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Fiction Fifty: An Introduction to the Short Story
Fiction 50 is a comprehensive introduction to short fiction, built around a group of 56 stories selected for their exceptional quality, variety, and historical significance to the genre. Fiction 50 provides instruction in the critical analysis of short fiction, helping readers to develop both verbal and written skills.
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First published September 15, 1992
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September 8, 2017
Having already read Mr. Pickering's "Fiction 100," it's not surprising to me that I've read more than half of these stories already. But ... there are plenty I haven't read so here we go. My edition has the cover but in color. Either some trickster or I by mistake clicked the "spoiler alert" thingee. No spoilers here. I wonder if it's retaliatory? I do a lot of flagging of spoiler questions on the quiz. There are so many of them ...
1 - My Kinsman, Major Molineaux by Hawthorne - Re-read this last night. Still a great story.
2- Barn Burning by Faulkner - Already read - didn't re-read(so far).
3 - Araby - J. Joyce - Already read twice, including recently.
4 - Dream Children by Gail Godwin - Don't recall this author's name but she is reasonably contemporary and has written several novels. The editor himself points out the connection to this story and "The Yellow Wall-Paper." I remember watching my/our doggies in dreams yipping and twitching away.
5 - White Heron by Sarah One Jewett - already read - great story. I need to read some more of SOJ.
6 - The Lottery by Shirley Jackson - a classic. Read several times, including recently.
7 - A & P by John Updike - already read a couple of times.
8 - Roses, Rhododendron by Alice Adams - I though the title sounded familiar, and sure enough, as I read into this I realized I'd read it before in an Alice Adams collection. Too late to stop at that point. Fine story, of course. Ms. Adams is one of those semi-prominent mid-20th century writers(Calder Willingham comes to mind) who seems mostly forgotten theses days.
9 - Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin - By the time I'd reached the end of this I was pretty sure I'd read it long ago. JB's description of the musical performance at the end was moving indeed. I suppose the author did about as well as anyone could in describing the emotional-spiritual-physical trials of being black in post-war America.
10 - Cortes and Montezuma by Donald Barthelme - possibly read before. Experimental fiction about ?????
11 - Janus by Ann Beattie - I've read a number of the author's stories in The New Yorker but that's about it. This story's a bit mysterious, but the meaning of the title seems clear enough by the end. Two-faced woman ...
12 - The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges - I think I read this before, but I read it again anyway. Another one of obscure-to-me meaning.
13- Astronomer's Wife - Read before and read again. Reminds of V. Woolf.
14- Cathedral by Raymond Carver - read before a number of times.
15 - The Country Husband" by John Cheever = semi-absurdist suburban. Read before ...
16 - The Darling by Anton Chekhov - already read, read again.
17 - The Storm - Kate Chopin - Haven't read this one(as far as I can remember). Pretty sexy for the early 20th century! You go Kate ...
18 - Witness for the Prosecution by Agatha Christie. This one was new to me but I did see the movie long ago so I was pretty sure how it would end, and I was right. A neat twist ... The film was directed by Billy Wilder and the screenplay by Wilder and Harry Kurnitz was a expansion of the stage play.
19 - The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain/Samuel L. Clemens - Possibly read before. Short and sweet. Meant to amuse.
20 - Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Skipped - read three times already, including once fairly recently. Still ... an all-time classic.
21 - The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky by Stephen Crane - read before and read again. Short and sweet tale of change coming to the old West. Sex!
22 - A Scandal in Bohemia by Arthur Conan Doyle - Don't think I read this before. Holmes is actually bested by Irene Adler ... "the" woman.
23 - King of the Bingo Game by Ralph Ellison - read before and read again. An intense tale of one of RE's "invisible" men.
24 - Mauser by Louise Erdrich - Probably the youngest author represented. Not sure if I read this before. Reminds a bit of Annie Proulx.
25 - A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner - Read before a couple of times, including once fairly recently.
26 - The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman =- a memorable read from "Fiction 100." Skipped this time.
27 - A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell. Never heard of this author ... Good story. Life from a female perspective. The patriarchy takes a hit(as it should).
28 - The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol - cited by many Russian realist authors later in the 19th century as a primary inspiration for them. One of the all-time great stories. Read before ... read again.
- Money and stuff gives us status and individual dignity in a money culture. Workers of the world ... UNITE! A bitter satire of a modernizing urban culture.
29 - Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway - read before, will likely read again. Tonight ... Another short one down. I like the lyrics to that Eagles song ... Don't look back. You can never look back. A bitter tale about just ONE of the perils of sex.
30 - Spunk by Zora Neale Hurston - Spooky revenge stuff. Negro mythology. Nice ...
31 - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving - Another great story from WI. I'm not sure that I've ever read this before, though I have seen the short Disney film. Great descriptive language of the early 19th century Hudson environment and culture and the big feast at the end.
32 - Four Meetings by Henry James - As I read into this I realized that I'd read it before, most likely in "Fiction 100." Another Jamesian horror story of someone screwed by life and by character(her own). I read and re-read the last sentence several times TRYING to understand what HJ was saying = no luck, though I think I half-got it.
33 - The Dead by James Joyce - Read before and read again. Great story from a great writer. About half-way through the theme of people struggling to live happy lives despite challenges came through - a jolt. Also another tale of the bitter losses that life can offer a la "Reading Turgenev" by William Trevor.
34 - The Tip-Top Club by Garrison Keillor - Definitely NOT read before. Yay! A sly satire on the kind of "just folks" that have given us the Presidency of Dandy Don Trump. UGH!
35 - We Are Not in This Together by William Kitteridge - I don't recall reading this one before and have only the vaguest awareness of a writer named William Kitteridge. The writing reminds me of the portentous/pseudo-mythical/spiritual/biblical western stuff of Jim Harrison(there's gratuitous grizzly[THREE of them!] killing in this one too), Wallace Stegner etc. Mr. K.'s prose has a lot of muscles in it, I guess you could say. Apparently Ray Carver was a fan. I'm not, although the descriptive stuff is nice enough. The human stuff? Not so much. Iowa Writer's Workshop writing ... Kitteridge went there.
36 - The Horse Dealer's Daughter by D. H. Lawrence - There are those that say that Lawrence was crazy-strange-weird. This wrought tale of love??? might be exhibit "A." Read before and read again for the hell of it.
37 - Horse Camp by Ursula K. Le Guin - I didn't think much of this one the first time through. It's a bit experimental and confusing(and VERY brief). Less so the second time through and I liked it better. Still ...
38 - Wine by Doris Lessing - Similar in tone to "Hills Like White Elephants" = high-tone middle-class melodrama.
39 - Shiloh by Bobbie Anne Mason - Another one from a writer I'm only vaguely aware of. In the same vein as Hills Like ... and Wine. Decidedly NOT middle-class, however. Blue collar relationship blues.
40 - Bartlebey the Scrivener by Herman Melville - Is this the all-time champeen of short stories? It'd get a lot of votes, that's for sure. I've read it a couple of times: in H.S. I hated it, but I loved it when I read it a few years ago. Psychologically speaking, there's plenty in there to ponder. Reading it again ... and done again and ever amazed at the different "angles" the story presents. This time around I encountered some wisdom/understanding right out of Alanon. The story can be seem as much a portrait of the narrator than Bartleby. What's it about? The testing of wills ... passive resistance ... the language of resistance. The author was unwilling to force Bartleby to do anything, he(the narrator) believed in free will. I'm sure I'll be reading it again some day. A presaging of absurdist literature ...
41 - Thanks for the Ride by Alice Munro - Munro = another genius. We are taken again to a land of no illusions. Bittersweet? Oh yeah, but mostly bitter.
42 - Four Summers by Joyce Carol Oates - I've read both of the included JCO stories, this one and the next one, probably in Fiction 100. In this one she visits Raymond Carver territory before Ray got there. Blue collar life dysfunction: drinking, Mom and Dad, siblings, sex, death ... the whole bonanza. Ms. Oates always take things to the semi-hysterical precipice.
43 - Where Are You Going, Where have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates. I skipped this one having read it before and seen the TV movie "Smooth Talk," which was pretty good, though I did get tired of watching Treat Williams trying to persuade Laura Dern to walk through the screen door to her ??? whatever. JCO can skate along the edge of compelling and annoying. This story was both, I guess. Also depressing ...
44 - The Artificial Nigger - More Southern Gothic from Flannery O'Connor. Read before and read again last night. She's a great writer but her "meanings" pretty much escape me. Again, I say, Faulkner has a lot to answer for.
45 - A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor - This story, as with Bartleby the Scrivener, pins the genius label on its author. The one FO tale seems like a clear masterpiece to me. What's it really about? Lord only knows. There's some stuff about Jesus raising Lazarus and causing a lot of trouble but your guess is a good as mine. This is as funny as it can be for the story that ends with the murder of six family members, including a little baby.
46 - I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen - Hadn't read before. A strong account of struggling lives in the not-so-wonderful "land of opportunity." Land of misery is more like it.
47 - The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe - read before a couple of times. Great story, but skipped this time around.
48 - The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe - read twice in the recent past. Skipped this time.
49 - The Grave by Katherine Anne Porter - Don't think I'd read this before but not sure - maybe. There's a bit in there reminiscent of a story in "Jesus' Son" - baby rabbits ... What the story's about is anybody's guess. KAP is a good writer, though.
50 - Yellow Woman by Leslie Silko - A Native American/modern combo. Never heard of the author before.
51 - The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy - read before, but it's Tolstoy so ... A long an dreary odyssey through the end-of-life of the title unfortunate. Y'all be careful when doing little household task, now. These days a simple operation might well have saved him. The tile might well have been "The Life of ..." but LT wanted to focus on the very end when the suffering ends and that bright light begins to wax. Help is on the way ...
- I had a similar injury to I.I. during a bike ride/fall. It was higher up - more in the heart area. Nothing came of it - I hope - not yet anyway. Many years ago in Colorado.
- In a general way this story relates to "Little Children," the other book I'm currently reading. How do we "choose" to lead our lives???
52 - Nineteen Fifty-Five by Alice Walker - A main character is obviously a fictional Elvis Presley. The narrator is a more general Willie Mae(Big Mama) Thornton, the original performer/author of "Hound Dog." Another story about how we live our lives.
53 - Why I live at the P.O. by Eudora Welty - A classic and much anthologized tale. Read twice before and skipped by me. Gotta read more Eudora Welty. A great writer.
54 - Wherever That Great Heart May Be by W. D. Wetherell - Another author I have no conscious recollection of. This story is a paean to heroic, mysterious fiction. No doubt the author was a lover of Conrad ... "Stories, stories, stories, stories!"
- Mr. Bem = a MEAN Donald Meek
55 - The Man Who Was Almost a Man by Richard Wright. Read before and read again. I wonder about reading this story from my perspective as a basically middle-class white person. I wonder how it looks to an under-class rural black person?
56 - Love Letters by Patricia Zelver - another I don't recall hearing of. Interesting story ...
And that's it for this excellent collection. Perhaps not quite as "classic" as Fiction 100, but well worth the time if you like short stories. 4.5* rounds down to 4*.
1 - My Kinsman, Major Molineaux by Hawthorne - Re-read this last night. Still a great story.
2- Barn Burning by Faulkner - Already read - didn't re-read(so far).
3 - Araby - J. Joyce - Already read twice, including recently.
4 - Dream Children by Gail Godwin - Don't recall this author's name but she is reasonably contemporary and has written several novels. The editor himself points out the connection to this story and "The Yellow Wall-Paper." I remember watching my/our doggies in dreams yipping and twitching away.
5 - White Heron by Sarah One Jewett - already read - great story. I need to read some more of SOJ.
6 - The Lottery by Shirley Jackson - a classic. Read several times, including recently.
7 - A & P by John Updike - already read a couple of times.
8 - Roses, Rhododendron by Alice Adams - I though the title sounded familiar, and sure enough, as I read into this I realized I'd read it before in an Alice Adams collection. Too late to stop at that point. Fine story, of course. Ms. Adams is one of those semi-prominent mid-20th century writers(Calder Willingham comes to mind) who seems mostly forgotten theses days.
9 - Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin - By the time I'd reached the end of this I was pretty sure I'd read it long ago. JB's description of the musical performance at the end was moving indeed. I suppose the author did about as well as anyone could in describing the emotional-spiritual-physical trials of being black in post-war America.
10 - Cortes and Montezuma by Donald Barthelme - possibly read before. Experimental fiction about ?????
11 - Janus by Ann Beattie - I've read a number of the author's stories in The New Yorker but that's about it. This story's a bit mysterious, but the meaning of the title seems clear enough by the end. Two-faced woman ...
12 - The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges - I think I read this before, but I read it again anyway. Another one of obscure-to-me meaning.
13- Astronomer's Wife - Read before and read again. Reminds of V. Woolf.
14- Cathedral by Raymond Carver - read before a number of times.
15 - The Country Husband" by John Cheever = semi-absurdist suburban. Read before ...
16 - The Darling by Anton Chekhov - already read, read again.
17 - The Storm - Kate Chopin - Haven't read this one(as far as I can remember). Pretty sexy for the early 20th century! You go Kate ...
18 - Witness for the Prosecution by Agatha Christie. This one was new to me but I did see the movie long ago so I was pretty sure how it would end, and I was right. A neat twist ... The film was directed by Billy Wilder and the screenplay by Wilder and Harry Kurnitz was a expansion of the stage play.
19 - The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain/Samuel L. Clemens - Possibly read before. Short and sweet. Meant to amuse.
20 - Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Skipped - read three times already, including once fairly recently. Still ... an all-time classic.
21 - The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky by Stephen Crane - read before and read again. Short and sweet tale of change coming to the old West. Sex!
22 - A Scandal in Bohemia by Arthur Conan Doyle - Don't think I read this before. Holmes is actually bested by Irene Adler ... "the" woman.
23 - King of the Bingo Game by Ralph Ellison - read before and read again. An intense tale of one of RE's "invisible" men.
24 - Mauser by Louise Erdrich - Probably the youngest author represented. Not sure if I read this before. Reminds a bit of Annie Proulx.
25 - A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner - Read before a couple of times, including once fairly recently.
26 - The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman =- a memorable read from "Fiction 100." Skipped this time.
27 - A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell. Never heard of this author ... Good story. Life from a female perspective. The patriarchy takes a hit(as it should).
28 - The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol - cited by many Russian realist authors later in the 19th century as a primary inspiration for them. One of the all-time great stories. Read before ... read again.
- Money and stuff gives us status and individual dignity in a money culture. Workers of the world ... UNITE! A bitter satire of a modernizing urban culture.
29 - Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway - read before, will likely read again. Tonight ... Another short one down. I like the lyrics to that Eagles song ... Don't look back. You can never look back. A bitter tale about just ONE of the perils of sex.
30 - Spunk by Zora Neale Hurston - Spooky revenge stuff. Negro mythology. Nice ...
31 - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving - Another great story from WI. I'm not sure that I've ever read this before, though I have seen the short Disney film. Great descriptive language of the early 19th century Hudson environment and culture and the big feast at the end.
32 - Four Meetings by Henry James - As I read into this I realized that I'd read it before, most likely in "Fiction 100." Another Jamesian horror story of someone screwed by life and by character(her own). I read and re-read the last sentence several times TRYING to understand what HJ was saying = no luck, though I think I half-got it.
33 - The Dead by James Joyce - Read before and read again. Great story from a great writer. About half-way through the theme of people struggling to live happy lives despite challenges came through - a jolt. Also another tale of the bitter losses that life can offer a la "Reading Turgenev" by William Trevor.
34 - The Tip-Top Club by Garrison Keillor - Definitely NOT read before. Yay! A sly satire on the kind of "just folks" that have given us the Presidency of Dandy Don Trump. UGH!
35 - We Are Not in This Together by William Kitteridge - I don't recall reading this one before and have only the vaguest awareness of a writer named William Kitteridge. The writing reminds me of the portentous/pseudo-mythical/spiritual/biblical western stuff of Jim Harrison(there's gratuitous grizzly[THREE of them!] killing in this one too), Wallace Stegner etc. Mr. K.'s prose has a lot of muscles in it, I guess you could say. Apparently Ray Carver was a fan. I'm not, although the descriptive stuff is nice enough. The human stuff? Not so much. Iowa Writer's Workshop writing ... Kitteridge went there.
36 - The Horse Dealer's Daughter by D. H. Lawrence - There are those that say that Lawrence was crazy-strange-weird. This wrought tale of love??? might be exhibit "A." Read before and read again for the hell of it.
37 - Horse Camp by Ursula K. Le Guin - I didn't think much of this one the first time through. It's a bit experimental and confusing(and VERY brief). Less so the second time through and I liked it better. Still ...
38 - Wine by Doris Lessing - Similar in tone to "Hills Like White Elephants" = high-tone middle-class melodrama.
39 - Shiloh by Bobbie Anne Mason - Another one from a writer I'm only vaguely aware of. In the same vein as Hills Like ... and Wine. Decidedly NOT middle-class, however. Blue collar relationship blues.
40 - Bartlebey the Scrivener by Herman Melville - Is this the all-time champeen of short stories? It'd get a lot of votes, that's for sure. I've read it a couple of times: in H.S. I hated it, but I loved it when I read it a few years ago. Psychologically speaking, there's plenty in there to ponder. Reading it again ... and done again and ever amazed at the different "angles" the story presents. This time around I encountered some wisdom/understanding right out of Alanon. The story can be seem as much a portrait of the narrator than Bartleby. What's it about? The testing of wills ... passive resistance ... the language of resistance. The author was unwilling to force Bartleby to do anything, he(the narrator) believed in free will. I'm sure I'll be reading it again some day. A presaging of absurdist literature ...
41 - Thanks for the Ride by Alice Munro - Munro = another genius. We are taken again to a land of no illusions. Bittersweet? Oh yeah, but mostly bitter.
42 - Four Summers by Joyce Carol Oates - I've read both of the included JCO stories, this one and the next one, probably in Fiction 100. In this one she visits Raymond Carver territory before Ray got there. Blue collar life dysfunction: drinking, Mom and Dad, siblings, sex, death ... the whole bonanza. Ms. Oates always take things to the semi-hysterical precipice.
43 - Where Are You Going, Where have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates. I skipped this one having read it before and seen the TV movie "Smooth Talk," which was pretty good, though I did get tired of watching Treat Williams trying to persuade Laura Dern to walk through the screen door to her ??? whatever. JCO can skate along the edge of compelling and annoying. This story was both, I guess. Also depressing ...
44 - The Artificial Nigger - More Southern Gothic from Flannery O'Connor. Read before and read again last night. She's a great writer but her "meanings" pretty much escape me. Again, I say, Faulkner has a lot to answer for.
45 - A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor - This story, as with Bartleby the Scrivener, pins the genius label on its author. The one FO tale seems like a clear masterpiece to me. What's it really about? Lord only knows. There's some stuff about Jesus raising Lazarus and causing a lot of trouble but your guess is a good as mine. This is as funny as it can be for the story that ends with the murder of six family members, including a little baby.
46 - I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen - Hadn't read before. A strong account of struggling lives in the not-so-wonderful "land of opportunity." Land of misery is more like it.
47 - The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe - read before a couple of times. Great story, but skipped this time around.
48 - The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe - read twice in the recent past. Skipped this time.
49 - The Grave by Katherine Anne Porter - Don't think I'd read this before but not sure - maybe. There's a bit in there reminiscent of a story in "Jesus' Son" - baby rabbits ... What the story's about is anybody's guess. KAP is a good writer, though.
50 - Yellow Woman by Leslie Silko - A Native American/modern combo. Never heard of the author before.
51 - The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy - read before, but it's Tolstoy so ... A long an dreary odyssey through the end-of-life of the title unfortunate. Y'all be careful when doing little household task, now. These days a simple operation might well have saved him. The tile might well have been "The Life of ..." but LT wanted to focus on the very end when the suffering ends and that bright light begins to wax. Help is on the way ...
- I had a similar injury to I.I. during a bike ride/fall. It was higher up - more in the heart area. Nothing came of it - I hope - not yet anyway. Many years ago in Colorado.
- In a general way this story relates to "Little Children," the other book I'm currently reading. How do we "choose" to lead our lives???
52 - Nineteen Fifty-Five by Alice Walker - A main character is obviously a fictional Elvis Presley. The narrator is a more general Willie Mae(Big Mama) Thornton, the original performer/author of "Hound Dog." Another story about how we live our lives.
53 - Why I live at the P.O. by Eudora Welty - A classic and much anthologized tale. Read twice before and skipped by me. Gotta read more Eudora Welty. A great writer.
54 - Wherever That Great Heart May Be by W. D. Wetherell - Another author I have no conscious recollection of. This story is a paean to heroic, mysterious fiction. No doubt the author was a lover of Conrad ... "Stories, stories, stories, stories!"
- Mr. Bem = a MEAN Donald Meek
55 - The Man Who Was Almost a Man by Richard Wright. Read before and read again. I wonder about reading this story from my perspective as a basically middle-class white person. I wonder how it looks to an under-class rural black person?
56 - Love Letters by Patricia Zelver - another I don't recall hearing of. Interesting story ...
And that's it for this excellent collection. Perhaps not quite as "classic" as Fiction 100, but well worth the time if you like short stories. 4.5* rounds down to 4*.
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