Related Essay: Alice Munro, "What is Real?" R. K. Narayan (1906-2001): "House Opposite" Joyce Carol Oates (1938- ): "How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again," "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Related Essay: Joyce Carol Oates, "Beginnings: The Origins and Art of the Short Story" Tim O'Brien (1946- ): "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," "The Things They Carried," Related Critical Essay: Katherine Kinney, from Friendly Fire Z Z Packer (1973- ): "Brownies," "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" Grace Paley (1922- ): "A Conversation with My Father" Philip Roth (1933- ): "Defender of the Faith" Akhil Sharma (1971- ): "If You Sing Like That for Me" Leslie Marmon Silko (1948- ): "Yellow Woman," Interview: Leslie Marmon Silko, Interviewed by Florence Boos Helena Maria Viramontes (1954- ): "The Moths" Alice Walker (1944- ): "Everyday Use," Related Critical Essay: Sam Whitsett, "In Spite of It All: A Reading of Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use'" Tobias Wolff (1945- ): "Bullet in the Brain" Monica Wood (1953- ): "Disappearing" Contemporary Cluster: Postcolonial Literature Ama Ata Aidoo (1942- ): "The Message" Peter Carey (1943- ): "Do You Love Me?" Hanif Kureishi (1954- ): "My Son the Fanatic" Salman Rushdie (1947- ): "Good Advice is Rarer than Rubies" John McLeod: "From 'Commonwealth' to 'Postcolonial'" Anne McClintock: "The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term 'Postcolonialism'" II. Reading, Writing, Discussing Reading: The Critical Essays Elizabeth Abel: "Black Writing, White Reading: Race and the Politics of Feminist Interpretation" Chinua Achebe: "The Novelist as Teacher" Margaret Atwood: "Reading Blind" Dale M. Bauer: "Edith Wharton's 'Roman Fever': A Rune of History" Steven Carter: "Tolstoy's 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich'" Judith Fetterley: "A Rose for 'A Rose for Emily'" Elizabeth Hardwick: "Bartleby in Manhattan" Shirley Jackson: "Biography of a Story" Roy Morris Junior: From Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company Katherine Kinney: From Friendly Fire Sharon O'Brien: From Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice Edgar Allan Poe: "Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales" Dana Sachs: "Small Tragedies and Distant Stars: Le Minh Khue's Language of Lost Ideals" Pancho Savery: "Baldwin, Bebop, and Sonny's Blues" Sam Whitsett: "In Spite of it All: A Reading of Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use'" Writing: Crafting the Short Story Raymond Carver: "On Writing" Henry James: "The Art of Fiction" Jhumpa Lahiri: "The Author of Interpreter of Maladies Interprets Herself" Alice Munro: "What is Real?" Flannery O'Connor: "Writing Short Stories" Joyce Carol Oates: "Beginnings: The Origins and Art of the Short Story" Discussing: Writers Talk About Their Work Isabel Allende: Interviewed by Farhart Iftekharuddin Ernest Hemingway: Interviewed by George Plimpton Louise Erdrich: Interviewed by Robert Spillman Richard Ford: Interviewed by Ned Stuckey-French David Wong Louie: Interviewed by Stacey Yukari Hirose Leslie Marmon Silko: Interviewed by Florenc...