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The Best American Short Stories of the Century
Since the series' inception in 1915, the annual volumes of The Best American Short Stories have launched literary careers, showcased the most compelling stories of each year, and confirmed for all time the significance of the short story in our national literature. Now THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF THE CENTURY brings together the best of the best - fifty-five extraordinary stories that represent a century's worth of unsurpassed accomplishments in this quintessentially American literary genre. Here are the stories that have endured the test of time: masterworks by such writers as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Saroyan, Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever, Eudora Welty, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Carver, Cynthia Ozick, and scores of others. These are the writers who have shaped and defined the landscape of the American short story, who have unflinchingly explored all aspects of the human condition, and whose works will continue to speak to us as we enter the next century. Their artistry is represented splendidly in these pages. THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES series has also always been known for making literary discoveries, and discovery proved to be an essential part of selecting the stories for this volume too. Collections from years past yielded a rich harvest of surprises, stories that may have been forgotten but still retain their relevance and luster. The result is a volume that not only gathers some of the most significant stories of our century between two covers but resurrects a handful of lost literary gems as well. Of all the great writers whose work has appeared in the series, only John Updike's contributions have spanned five consecutive decades, from his first appearance, in 1959. Updike worked with coeditor Katrina Kenison to choose stories from each decade that meet his own high standards of literary quality.
835 pages, Paperback
First published April 20, 2000
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About the author
John Updike
861 books2,425 followersJohn Hoyer Updike was an American writer. Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit Remembered). Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest both won Pulitzer Prizes for Updike. Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class," Updike is well known for his careful craftsmanship and prolific writing, having published 22 novels and more than a dozen short story collections as well as poetry, literary criticism and children's books. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems have appeared in The New Yorker since the 1950s. His works often explore sex, faith, and death, and their inter-relationships.
He died of lung cancer at age 76.
He died of lung cancer at age 76.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 223 reviews
March 9, 2012
The title is a misnomer. Not that there aren't some wonderful stories here, but they were never really chosen because they're the best American short stories of the 20th century. Rather, these are Updike's 56 picks out of the 2,000 stories originally chosen in the 84 volumes of a yearly anthology published from 1915 through 1999. If a story was never published in Best American Stories they weren't available to be selected. Updike couldn't select "Paul's Case" by Willa Cather, "Are These Actual Miles?" by Raymond Carver, "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell, "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner, "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Hills Like White Elephants" or "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" by Ernest Hemingway, "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes, "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet" by Stephen King, "To Build a Fire" by Jack London, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor, "Gift of the Magi" or "The Ransom of Red Chief" by O'Henry, "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" by Katherine Anne Porter, "Brokeback Mountain" by Annie Proulx, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J.D. Salinger, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" by James Thurber, "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" or "The War Prayer" by Mark Twain, "A Worn Path" by Eudora Welty or Updike's own "A&P." That means a lot of American short stories of the 20th century that are often anthologized won't be found here--arguably none of the really famous ones are found here, even though a lot of familiar names such as Hemingway and Faulkner are included.
There were so many of my favorite short stories that were part of the anthologies that could have been selected though listed at the back of the book: "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin, "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver, "Babylon Revisited" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Snows of Kilimanjaro" by Ernest Hemingway, "Haircut" by Ring Lardner, "The Magic Barrel" by Bernard Malamud, "Shiloh" by Bobbie Ann Mason, "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" by Carson McCullers, "People Like That Are the Only People Here" by Lorrie Moore, "Everything that Rises Must Converge" by Flannery O'Connor, "My Friend Flicka" by Mary O'Hara, "A Telephone Call" by Dorothy Parker, "Act of Faith" by Irwin Shaw, "The Chrysanthemums" by John Steinbeck, "The Catbird Seat" by James Thurber or Tillie Olson's "I Stand Here Ironing." And, sadly, though I can't say I'm surprised, no short stories by the well-known science fiction authors who I truly believe wrote some of the best short fiction of the 20th century--and some of them did make it into the yearly anthologies. Yet Updike didn't choose any such story--so no Ray Bradbury, Judith Merril, Harlan Ellison, Ursula Le Guin or Theodore Sturgeon. Almost nothing that could be called a genre story, no love stories, little humor or anything that's upbeat and I can't say any story had a great twist. Nor were there any horror stories--and given that the American short story got its foundation from stories such as Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," the horror tales of Edgar Allan Poe and stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne such as "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Minister's Black Veil" that's a crime. In the end, especially reading one story after the other, I felt the collection too often came across as bland and predictable.
So, if you're thinking of getting a one-volume collection of the canonical American short stories of the past century, or the best or the most entertaining and memorable that could make you a fan of the form, this isn't the book. But if you want a collection of 56 strong short stories of literary fiction of the kind you find in The New Yorker, well, almost all of the stories included are well worth reading with little moments to savor and writing techniques to learn from. About the only time I thought "My God, what was Updike thinking?" was his inclusion of Richard Wright's ode to the Communist Party, "Bright and Morning Star" (1939), a crude propaganda piece. There were certainly stories herein I thought as memorable and impressive as the stories not included I listed above. My top ten:
“A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell (1917) - both great psychological study and whodunnit--one of the few that could be seen as a "genre" story.
"Here We Are" by Dorothy Parker (1931) - featured winning humor and was all the more appreciated because there was so little of that in the book.
"Death of a Favorite" by J.F. Powers (1951) - probably the closest thing to speculative fiction in the book, it was a humor piece from a cat's point of view. I probably liked it more than it deserved simply because it was so different than the usual formula literary fiction.
"The Ledge" by Lawrence Sargent Hall (1960) - horrifying and sad but beautifully written.
"Defender of the Faith" by Philip Roth (1960) - Great characters--it redeemed Roth after my introduction to him through his execrable The Plot Against America. This was one of the few stories in the anthology that surprised me, that didn't head where I was expecting after reading the first paragraph.
"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates (1967) - I'd tried novels by the author but had never found her to my liking, so I was surprised to find this a standout. The protagonist Connie is too-stupid-to-live--but I have to admit this is one of the most memorable stories in the book, and probably the most often anthologized.
"The Key" by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1970) - starts depressing and sad but ends humane and warm.
"A City of Churches" by Donald Barthelme (1973) - weird but certainly striking and unusual.
“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien (1987) - lyrically written war story. One of the few in the anthology I had read before.
"In the Gloaming" by Alice Elliott Dark (1994) - ripped my heart out and moved me close to tears.
There were so many of my favorite short stories that were part of the anthologies that could have been selected though listed at the back of the book: "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin, "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver, "Babylon Revisited" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Snows of Kilimanjaro" by Ernest Hemingway, "Haircut" by Ring Lardner, "The Magic Barrel" by Bernard Malamud, "Shiloh" by Bobbie Ann Mason, "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" by Carson McCullers, "People Like That Are the Only People Here" by Lorrie Moore, "Everything that Rises Must Converge" by Flannery O'Connor, "My Friend Flicka" by Mary O'Hara, "A Telephone Call" by Dorothy Parker, "Act of Faith" by Irwin Shaw, "The Chrysanthemums" by John Steinbeck, "The Catbird Seat" by James Thurber or Tillie Olson's "I Stand Here Ironing." And, sadly, though I can't say I'm surprised, no short stories by the well-known science fiction authors who I truly believe wrote some of the best short fiction of the 20th century--and some of them did make it into the yearly anthologies. Yet Updike didn't choose any such story--so no Ray Bradbury, Judith Merril, Harlan Ellison, Ursula Le Guin or Theodore Sturgeon. Almost nothing that could be called a genre story, no love stories, little humor or anything that's upbeat and I can't say any story had a great twist. Nor were there any horror stories--and given that the American short story got its foundation from stories such as Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," the horror tales of Edgar Allan Poe and stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne such as "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Minister's Black Veil" that's a crime. In the end, especially reading one story after the other, I felt the collection too often came across as bland and predictable.
So, if you're thinking of getting a one-volume collection of the canonical American short stories of the past century, or the best or the most entertaining and memorable that could make you a fan of the form, this isn't the book. But if you want a collection of 56 strong short stories of literary fiction of the kind you find in The New Yorker, well, almost all of the stories included are well worth reading with little moments to savor and writing techniques to learn from. About the only time I thought "My God, what was Updike thinking?" was his inclusion of Richard Wright's ode to the Communist Party, "Bright and Morning Star" (1939), a crude propaganda piece. There were certainly stories herein I thought as memorable and impressive as the stories not included I listed above. My top ten:
“A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell (1917) - both great psychological study and whodunnit--one of the few that could be seen as a "genre" story.
"Here We Are" by Dorothy Parker (1931) - featured winning humor and was all the more appreciated because there was so little of that in the book.
"Death of a Favorite" by J.F. Powers (1951) - probably the closest thing to speculative fiction in the book, it was a humor piece from a cat's point of view. I probably liked it more than it deserved simply because it was so different than the usual formula literary fiction.
"The Ledge" by Lawrence Sargent Hall (1960) - horrifying and sad but beautifully written.
"Defender of the Faith" by Philip Roth (1960) - Great characters--it redeemed Roth after my introduction to him through his execrable The Plot Against America. This was one of the few stories in the anthology that surprised me, that didn't head where I was expecting after reading the first paragraph.
"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates (1967) - I'd tried novels by the author but had never found her to my liking, so I was surprised to find this a standout. The protagonist Connie is too-stupid-to-live--but I have to admit this is one of the most memorable stories in the book, and probably the most often anthologized.
"The Key" by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1970) - starts depressing and sad but ends humane and warm.
"A City of Churches" by Donald Barthelme (1973) - weird but certainly striking and unusual.
“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien (1987) - lyrically written war story. One of the few in the anthology I had read before.
"In the Gloaming" by Alice Elliott Dark (1994) - ripped my heart out and moved me close to tears.
November 11, 2025
After seven (7) months, I have finally slogged my way through this anthology! Despite which, it isn’t bad. At least half the stories I would even call good (though not much over half). Fewer are great, though, and I realized upon finishing that only one (“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”) has much claim to being an iconic American short story. This although there are lots of iconic American short stories! I wish the editors’ introductions reflected on why this series seem to have missed almost all of them. (My diagnosis: too artistically conservative, avoiding experimentation and genre fiction.) That said, there are certainly many celebrated authors represented, as well as lesser-known ones who often surpass their famous counterparts.
I picked this up after reading 100 Years of BASS, published 15 years later with different editors and no overlapping stories. Updike certainly snagged some gems here, albeit with some glaring omissions, “Sonny’s Blues” and “I Stand Here Ironing” in particular. Of the 16 authors included in both, I strongly agree with his choices on 6 (Lardner, Hemingway, Faulkner, Roth, Oates, and Carver); 7 could go either way (the Porter, O’Connor, Barthelme and Munro stories in both volumes are good, while I would happily ditch Anderson and Fitzgerald altogether and never quite understand Welty); and strongly disagree with 3 (what was he thinking on Cheever, Elkin and Updike?—yes, he included himself).
This volume is more gender-balanced than you might expect (25 women to 30 men), though lacking in racial diversity: out of 55 authors, 4 are Black and one Asian-American, with the volume’s cultural diversity coming mostly from Jewish and European immigrant stories. (This has changed dramatically in recent volumes of the series, and even the 2015 retrospective managed 25% authors of color.)
Overall, I am glad I read this; it contains many excellent stories, as well as new-to-me authors. That said, it still felt like a slog, mostly due to the deadly 15-story stretch in the second quarter (from the Fitzgerald through the Cheever), after which I never recovered any momentum. 100 Years of BASS is certainly more accessible—but still, there are some gems here. My top 12 are starred.
Review Part 1 (stories 1-11; 1915-1931) - 4/8/25
I was skeptical of how much I’d appreciate Updike’s taste, but at 11 out of 55 stories am agreeing with his choices. Updike is specifically interested in Americanness, including only stories set in the U.S. or featuring Americans, and these stories ask questions about the meaning of being American. These early stories have a much greater representation of immigrant characters and racial issues than in Moore’s volume, despite the increased interest in diversity between publication of the two.
* “Zelig” by Benjamin Rosenblatt: A great start to the anthology, this 6-page story packs a punch and sets the tone immediately. It features an Eastern European immigrant who wants nothing more than to go home, but ultimately forgoes his own dreams in favor of a better future for his grandson. Becoming American as surrender and loss of identity: this will not be a boosterish anthology. But it’s a moving story, with a lot of life and history packed into a few pages.
“Little Selves” by Mary Lerner: An Irish immigrant woman on her deathbed daydreams about her childhood. Vivid and well-written, maybe a little saccharine in the end. Envisioning everyone you’ve ever been as a unique person is an interesting thought.
* “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell: A great crime story set on a rural farm in the aftermath of a suspicious death. I love the women’s solidarity and perspicacity under the noses of the patronizing yet clueless men. And the dialogue, tension and slow unfolding of information are all just right, as is the ambiguous end.
“The Other Woman” by Sherwood Anderson: A monologue from a guy who cheated right before his wedding. I see that people appreciate this for its unreliable narrator and refraining from telling the reader what to think, which is fair, but it’s not best-of-the-best material to me.
* “The Golden Honeymoon” by Ring Lardner: A fun story about an elderly New Jersey couple vacationing in Florida, with a strong and believable voice and dialogue. Apparently we’re supposed to judge the narrator and perhaps his whole social milieu, but from a 2020s perspective the sheer sociability of these snowbirds’ vacation and the importance of the Rotary Club are endearing, and who would want to spend their vacation with their spouse’s ex? This guy is still the best husband in the first batch of stories.
“Blood-Burning Moon” by Jean Toomer: Interesting mostly for being a story of a lynching told by a mixed-race author in the 20s. The only real surprise is how unsympathetic the victim is, with multiple murders under his belt. Not that his victim (racist even toward the woman he’s messing with) is any better.
“The Killers” by Ernest Hemingway: A minimalist story, almost all dialogue, about killers-for-hire holding up a café. The style was distancing for me, but I can see why others would enjoy it.
“Double Birthday” by Willa Cather: Two Pennsylvania families intersect: an uncle and nephew once well-off but now in genteel poverty, and a wealthy judge and his widowed daughter. It’s well-written but I’m afraid I not only didn’t understand what this story was trying to say, I didn’t understand what it was trying to say something about. Apparently Cather also wanted people to know she didn’t think it her best.
“Wild Plums” by Grace Stone Coates: A short but evocative story in which killjoy parents wind up subtly illustrating all sorts of issues around immigration, class, community, and childhood. I don’t agree with Updike calling it a “trifle” at all.
“Theft” by Katherine Anne Porter: A short but complex story, leaving more unsaid than said, even down to the protagonist’s name. Who is this woman whose purse is stolen, and is she right to mistrust her own choices?
* “That Evening Sun Go Down” by William Faulkner: Wow, this is really good—I’ve never liked Faulkner before. A story about race, privilege and domestic violence that manages to indict the white family’s carelessness/obliviousness/callousness toward their black cook, all from the perspective of a clueless white boy. (Actually, is that kid clueless? The narrator is the haziest character in this story.) More accessible than other Faulkner I’ve read, and the characters and dialogue ring true.
Review Part 2 (stories 12-23, 1931-1948) – 6/19/25
After a promising opening, I soured hard on this anthology in the second part, only really liked the first one of this set, found most of the others dull, standard-issue and forgettable, and set aside the book for a couple months partway through. I do plan to soldier on, but may wind up abandoning the anthology if the stories don’t improve. In particular, Updike seems really enamored of stories that are all just internal monologue or narrative summary, where nothing really changes for the character.
* “Here We Are” by Dorothy Parker: Almost all dialogue, this story presents a vivid, entertaining and authentic-feeling portrait of a newlywed couple. They’re anxious and awkward and insecure about the impending sex they can’t actually talk about. This marriage seems headed for disaster.
“Crazy Sunday” by F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Fitzgerald story, ergo, an account of rich assholes I don’t care about. In this one the protagonist believes himself in love with another man’s wife, yet credits the man with her personality and all her merits. Possibly more worthwhile for those familiar with the apparently thinly-veiled Hollywood personalities portrayed.
“My Dead Brother Comes to America” by Alexander Godin: An Ellis Island story whose commentary on the dehumanizing aspects of the immigration system remains timely today, but whose characters and their histories are so blandly nonspecific as to render the whole thing quickly forgettable.
“Resurrection of a Life” by William Saroyan: An entirely forgettable story in which a guy rambles about his boyhood thoughts. I was so bored I took a break to go grocery shopping halfway through, and it’s only 10 pages long.
“Christmas Gift” by Robert Penn Warren: Vivid scene-setting but not very compelling in the character dynamics, and has not aged well. The “Christmas miracle” involves a doctor sharing a cigarette with a child and the child sharing already-licked candy with the doctor.
“Bright and Morning Star” by Richard Wright: A violent and disturbing story about police treatment of Black Communist organizers. It’s pretty convincing, though the characters are not the most memorable. But why is Updike only choosing the most gruesome stories by black writers? “Sonny’s Blues” was right there.
“The Hitch-Hikers” by Eudora Welty: A traveling salesman struggles with the point of life after some random encounters and the death of a hitchhiker. I struggled with the point of the story, and being the sixth “meh” installment in a row, put the anthology on hiatus for awhile.
“The Peach Stone” by Paul Horgan: Sadly, it did not get better when I returned. This is a vivid depiction of the inner lives of several people driving through New Mexico on the way to bury a child (Updike seems enamored of stories consisting entirely of internal monologue). You can tell it was written by a man because a mother whose toddler died in a fire is apparently healing from her grief within 24 hours, and this episode makes a single, childless woman want to be a mother.
“That in Aleppo Once…” by Vladimir Nabokov: Another monologue, from a guy who is either out of his mind or has been gaslit by his wife. The truth of that isn’t the point, the point is symbolizing the surrealism of being a refugee in wartime. But believing his wife has been raped and making it all about him definitely didn’t endear him to me.
“The Interior Castle” by Jean Stafford: More on the endless internal monologue, this is a story of a woman in the hospital after a car accident and how much she suffers. Well, that was unpleasant.
“Miami-New York” by Martha Gellhorn: A sexual encounter on a plane during WWII. This is at least more story than monologue, but then that is a low bar.
“The Second Tree from the Corner” by E.B. White: A 5-page story about a guy going to therapy and finding it unhelpful. Meh.
Review Part 3 (stories 24-33, 1949-1967) – 9/18/25
I continue to mostly slog through this anthology; I liked a handful in this third section, but still a minority. Updike loves his tragedies, as well as his “man reflects on his life” monologues. Considered skipping a few but that seems to defeat the purpose.
“The Farmer’s Children” by Elizabeth Bishop: A tragedy full of vivid imagery, if forgettable characters.
“Death of a Favorite” by J.F. Powers: Life in the rectory from the unconvincing point-of-view of a cat. Cruelty to animals is not funny.
“The Resemblance Between a Violin Case and a Coffin” by Tennessee Williams: Trust Updike to pick a story from a famous playwright that’s still almost entirely internal monologue. When I finished it I wrote that it was the best “man looks back on his life” internal monologue so far, but it quickly proved forgettable.
“The Country Husband” by John Cheever: Updike chose the wrong Cheever (“The Enormous Radio” was right there). This long tale quickly drops its most interesting elements (the plane crash, the abuse of the Norman woman) in favor of a stereotypical suburban male midlife crisis story that peters out in the end.
“Greenleaf” by Flannery O’Connor: Finally, a good one: well-written, an authentic-feeling portrait of people and a place, with an honest-to-God plot. It’s very O’Connor: everyone is terrible in the pettiest possible ways, and it ends in tragedy. Upon first seeing commentary on how Catholic her stories are I didn’t get it, but now I do: she thinks people are so terrible that only a miracle can redeem them.
“The Ledge” by Lawrence Sargent Hall: Another vividly written tragedy. I liked the boating descriptions and at least the protagonist has some personality, but Updike’s love of tragic stories is getting old.
* “Defender of the Faith” by Philip Roth: Quite good, and thematically complex: a story about a young, recently returned WWII veteran reassigned to a boot camp, where he encounters a recruit who expects special treatment due to their shared Jewishness. One of the few that made me stop and think what it’s about (and that is interesting enough to bother discussing).
“Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers” by Stanley Elkin: Another poor choice: “The Conventional Wisdom” was memorable and striking, while this is the epitome of bland. A grocer’s first day back at work after his son’s death is relayed at great and mundane length.
* “The German Refugee” by Bernard Malamud: A good one. A college student tutors in English and ultimately befriends a man who fled the Nazis, but finds starting over is not so easy. Some good psychological complexity.
* “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates: An effective horror story with strong characterization. I read this one in school and discussion centered on devil-related symbolism that I still can’t unsee. A bit tired of every Oates work I have read focusing on punishing women for sexuality, though.
Review Part 4 (stories 34-44, 1968-1983) – 10/8/25
Again I only liked a handful in the fourth section. This book is an interesting exercise but I’ll be glad to finish it.
* “The Rotifer” by Mary Ladd Gavell: This would be a great story for a class or book club, because its structure poses a provocative question: how possible is it to save someone else from making bad relationship decisions? I tend to disagree with the implicit comparison between the three scenarios (though there’s a grain of truth to it) and think the narrator is a coward, but it was fun to see something bold and different. Shame this is Gavell’s only published story.
“Gold Coast” by John Alan McPherson: I can see why people would like this—it’s like The Door in a short story, about the indignity of getting old—but didn’t emotionally connect with it, and the narrator’s romantic relationship felt extraneous.
“The Key” by Isaac Bashevis Singer: This is a fine story about a paranoid older widow forced to encounter the world, but I think it has to be understood through a religious lens, because otherwise her epiphany doesn’t feel quite believable. Unclear whether she dies at the end.
“A City of Churches” by Donald Barthelme: What a strange little surrealist tale. I don’t think I get Barthelme, but he intrigues me.
* “How to Win” by Rosellen Brown: Excellent. A very well-written literary story showcasing the complexity of a mother’s experience in raising her young disabled child. She’s a three-dimensional person outside of that, too.
“Roses, Rhododendron” by Alice Adams: Another “looking back on childhood” story, featuring the friendship between two girls and their relationships with their own and each other’s mothers. I’m not sure of its ultimate point but I related enough to enjoy it.
“Verona: A Young Woman Speaks” by Harold Brodkey: A short character monologue that I think is meant to capture joy? It was fine.
“A Silver Dish” by Saul Bellow: A long “guy looking back on his life” story (specifically, on his relationship with his father upon the elderly father’s death) that to me did not justify the length. The father/son relationship is interesting enough but so many of these stories are just so plain in terms of prose and structure. The background radiation of misogyny and racism didn’t help.
“Gesturing” by John Updike: Supposedly Updike’s co-editor was the one who decided to include this. I think it must have been an ego-stroking move because I’m not sure why this tale of a couple’s amicable separation (despite cheating on both sides) would be noteworthy to anyone.
“The Shawl” by Cynthia Ozick: This is a short, decently effective Holocaust story that just feels out-of-place among all these domestic, navel-gazing, upper-middle-class WASP and Jewish-American stories. When Updike steps out of his comfort zone he consistently seems to go for the most brutal possible choices.
“Where I’m Calling From” by Raymond Carver: I’m not sure this peek into the lives of men at a rehab facility has a clear point either, but at least they have real problems.
Review Part 5 (stories 45-55, 1986-1998) – 11/10/25
“Janus” by Ann Beattie: A short piece but more complex than it first appears, telling a woman’s story through the lens of an object.
“The Way We Live Now” by Susan Sontag: One of the more experimental works, telling the story of a man dying of AIDS through jumbled, secondhand accounts from his large network of friends. A bit dense, but feels real; I appreciated that it’s doing something different, mirroring structurally a messy and complicated situation.
“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien: One of the few I’d read before: this is good of course, but I don’t fully connect with O’Brien’s writing, whether because it’s largely narrative summary or because he’s shaped our views of the Vietnam War to the point of feeling obvious.
* “Meneseteung” by Alice Munro: A strong, complex historical story in which a modern narrator reimagines the life of a woman trapped by society. It was worth looking up commentary for this one—especially because this volume misses the last paragraph!
“You’re Ugly, Too” by Lorrie Moore: This at first felt a little too slice-of-life for me, till I read Updike’s commentary: “radical female discontent” feels a bit patronizing and yet recontextualized the story in a helpful way.
“I Want to Live!” by Thom Jones: A very authentic-feeling, emotive story about a woman dying of cancer. The voice suits it well.
* “In the Gloaming” by Alice Elliott Dark: Another well-written death story, this time about a woman providing hospice care for her adult son. It’s lovely though, with memorable characters.
Final 4 stories reviewed in the comments due to length restrictions.
I picked this up after reading 100 Years of BASS, published 15 years later with different editors and no overlapping stories. Updike certainly snagged some gems here, albeit with some glaring omissions, “Sonny’s Blues” and “I Stand Here Ironing” in particular. Of the 16 authors included in both, I strongly agree with his choices on 6 (Lardner, Hemingway, Faulkner, Roth, Oates, and Carver); 7 could go either way (the Porter, O’Connor, Barthelme and Munro stories in both volumes are good, while I would happily ditch Anderson and Fitzgerald altogether and never quite understand Welty); and strongly disagree with 3 (what was he thinking on Cheever, Elkin and Updike?—yes, he included himself).
This volume is more gender-balanced than you might expect (25 women to 30 men), though lacking in racial diversity: out of 55 authors, 4 are Black and one Asian-American, with the volume’s cultural diversity coming mostly from Jewish and European immigrant stories. (This has changed dramatically in recent volumes of the series, and even the 2015 retrospective managed 25% authors of color.)
Overall, I am glad I read this; it contains many excellent stories, as well as new-to-me authors. That said, it still felt like a slog, mostly due to the deadly 15-story stretch in the second quarter (from the Fitzgerald through the Cheever), after which I never recovered any momentum. 100 Years of BASS is certainly more accessible—but still, there are some gems here. My top 12 are starred.
Review Part 1 (stories 1-11; 1915-1931) - 4/8/25
I was skeptical of how much I’d appreciate Updike’s taste, but at 11 out of 55 stories am agreeing with his choices. Updike is specifically interested in Americanness, including only stories set in the U.S. or featuring Americans, and these stories ask questions about the meaning of being American. These early stories have a much greater representation of immigrant characters and racial issues than in Moore’s volume, despite the increased interest in diversity between publication of the two.
* “Zelig” by Benjamin Rosenblatt: A great start to the anthology, this 6-page story packs a punch and sets the tone immediately. It features an Eastern European immigrant who wants nothing more than to go home, but ultimately forgoes his own dreams in favor of a better future for his grandson. Becoming American as surrender and loss of identity: this will not be a boosterish anthology. But it’s a moving story, with a lot of life and history packed into a few pages.
“Little Selves” by Mary Lerner: An Irish immigrant woman on her deathbed daydreams about her childhood. Vivid and well-written, maybe a little saccharine in the end. Envisioning everyone you’ve ever been as a unique person is an interesting thought.
* “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell: A great crime story set on a rural farm in the aftermath of a suspicious death. I love the women’s solidarity and perspicacity under the noses of the patronizing yet clueless men. And the dialogue, tension and slow unfolding of information are all just right, as is the ambiguous end.
“The Other Woman” by Sherwood Anderson: A monologue from a guy who cheated right before his wedding. I see that people appreciate this for its unreliable narrator and refraining from telling the reader what to think, which is fair, but it’s not best-of-the-best material to me.
* “The Golden Honeymoon” by Ring Lardner: A fun story about an elderly New Jersey couple vacationing in Florida, with a strong and believable voice and dialogue. Apparently we’re supposed to judge the narrator and perhaps his whole social milieu, but from a 2020s perspective the sheer sociability of these snowbirds’ vacation and the importance of the Rotary Club are endearing, and who would want to spend their vacation with their spouse’s ex? This guy is still the best husband in the first batch of stories.
“Blood-Burning Moon” by Jean Toomer: Interesting mostly for being a story of a lynching told by a mixed-race author in the 20s. The only real surprise is how unsympathetic the victim is, with multiple murders under his belt. Not that his victim (racist even toward the woman he’s messing with) is any better.
“The Killers” by Ernest Hemingway: A minimalist story, almost all dialogue, about killers-for-hire holding up a café. The style was distancing for me, but I can see why others would enjoy it.
“Double Birthday” by Willa Cather: Two Pennsylvania families intersect: an uncle and nephew once well-off but now in genteel poverty, and a wealthy judge and his widowed daughter. It’s well-written but I’m afraid I not only didn’t understand what this story was trying to say, I didn’t understand what it was trying to say something about. Apparently Cather also wanted people to know she didn’t think it her best.
“Wild Plums” by Grace Stone Coates: A short but evocative story in which killjoy parents wind up subtly illustrating all sorts of issues around immigration, class, community, and childhood. I don’t agree with Updike calling it a “trifle” at all.
“Theft” by Katherine Anne Porter: A short but complex story, leaving more unsaid than said, even down to the protagonist’s name. Who is this woman whose purse is stolen, and is she right to mistrust her own choices?
* “That Evening Sun Go Down” by William Faulkner: Wow, this is really good—I’ve never liked Faulkner before. A story about race, privilege and domestic violence that manages to indict the white family’s carelessness/obliviousness/callousness toward their black cook, all from the perspective of a clueless white boy. (Actually, is that kid clueless? The narrator is the haziest character in this story.) More accessible than other Faulkner I’ve read, and the characters and dialogue ring true.
Review Part 2 (stories 12-23, 1931-1948) – 6/19/25
After a promising opening, I soured hard on this anthology in the second part, only really liked the first one of this set, found most of the others dull, standard-issue and forgettable, and set aside the book for a couple months partway through. I do plan to soldier on, but may wind up abandoning the anthology if the stories don’t improve. In particular, Updike seems really enamored of stories that are all just internal monologue or narrative summary, where nothing really changes for the character.
* “Here We Are” by Dorothy Parker: Almost all dialogue, this story presents a vivid, entertaining and authentic-feeling portrait of a newlywed couple. They’re anxious and awkward and insecure about the impending sex they can’t actually talk about. This marriage seems headed for disaster.
“Crazy Sunday” by F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Fitzgerald story, ergo, an account of rich assholes I don’t care about. In this one the protagonist believes himself in love with another man’s wife, yet credits the man with her personality and all her merits. Possibly more worthwhile for those familiar with the apparently thinly-veiled Hollywood personalities portrayed.
“My Dead Brother Comes to America” by Alexander Godin: An Ellis Island story whose commentary on the dehumanizing aspects of the immigration system remains timely today, but whose characters and their histories are so blandly nonspecific as to render the whole thing quickly forgettable.
“Resurrection of a Life” by William Saroyan: An entirely forgettable story in which a guy rambles about his boyhood thoughts. I was so bored I took a break to go grocery shopping halfway through, and it’s only 10 pages long.
“Christmas Gift” by Robert Penn Warren: Vivid scene-setting but not very compelling in the character dynamics, and has not aged well. The “Christmas miracle” involves a doctor sharing a cigarette with a child and the child sharing already-licked candy with the doctor.
“Bright and Morning Star” by Richard Wright: A violent and disturbing story about police treatment of Black Communist organizers. It’s pretty convincing, though the characters are not the most memorable. But why is Updike only choosing the most gruesome stories by black writers? “Sonny’s Blues” was right there.
“The Hitch-Hikers” by Eudora Welty: A traveling salesman struggles with the point of life after some random encounters and the death of a hitchhiker. I struggled with the point of the story, and being the sixth “meh” installment in a row, put the anthology on hiatus for awhile.
“The Peach Stone” by Paul Horgan: Sadly, it did not get better when I returned. This is a vivid depiction of the inner lives of several people driving through New Mexico on the way to bury a child (Updike seems enamored of stories consisting entirely of internal monologue). You can tell it was written by a man because a mother whose toddler died in a fire is apparently healing from her grief within 24 hours, and this episode makes a single, childless woman want to be a mother.
“That in Aleppo Once…” by Vladimir Nabokov: Another monologue, from a guy who is either out of his mind or has been gaslit by his wife. The truth of that isn’t the point, the point is symbolizing the surrealism of being a refugee in wartime. But believing his wife has been raped and making it all about him definitely didn’t endear him to me.
“The Interior Castle” by Jean Stafford: More on the endless internal monologue, this is a story of a woman in the hospital after a car accident and how much she suffers. Well, that was unpleasant.
“Miami-New York” by Martha Gellhorn: A sexual encounter on a plane during WWII. This is at least more story than monologue, but then that is a low bar.
“The Second Tree from the Corner” by E.B. White: A 5-page story about a guy going to therapy and finding it unhelpful. Meh.
Review Part 3 (stories 24-33, 1949-1967) – 9/18/25
I continue to mostly slog through this anthology; I liked a handful in this third section, but still a minority. Updike loves his tragedies, as well as his “man reflects on his life” monologues. Considered skipping a few but that seems to defeat the purpose.
“The Farmer’s Children” by Elizabeth Bishop: A tragedy full of vivid imagery, if forgettable characters.
“Death of a Favorite” by J.F. Powers: Life in the rectory from the unconvincing point-of-view of a cat. Cruelty to animals is not funny.
“The Resemblance Between a Violin Case and a Coffin” by Tennessee Williams: Trust Updike to pick a story from a famous playwright that’s still almost entirely internal monologue. When I finished it I wrote that it was the best “man looks back on his life” internal monologue so far, but it quickly proved forgettable.
“The Country Husband” by John Cheever: Updike chose the wrong Cheever (“The Enormous Radio” was right there). This long tale quickly drops its most interesting elements (the plane crash, the abuse of the Norman woman) in favor of a stereotypical suburban male midlife crisis story that peters out in the end.
“Greenleaf” by Flannery O’Connor: Finally, a good one: well-written, an authentic-feeling portrait of people and a place, with an honest-to-God plot. It’s very O’Connor: everyone is terrible in the pettiest possible ways, and it ends in tragedy. Upon first seeing commentary on how Catholic her stories are I didn’t get it, but now I do: she thinks people are so terrible that only a miracle can redeem them.
“The Ledge” by Lawrence Sargent Hall: Another vividly written tragedy. I liked the boating descriptions and at least the protagonist has some personality, but Updike’s love of tragic stories is getting old.
* “Defender of the Faith” by Philip Roth: Quite good, and thematically complex: a story about a young, recently returned WWII veteran reassigned to a boot camp, where he encounters a recruit who expects special treatment due to their shared Jewishness. One of the few that made me stop and think what it’s about (and that is interesting enough to bother discussing).
“Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers” by Stanley Elkin: Another poor choice: “The Conventional Wisdom” was memorable and striking, while this is the epitome of bland. A grocer’s first day back at work after his son’s death is relayed at great and mundane length.
* “The German Refugee” by Bernard Malamud: A good one. A college student tutors in English and ultimately befriends a man who fled the Nazis, but finds starting over is not so easy. Some good psychological complexity.
* “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates: An effective horror story with strong characterization. I read this one in school and discussion centered on devil-related symbolism that I still can’t unsee. A bit tired of every Oates work I have read focusing on punishing women for sexuality, though.
Review Part 4 (stories 34-44, 1968-1983) – 10/8/25
Again I only liked a handful in the fourth section. This book is an interesting exercise but I’ll be glad to finish it.
* “The Rotifer” by Mary Ladd Gavell: This would be a great story for a class or book club, because its structure poses a provocative question: how possible is it to save someone else from making bad relationship decisions? I tend to disagree with the implicit comparison between the three scenarios (though there’s a grain of truth to it) and think the narrator is a coward, but it was fun to see something bold and different. Shame this is Gavell’s only published story.
“Gold Coast” by John Alan McPherson: I can see why people would like this—it’s like The Door in a short story, about the indignity of getting old—but didn’t emotionally connect with it, and the narrator’s romantic relationship felt extraneous.
“The Key” by Isaac Bashevis Singer: This is a fine story about a paranoid older widow forced to encounter the world, but I think it has to be understood through a religious lens, because otherwise her epiphany doesn’t feel quite believable. Unclear whether she dies at the end.
“A City of Churches” by Donald Barthelme: What a strange little surrealist tale. I don’t think I get Barthelme, but he intrigues me.
* “How to Win” by Rosellen Brown: Excellent. A very well-written literary story showcasing the complexity of a mother’s experience in raising her young disabled child. She’s a three-dimensional person outside of that, too.
“Roses, Rhododendron” by Alice Adams: Another “looking back on childhood” story, featuring the friendship between two girls and their relationships with their own and each other’s mothers. I’m not sure of its ultimate point but I related enough to enjoy it.
“Verona: A Young Woman Speaks” by Harold Brodkey: A short character monologue that I think is meant to capture joy? It was fine.
“A Silver Dish” by Saul Bellow: A long “guy looking back on his life” story (specifically, on his relationship with his father upon the elderly father’s death) that to me did not justify the length. The father/son relationship is interesting enough but so many of these stories are just so plain in terms of prose and structure. The background radiation of misogyny and racism didn’t help.
“Gesturing” by John Updike: Supposedly Updike’s co-editor was the one who decided to include this. I think it must have been an ego-stroking move because I’m not sure why this tale of a couple’s amicable separation (despite cheating on both sides) would be noteworthy to anyone.
“The Shawl” by Cynthia Ozick: This is a short, decently effective Holocaust story that just feels out-of-place among all these domestic, navel-gazing, upper-middle-class WASP and Jewish-American stories. When Updike steps out of his comfort zone he consistently seems to go for the most brutal possible choices.
“Where I’m Calling From” by Raymond Carver: I’m not sure this peek into the lives of men at a rehab facility has a clear point either, but at least they have real problems.
Review Part 5 (stories 45-55, 1986-1998) – 11/10/25
“Janus” by Ann Beattie: A short piece but more complex than it first appears, telling a woman’s story through the lens of an object.
“The Way We Live Now” by Susan Sontag: One of the more experimental works, telling the story of a man dying of AIDS through jumbled, secondhand accounts from his large network of friends. A bit dense, but feels real; I appreciated that it’s doing something different, mirroring structurally a messy and complicated situation.
“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien: One of the few I’d read before: this is good of course, but I don’t fully connect with O’Brien’s writing, whether because it’s largely narrative summary or because he’s shaped our views of the Vietnam War to the point of feeling obvious.
* “Meneseteung” by Alice Munro: A strong, complex historical story in which a modern narrator reimagines the life of a woman trapped by society. It was worth looking up commentary for this one—especially because this volume misses the last paragraph!
“You’re Ugly, Too” by Lorrie Moore: This at first felt a little too slice-of-life for me, till I read Updike’s commentary: “radical female discontent” feels a bit patronizing and yet recontextualized the story in a helpful way.
“I Want to Live!” by Thom Jones: A very authentic-feeling, emotive story about a woman dying of cancer. The voice suits it well.
* “In the Gloaming” by Alice Elliott Dark: Another well-written death story, this time about a woman providing hospice care for her adult son. It’s lovely though, with memorable characters.
Final 4 stories reviewed in the comments due to length restrictions.
June 2, 2020
The Best American Short Stories of the Century
This collection was put together in 1999 based on a century of the Best American Short Stories Annuals. The editors, led by Updike, chose the fifty-five that they felt were the best of the best. Of course there is no single book that includes all the greatest American short stories but this is what they set out to do.
With these caveats here are the 15 stories that I considered the best of this volume — five star material. Each of these stories blew me away when I read them for the first time. Dramatic, grave, poignant, original, quintessentially American are all some of the adjectives that immediately come to mind. Most of these stories are very well known outside of this anthology.
5 star short stories
1. A Jury of Her Peers (1917) - Susan Glaspell. A murder investigation of a husband where only the wife and a neighbor woman understand , through their tacit conversation, what actually occurred.
2. The Other Woman (1920) - Sherwood Anderson. While Anderson’s stories The Egg, Death in the Woods and those in Winesburg are more famous, this story on infidelity resonates.
3. The Killers (1927) - Ernest Hemingway. Classic thriller about looking the other way — modernized through the ubiquity of the roadside diner.
4. Theft (1930) - Katherine Anne Porter. Porter was a master of the short story. The story is one of class distinction that arises with the theft of a purse.
5. My Dead Brother Comes to America (1934) - Alexander Godin. Beautifully written and devastating story about an immigrant family arriving in America.
6. Christmas Gift (1938) - Robert Penn Warren. Although probably set in the 1930’s of the South, it could have been any rural area in 19th century America. An impoverished young child rushes to town to fetch the doctor to help his pregnant cousin.
7. Miami-New York (1948) by Martha Gellhorn. Clever story about a well to do woman in the early days of commercial flights. She begins fantasizing about a military man sitting next to her on her flight back home. He is fantasizing about her as well.
8. The Resemblance of a Violin Case and a Coffin (1951) - Tennessee Williams. Perhaps my favorite short story of all time. It is the story of a gay boy who is enamored with his sister’s boyfriend.
9. The Country Husband (1955) - John Cheever. Cheever was America’s quintessential writer on early suburbia. This morality tale is about a husband who wants to pursue his lecherous thoughts with the babysitter.
10. The Ledge (1960) - Lawrence Sargent Hall. Devastating and dramatic story about a duck hunting expedition.
11. Defender of the Faith (1960) - Philip Roth. Roth’s controversial story about a well connected Army infantryman who is Jewish and expects his Jewish commander to give him special treatment.
12. A Silver Dish (1979) - Saul Bellow. A ne’er de well father uses his son’s connections to commit petty crimes. A story that highlights adult children who are punished for their fathers’ sins.
13. Where I’m Calling From (1983) - Raymond Carver. A story within a story about rehab that only Carver could tell.
14. The Things They Carried (1987) - Tim O’Brien. Perhaps the greatest and well known short story ever written about Vietnam.
15. I Want to Live! (1993) - Thom Jones. Devastating story about battling cancer. For me this was the most emotional and personal story in the collection.
4.5 stars. This is a powerful anthology. Not all of the stories are amazing but there are a lot gems in this collection. I am glad I read it. Highly recommended.
This collection was put together in 1999 based on a century of the Best American Short Stories Annuals. The editors, led by Updike, chose the fifty-five that they felt were the best of the best. Of course there is no single book that includes all the greatest American short stories but this is what they set out to do.
With these caveats here are the 15 stories that I considered the best of this volume — five star material. Each of these stories blew me away when I read them for the first time. Dramatic, grave, poignant, original, quintessentially American are all some of the adjectives that immediately come to mind. Most of these stories are very well known outside of this anthology.
5 star short stories
1. A Jury of Her Peers (1917) - Susan Glaspell. A murder investigation of a husband where only the wife and a neighbor woman understand , through their tacit conversation, what actually occurred.
2. The Other Woman (1920) - Sherwood Anderson. While Anderson’s stories The Egg, Death in the Woods and those in Winesburg are more famous, this story on infidelity resonates.
3. The Killers (1927) - Ernest Hemingway. Classic thriller about looking the other way — modernized through the ubiquity of the roadside diner.
4. Theft (1930) - Katherine Anne Porter. Porter was a master of the short story. The story is one of class distinction that arises with the theft of a purse.
5. My Dead Brother Comes to America (1934) - Alexander Godin. Beautifully written and devastating story about an immigrant family arriving in America.
6. Christmas Gift (1938) - Robert Penn Warren. Although probably set in the 1930’s of the South, it could have been any rural area in 19th century America. An impoverished young child rushes to town to fetch the doctor to help his pregnant cousin.
7. Miami-New York (1948) by Martha Gellhorn. Clever story about a well to do woman in the early days of commercial flights. She begins fantasizing about a military man sitting next to her on her flight back home. He is fantasizing about her as well.
8. The Resemblance of a Violin Case and a Coffin (1951) - Tennessee Williams. Perhaps my favorite short story of all time. It is the story of a gay boy who is enamored with his sister’s boyfriend.
9. The Country Husband (1955) - John Cheever. Cheever was America’s quintessential writer on early suburbia. This morality tale is about a husband who wants to pursue his lecherous thoughts with the babysitter.
10. The Ledge (1960) - Lawrence Sargent Hall. Devastating and dramatic story about a duck hunting expedition.
11. Defender of the Faith (1960) - Philip Roth. Roth’s controversial story about a well connected Army infantryman who is Jewish and expects his Jewish commander to give him special treatment.
12. A Silver Dish (1979) - Saul Bellow. A ne’er de well father uses his son’s connections to commit petty crimes. A story that highlights adult children who are punished for their fathers’ sins.
13. Where I’m Calling From (1983) - Raymond Carver. A story within a story about rehab that only Carver could tell.
14. The Things They Carried (1987) - Tim O’Brien. Perhaps the greatest and well known short story ever written about Vietnam.
15. I Want to Live! (1993) - Thom Jones. Devastating story about battling cancer. For me this was the most emotional and personal story in the collection.
4.5 stars. This is a powerful anthology. Not all of the stories are amazing but there are a lot gems in this collection. I am glad I read it. Highly recommended.
May 29, 2020
An incredibly un-putdownable selection of the best short fiction writing of the 20th century. It’s rare I consider short story collections page turners, but there was just one masterful read after another. Of course, there were a couple of clunkers, but I loved over 90% of the stories and considering this collection is a door stopper, that’s pretty good!! Bravo John Updike (RIP) for a superb job editing this anthology. It can’t be easy choosing 56 stories to call the “best” spanning 100 years.
April 21, 2008
It can't be easy to choose the best American short stories of the 20th Century. Even if you have over 700 pages to fill (like this collection) classic stories are bound to be left out. Although there are plenty of good stories here from canonical writers, I had a few problems with this anthology. First of all, some of the stories were not very good, and I can't help feeling that they were chosen because they fit some kind of needed token representation. It's a crime that Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" is not in this collection (surely one of the best American short stories ever written?); and if we are going to talk quotas, why not include a Science-fiction story? Towards the end, there's a story by Alice Munro, which is kinda funny when you consider that she's the quintessential Canadian writer who has, by the way, never lived in America. And here's a question for you: if somebody asked you to choose the best short stories of the century, would you include one of your own?
November 11, 2021
A better title would be: "John Updike's Random Short Story Roulette"
There a few great short stories here, but most of them are mediocre at best. This is most definitely NOT a collection of the best American short stories.
If you are looking for a great short story collection, I recommend looking elsewhere.
There a few great short stories here, but most of them are mediocre at best. This is most definitely NOT a collection of the best American short stories.
If you are looking for a great short story collection, I recommend looking elsewhere.
August 15, 2007
Updike's The Best American Short Stories of the Century underrepresents humor and "genre" fiction, and for every drop of optimism there is a bucket of pessimism - so, it's a typical literary fiction collection. These are not the best-told stories, nor the most interesting stories. Those Updike selects are chosen for their literary value, their intellectual depth and understanding of more delicate elements of the craft, like religious allusions or flexible voice. Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eudora Welty, Tim O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Wright, Dorothy Parker, E.B. White, William Faulkner, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Joyce Carol Oates and, of course, John Updike are represented, along with dozens more literary luminaries. You're not supposed to agree with Updike's selections (I would have chosen other Wright, Welty and O'Connor stories), but this is a great resource for beginners who want to understand the American literary short story, or who are looking for new writers to explore. Anyone who recognizes every name on the Table of Contents, though, is overqualified and shouldn't pick this up - you probably own, have read, or will disagree with the addition of each story that's in in here.
December 4, 2011
OK I know it's cliche to rate this five stars but for the record I normally don't rate BASS and BAE that well.. BUT here I got a chance to read writer's I've long heard so much about but hadn't really read - like Joyce Carol Oates (ridonculous, time-less story in here, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, about a pretty girl who gets lots of attention but it eventually gets her in a jam), and F. Scott Fitzgerald, because really I'd long been in the camp who'd read Gatsby and nothing else of his. His story Crazy Sunday was so good I stopped after each page and re-read, to lengthen my time with it. Also nice to get a small dose of a few masters who I of course respect but couldn't sit through a whole novel with - like Nabokov, Saul Bellow, Hemingway. Also amazing samplings of Roth, Updike, Lorrie Moore, and other gems. If there's any flaw it's that Updike doesn't give any props to ethnographic rock stars who started to come alive in the 90s like Junot Diaz, Jhumpa Lahiri, Edwidge Danticat - but surely they'll get their cred in the next century's tome.
November 18, 2008
Many of my favorite authors were in here, Ernest hemingway, William Faulkner, Joyce carol Oates, Richard Wright, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams, Robert Penn Warren and many more I plan on reading in the future. This was a wonderful collection of short stories from crime, love, illness, death, racism, and humor.
May 22, 2007
This is a truly amazing collection! My mom and I each had a copy and read it at roughly the same time. (My mom, of course, finished first!) I eagerly await each yearly edition of the Best American Short Stories, so this volume was a special treat for me. One of the things that surprised me about this book was just how 'American' it is. John Updike notes in his introduction that he tried not just to choose stories written in America, but stories that truly tell us something ABOUT America. I think that he succeeded completely. Each of these stories moves you down the path of American history via a window into a small corner of the 'American' experience. This book is not only full of powerful, diverse stories but also provieds a good introduction to many well known authors.
Whether you plow through it like I did, or read a story here and there, this is a book you should have on your shelf.
Whether you plow through it like I did, or read a story here and there, this is a book you should have on your shelf.
July 27, 2012
I would be hard-pressed to say anything negative about a collection of short stories selected by John Updike. This collection of stories are character and era-defining, stunning classics of American short story literature. With pieces from classic American authors like Faulkner, O'Brian, and Lardner, it does not disappoint. I was excited to read and reread each story to pick up differnt details and subtlities; each author had his/her own way of expressing the period sentiment.
My opinion of this anthology is that it's an excellent and exciting collection of period literature. An excellent snapshot of our nation at the time the stories were written.
Of all the stories written, my favourite was Updike's "Gesturing". Strong and vivid writing technique, and a nice modern approach to the family system.
My opinion of this anthology is that it's an excellent and exciting collection of period literature. An excellent snapshot of our nation at the time the stories were written.
Of all the stories written, my favourite was Updike's "Gesturing". Strong and vivid writing technique, and a nice modern approach to the family system.
June 8, 2013
This ought have been called the "Best American Short Stories About New York WASPs, Jewish Males and the Dark South." From Flannery O' Connor we get "Greenleaf", a questionable and surely non-representative selection; from Hemingway "The Killers", probably among the lesser third from The Snows of Kilmanjaro. Also, I'm pretty sure Alice Munro is Canadian, yet John O' Hara finds no place here (both are semi-explained in Updike's introduction--the former hailing from "Anglophone Canada" (how does this fit into either a pan-continental or nationalist reading of the term "American"?), the latter never having qualified for a yearly Best Of (in which case the book ought have been titled "Best of a Century of The Best of American Short Stories" but Updike, one presumes, has no more love for recursive titles than the next man, and thus we Press On)). Bah!
January 20, 2017
Technically all the stories were written perfectly. However, I was disappointed that the majority of them were depressing. In addition, it seemed as if some of the authors were more interested in writing techniques than creating characters or stories that drew you in. This is unfortunate because there's not much room in a short story for development of plot or character depth. I was surprised I didn't care for some stories written by big names, while others I was relieved that they came through for me by writing something that drew me in.
Willa Cather & Tennessee Williams were two that I enjoyed. I was thankfully rewarded with also liking an author I had not read before: Alice Adams. I liked her short story so much I'm going to look up her other works & read those. So, with that, there was some good that came out of reading this large collection.
Willa Cather & Tennessee Williams were two that I enjoyed. I was thankfully rewarded with also liking an author I had not read before: Alice Adams. I liked her short story so much I'm going to look up her other works & read those. So, with that, there was some good that came out of reading this large collection.
February 20, 2018
Some of these stories were amazing, and others were amazingly depressing.
November 19, 2021
UPDATED REVIEW: November 18, 2021
The Best American Short Stories of the Century is one of the absolute greatest single-volume collections of short stories you will find anywhere. You might not like everything here, but it is a pretty fair representation of what has happened in American short fiction from roughly 1900 to 2000. There are fifty-five pieces here, and if you should think fifty-five stories could not possibly capture everything, you'd be right. But if you want something more comprehensive, then get The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction . You'll get plenty of American stuff as well as a great big wide swath of international short fiction.
The first time I rated this four stars. Now I'm rating it five. Not that it matters too much, does it?
I hope to revisit this collection in life again and again and again...
ORIGINAL REVIEW: September 4, 2018
Here's why you should read The Best American Short Stories of the Century: it's a good-faith attempt to offer up the best American stories of the twentieth century. All fifty-five (55?! what a number) of these stories were curated from the previous volumes of The Best American Short Stories series. Glass half empty, of course some stories were missed. Glass half full, imagine what it took for just one of these stories to make it into this set of fifty-five. As John Updike explains in his introduction, to arrive in this book, a story first had to make it into a major magazine or journal among the hundreds of thousands of stories that are submitted every year. Then the year after it was published, the story had to be selected as one of twenty best to make it into The Best American Short Stories series. There are two-thousand stories total published in the series, and so the story, in moving down through all the filters, was further narrowed down to one in about two hundred. And then after that it had to be selected as one of fifty-five. How can the stories that are selected not be good?
If you don't think the stories are good, you at least have to reckon with the selection. You'll find some usual suspects in this book: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner. Then there are the classic figures we ought to know beyond basic high-school literacy. Knowing these folks would be like knowing a little about fine wine: Katherine Anne Porter, Richard Wright, E.B. White. And we have some of the contemporary or semi-contemporary heavy-hitters like Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, Cynthia Ozick, Raymond Carver, Tim O'Brien, Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore.
You may find yourself questioning some of the stories that made it in here. I did, and I'm someone who reads more short stories than your average person, and I'd call myself semi-literate among people who read short stories quote-unquote seriously. Some of this of course amount to taste. I, for instance, have never been moved by Donald Barthelme, and yet his "A City of Churches" makes it in here. Some stories, I downright didn't like at all, like Thom Jones' "I Want to Live!" Yet I'm glad I read some other stories, because they surprised me. I would have figured that Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" were in here, and yet the editors choose O'Connor's "Greenleaf," which I don't know that I'd read before and which I think is fantastic. Plus I discovered a lot of writers I wasn't familiar with but who I think are great. I absolutely loved Martha Gellhorn's "Miami-New York" (it's got a slow start but really takes off). I was moved by Bernard Malamud's "The German Refugee," probably the best story in the collection. I felt great empathy for the old woman in Isaac Bashevis Singer's "The Key." Gellhorn, Malamud, and Singer were all new to me, as was Dorothy Parker, but after all this, at some point I plan to read more of their work.
Anyway, this is all just to say I really liked this collection's selections, and even when I didn't, it was fun to form my own opinions.
The Best American Short Stories of the Century is one of the absolute greatest single-volume collections of short stories you will find anywhere. You might not like everything here, but it is a pretty fair representation of what has happened in American short fiction from roughly 1900 to 2000. There are fifty-five pieces here, and if you should think fifty-five stories could not possibly capture everything, you'd be right. But if you want something more comprehensive, then get The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction . You'll get plenty of American stuff as well as a great big wide swath of international short fiction.
The first time I rated this four stars. Now I'm rating it five. Not that it matters too much, does it?
I hope to revisit this collection in life again and again and again...
ORIGINAL REVIEW: September 4, 2018
Here's why you should read The Best American Short Stories of the Century: it's a good-faith attempt to offer up the best American stories of the twentieth century. All fifty-five (55?! what a number) of these stories were curated from the previous volumes of The Best American Short Stories series. Glass half empty, of course some stories were missed. Glass half full, imagine what it took for just one of these stories to make it into this set of fifty-five. As John Updike explains in his introduction, to arrive in this book, a story first had to make it into a major magazine or journal among the hundreds of thousands of stories that are submitted every year. Then the year after it was published, the story had to be selected as one of twenty best to make it into The Best American Short Stories series. There are two-thousand stories total published in the series, and so the story, in moving down through all the filters, was further narrowed down to one in about two hundred. And then after that it had to be selected as one of fifty-five. How can the stories that are selected not be good?
If you don't think the stories are good, you at least have to reckon with the selection. You'll find some usual suspects in this book: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner. Then there are the classic figures we ought to know beyond basic high-school literacy. Knowing these folks would be like knowing a little about fine wine: Katherine Anne Porter, Richard Wright, E.B. White. And we have some of the contemporary or semi-contemporary heavy-hitters like Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, Cynthia Ozick, Raymond Carver, Tim O'Brien, Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore.
You may find yourself questioning some of the stories that made it in here. I did, and I'm someone who reads more short stories than your average person, and I'd call myself semi-literate among people who read short stories quote-unquote seriously. Some of this of course amount to taste. I, for instance, have never been moved by Donald Barthelme, and yet his "A City of Churches" makes it in here. Some stories, I downright didn't like at all, like Thom Jones' "I Want to Live!" Yet I'm glad I read some other stories, because they surprised me. I would have figured that Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" were in here, and yet the editors choose O'Connor's "Greenleaf," which I don't know that I'd read before and which I think is fantastic. Plus I discovered a lot of writers I wasn't familiar with but who I think are great. I absolutely loved Martha Gellhorn's "Miami-New York" (it's got a slow start but really takes off). I was moved by Bernard Malamud's "The German Refugee," probably the best story in the collection. I felt great empathy for the old woman in Isaac Bashevis Singer's "The Key." Gellhorn, Malamud, and Singer were all new to me, as was Dorothy Parker, but after all this, at some point I plan to read more of their work.
Anyway, this is all just to say I really liked this collection's selections, and even when I didn't, it was fun to form my own opinions.
August 23, 2009
What I learned from this book... Edward O'Brien, who started the annual Best American Short Stories, saw the virtue in our diversity as a nation being represented so well in a distinctly American literature. So from the intro I learned that the short story form is an American genre (think Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, etc) and it has been mostly dismissed by the rest of the literary world for lacking "sophistication and technique".
The introductions are given by the year's guest editor and this one is John Updike. Choosing from 200, he picked 56 stories that he felt best mirror the realities of American life. I never (ever) thought of short stories as a news medium, another thing I learned. I liked that Updike took each decade and reminded the reader to keep in mind what was going on in society and the world because these influences do bleed through. So, many stories that I wanted to dismiss as just stupid or self indulgent, now I thought more about understanding.
My favorites: Willa Cather's Double Birthday (1929)
Death of a Favorite, JF Powers (1951)
Defender of the Faith, Philip Roth (1960)
Roses, Rhododendron by Alice Adams (1976)
Alice Munro's Meneseteung (1989)
and In the Gloaming from 1994 by Alice Elliott Dark
From the 1915 to 1999 stories here that I liked least I guess are the ones that are more extreme in language, violence and creepiness. Updike wrote in the intro, "The American experience, story after story insisted, has been brutal and hard." Ugh - 1923's Blood-Burning Moon by Jean Toomer & 1994's Public Library by Carolyn Ferrell are proofs to this point.
The introductions are given by the year's guest editor and this one is John Updike. Choosing from 200, he picked 56 stories that he felt best mirror the realities of American life. I never (ever) thought of short stories as a news medium, another thing I learned. I liked that Updike took each decade and reminded the reader to keep in mind what was going on in society and the world because these influences do bleed through. So, many stories that I wanted to dismiss as just stupid or self indulgent, now I thought more about understanding.
My favorites: Willa Cather's Double Birthday (1929)
Death of a Favorite, JF Powers (1951)
Defender of the Faith, Philip Roth (1960)
Roses, Rhododendron by Alice Adams (1976)
Alice Munro's Meneseteung (1989)
and In the Gloaming from 1994 by Alice Elliott Dark
From the 1915 to 1999 stories here that I liked least I guess are the ones that are more extreme in language, violence and creepiness. Updike wrote in the intro, "The American experience, story after story insisted, has been brutal and hard." Ugh - 1923's Blood-Burning Moon by Jean Toomer & 1994's Public Library by Carolyn Ferrell are proofs to this point.
January 24, 2011
This book has been my occasional bedtime reading material since the middle of September (OK, there was a while when I wasn’t reading before going to sleep). The Best American Short Story volumes have been publishing the best American short stories for each year since 1915; and this volume contains the editors’ opinion of the best fifty-five stories, from “Zelig” by Benjamin Rosenblatt in 1915 to “The Half-Skinned Steer” by Annie Proulx in 1998. Some of these stories I have encountered before in various anthologies, but many stories I had never read before; and I think this is a very good book to have by one’s nightstand, as these are stories that you not only remember, but think about for days afterwards.
I can only review a short=story volume by noting the stories that I especially liked; and in chronological order, those stories would include “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell (1917), “Here We Are” by Dorothy Parker (1931), “Bright and Morning Star” by Richard Wright (1939), “The Farmer’s Children” by Elizabeth Bishop (1949), “The Ledge” by Lawrence Sargent Hall (1960), “A City of Churches” by Donald Barthelme (1973), “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien (1987), “I Want To Live!” by Thom Jones (1993), and “Proper Library” by Carolyn Ferrell (1994).
I can attest, having read each of the fifty-five stories in this volume, that I feel like I have done something of value by reading this book; and I am glad that I came to possess this volume, at what time I know not, but it was a happy impulse when and where I purchased it.
I can only review a short=story volume by noting the stories that I especially liked; and in chronological order, those stories would include “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell (1917), “Here We Are” by Dorothy Parker (1931), “Bright and Morning Star” by Richard Wright (1939), “The Farmer’s Children” by Elizabeth Bishop (1949), “The Ledge” by Lawrence Sargent Hall (1960), “A City of Churches” by Donald Barthelme (1973), “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien (1987), “I Want To Live!” by Thom Jones (1993), and “Proper Library” by Carolyn Ferrell (1994).
I can attest, having read each of the fifty-five stories in this volume, that I feel like I have done something of value by reading this book; and I am glad that I came to possess this volume, at what time I know not, but it was a happy impulse when and where I purchased it.
January 2, 2019
Echoing other reviews - this collection of short stories is not even close to meeting its title's promise. But, there were some solid stories in here (as well as some very plain ones). My favorite kind of short story usually includes twists at the end (RE: Roald Dahl). However, what this collection lacked in excitement it made up for in its broad overview of humanity.
It was rich in its viewpoints, and included a story about a janitor learning about people from their trash, a story about dying people, a story about a man confused about his love interests, a mother conflicted about her tyrant of a boy, a story about a co-philandering married couple, a story about a homeless murderer, a story about a just-married couple wracked by jealousy and distrust, a story about a white girl unlearning her father's racism, a story about a deathly poor mother of an infant, a brain surgery patient recalling her life during the surgery, a story about an intelligent but underachieving gay black boy living in a poor neighborhood, and so on.
My favorite short stories from this collection were (in no particular order):
• How to Win (Rosellen Brown),
• The Other Woman (Sherwood Anderson),
• The German Refugee (Bernard Malamud), and
• The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien).
I would have given four or five stars to these four stories, but there were some real two-star stinkers and a lot of three-star blah fests.
It was rich in its viewpoints, and included a story about a janitor learning about people from their trash, a story about dying people, a story about a man confused about his love interests, a mother conflicted about her tyrant of a boy, a story about a co-philandering married couple, a story about a homeless murderer, a story about a just-married couple wracked by jealousy and distrust, a story about a white girl unlearning her father's racism, a story about a deathly poor mother of an infant, a brain surgery patient recalling her life during the surgery, a story about an intelligent but underachieving gay black boy living in a poor neighborhood, and so on.
My favorite short stories from this collection were (in no particular order):
• How to Win (Rosellen Brown),
• The Other Woman (Sherwood Anderson),
• The German Refugee (Bernard Malamud), and
• The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien).
I would have given four or five stars to these four stories, but there were some real two-star stinkers and a lot of three-star blah fests.
April 23, 2009
First you should know I've always loved short stories. The really great ones seem to have all the richness and plot and feeling of a novel, but wrapped up in a few short pages. So it's a challenging genre to do well, sort of like the famous apology from Blaise Pascal for writing a long letter because he "lacked the time to make it short." This book is specifically American stories published in the 20th century, and you can imagine the process they must have gone through to narrow down the list. I can't resist listing a few that I enjoyed most:
"Little Selves" by Mary Lerner
"Wild Plums" by Grace Stone Coates
"My Dead Brother Comes to America" by Alexander Godin
"In the Gloaming" by Alice Elliott Dark
They're not all happy stories, and some will rip your heart out. But they're all poignant and impactful and beautiful. Sort of like life I guess.
"Little Selves" by Mary Lerner
"Wild Plums" by Grace Stone Coates
"My Dead Brother Comes to America" by Alexander Godin
"In the Gloaming" by Alice Elliott Dark
They're not all happy stories, and some will rip your heart out. But they're all poignant and impactful and beautiful. Sort of like life I guess.
January 18, 2011
Short stories! What could be better reading material for someone with a head cold, mild general malaise, and the attention span of a five-year-old?
There actually is an answer to this question, and it's "comic books." But I'm fresh out, so Updike's favorites will have to tide me over.
There actually is an answer to this question, and it's "comic books." But I'm fresh out, so Updike's favorites will have to tide me over.
April 12, 2010
If you only read one of these stories, read "I Want to Live!" By Thom Jones.
May 26, 2012
كتاب رائع من خلاله نرى كيفية تطور القصة القصيرة الأمريكية خلال القرن الماضي
December 28, 2018
A good anthology but where was O. Henry, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, and Max Steele?
June 16, 2022
As other reviewers have noted this collection should properly be titled John Updikes' favorite Short Stories of the Century. Other than that this is essentially what it says on the tin, a collection of short stories, from mostly American authors, spanning the years 1917 to 1997.
Overall I found this collection to be a bit dull. There was not enough variety thematically or tonally to make these stories all that interesting. I was introduced to a number of Jewish authors who I would like to investigate further, but their stories selected for this collection didn't really speak to me in any profound way.
As I look through the index of this book I have a hard time remembering exactly what happened in many of the short stories in this collection, even though I took the time to read all of them- with the exception of Hemingway and Fitzgerald's entries.
I originally picked up this book to read Joyce Carol Oates "Where are you going, Where have you Been" which was recommended to me by GR friend Traveller. I went ahead and read the rest of the book to satisfy my curiosity. I did find a handful of interesting stories and learn the names of new authors I want to discover so it wasn't a complete waste of time, but given that this collection is 800 pages there wasn't enough content that I enjoyed in this book.
Here are the entries I enjoyed and would have given a four or five star rating.
A Jury of Her Peers - Susan Glaspell
My Dead Brother Comes to America - Alexander Godin
The Interior Castle - Jean Stafford
The Farmer's Children - Elizabeth Bishop
The Resemblance Between a Violin Case and a Coffin - Tennesse Williams
The German Refugee - Bernard Malamud
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? - Joyce Carol Oates
The Rotifer - Mary Ladd Gavell
How to Win - Rosellen Brown
Proper Library - Carolyn Ferrell
Overall I found this collection to be a bit dull. There was not enough variety thematically or tonally to make these stories all that interesting. I was introduced to a number of Jewish authors who I would like to investigate further, but their stories selected for this collection didn't really speak to me in any profound way.
As I look through the index of this book I have a hard time remembering exactly what happened in many of the short stories in this collection, even though I took the time to read all of them- with the exception of Hemingway and Fitzgerald's entries.
I originally picked up this book to read Joyce Carol Oates "Where are you going, Where have you Been" which was recommended to me by GR friend Traveller. I went ahead and read the rest of the book to satisfy my curiosity. I did find a handful of interesting stories and learn the names of new authors I want to discover so it wasn't a complete waste of time, but given that this collection is 800 pages there wasn't enough content that I enjoyed in this book.
Here are the entries I enjoyed and would have given a four or five star rating.
A Jury of Her Peers - Susan Glaspell
My Dead Brother Comes to America - Alexander Godin
The Interior Castle - Jean Stafford
The Farmer's Children - Elizabeth Bishop
The Resemblance Between a Violin Case and a Coffin - Tennesse Williams
The German Refugee - Bernard Malamud
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? - Joyce Carol Oates
The Rotifer - Mary Ladd Gavell
How to Win - Rosellen Brown
Proper Library - Carolyn Ferrell
December 31, 2021
A long slow adventure over the past century. How I do enjoy a gem of a short story and this book was chock full. What a pleasure!
January 28, 2023
A marvelous collection of American short stories, selected from the stories published in the annual volumes of Best American Short Stories between 1915 (when it started) through 1999. These annual collections, in turn, are the result of an exhaustive process, a review of short stories published in that particular year. This collection is a kind of who’s who of famous writers, providing the reader with a great way to sample writers you think you should read but may never get around to reading. That’s certainly true for me. I like also that several writers are completely obscure, but wrote an excellent story.
There is no science fiction, fantasy, or supernatural - except for a story by Donald Barthelme. Many stories reflect a variety of American experiences, so the book is a tour through the 20th Century. One strength of the collection are several stories on the struggles of immigrants to adjust to a new life in America, including Mary Lerner (a dying woman’s reverie of her magical girlhood in Ireland) and Benjamin Rosenblatt (a Russian peasant who is not adapting to the New World, still finds a way to make his life meaningful). Stories by Ernest Hemingway and Joyce Carol Oates convey the sheer terror inflicted by criminals who enjoy their work. Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Harold Brodkey, Philip Roth write about the Jewish experience; most memorable are the Jewish scoundrels portrayed by Roth and Bellow. John Cheever has a devastating tale of moral rot in suburbia. And there are too many more interesting stories to mention.
My favorites:
Grace Stone Coates, “Wild Plums” — a young girl learns about class distinctions
Susan Glaspell, “A Jury of Her Peers” — an entertaining yarn with a strong feminist twist. A middle aged woman in a small town examines a suspicious death
Willa Cather, “Double Birthday” — a sharply observed story of a judge with a rigid disdain for two persons who lost their fortunes; the pathos, rituals, and perspectives of the two individuals fallen in status; and a wealthy lady who tries to bridge the gap
James Alan McPherson, “Gold Coast” — a black student who feels out of place at Harvard, working as a janitor to pay his tuition, and his experiences with the alcoholic Irish head janitor who takes him under his wing. The impact of race is a major part of the story, but its even more about the relationship between two idiosyncratic, lonely individuals.
Richard Wright, “Bright and Morning Star” — black and white communists heroically face KKK-style terror in the Deep South, a part of history I was not aware of.
Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried” — powerful memories of soldiers of the Vietnam war
Also among my favorites are wonderfully comic tales by Ring Lardner (tensions among conventional people on vacation), Dorothy Parker (a newly wedded couple where the man is blissfully unaware of how difficult his wife will prove to be), J.F. Powers (a shrewd and keenly intelligent cat is at the center of a vicious power struggle at a Catholic Church), and Martha Gellhorn (a sophisticated journalist finds herself attracted to an unsophisticated, happy go lucky fellow during a long plane trip).
I give the book 4.5 stars because there are a group of stories that are just depressing. The ones I didn’t appreciate (although very well-done) were by Elizabeth Bishop and Lawrence Sargent Hall (events move inexorably to tragedy); Cynthia Ozick (mother and daughter in a concentration camp); Jean Toomer (racist terror culminating in a lynching); Jean Stafford (horrible results of a car accident); and Thom Jones (a young man dying). I understand the need to not forget a legacy of racism in lynchings and the holocaust. But I wonder what the point is for the other stories where everything is grim. Tragedy can be a critique of society, reveal moral dilemmas, and involve interesting people and situations. These stories are unrelentingly bleak.
There is no science fiction, fantasy, or supernatural - except for a story by Donald Barthelme. Many stories reflect a variety of American experiences, so the book is a tour through the 20th Century. One strength of the collection are several stories on the struggles of immigrants to adjust to a new life in America, including Mary Lerner (a dying woman’s reverie of her magical girlhood in Ireland) and Benjamin Rosenblatt (a Russian peasant who is not adapting to the New World, still finds a way to make his life meaningful). Stories by Ernest Hemingway and Joyce Carol Oates convey the sheer terror inflicted by criminals who enjoy their work. Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Harold Brodkey, Philip Roth write about the Jewish experience; most memorable are the Jewish scoundrels portrayed by Roth and Bellow. John Cheever has a devastating tale of moral rot in suburbia. And there are too many more interesting stories to mention.
My favorites:
Grace Stone Coates, “Wild Plums” — a young girl learns about class distinctions
Susan Glaspell, “A Jury of Her Peers” — an entertaining yarn with a strong feminist twist. A middle aged woman in a small town examines a suspicious death
Willa Cather, “Double Birthday” — a sharply observed story of a judge with a rigid disdain for two persons who lost their fortunes; the pathos, rituals, and perspectives of the two individuals fallen in status; and a wealthy lady who tries to bridge the gap
James Alan McPherson, “Gold Coast” — a black student who feels out of place at Harvard, working as a janitor to pay his tuition, and his experiences with the alcoholic Irish head janitor who takes him under his wing. The impact of race is a major part of the story, but its even more about the relationship between two idiosyncratic, lonely individuals.
Richard Wright, “Bright and Morning Star” — black and white communists heroically face KKK-style terror in the Deep South, a part of history I was not aware of.
Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried” — powerful memories of soldiers of the Vietnam war
Also among my favorites are wonderfully comic tales by Ring Lardner (tensions among conventional people on vacation), Dorothy Parker (a newly wedded couple where the man is blissfully unaware of how difficult his wife will prove to be), J.F. Powers (a shrewd and keenly intelligent cat is at the center of a vicious power struggle at a Catholic Church), and Martha Gellhorn (a sophisticated journalist finds herself attracted to an unsophisticated, happy go lucky fellow during a long plane trip).
I give the book 4.5 stars because there are a group of stories that are just depressing. The ones I didn’t appreciate (although very well-done) were by Elizabeth Bishop and Lawrence Sargent Hall (events move inexorably to tragedy); Cynthia Ozick (mother and daughter in a concentration camp); Jean Toomer (racist terror culminating in a lynching); Jean Stafford (horrible results of a car accident); and Thom Jones (a young man dying). I understand the need to not forget a legacy of racism in lynchings and the holocaust. But I wonder what the point is for the other stories where everything is grim. Tragedy can be a critique of society, reveal moral dilemmas, and involve interesting people and situations. These stories are unrelentingly bleak.
October 17, 2021
I can't believe I read the whole thing, basically. What a journey. I highly recommend doing what I did, and just kind of leaving this book lying around for a month or two but actually reading *every* story, in order, to experience the Progress of the American Century. (Ahem.) Highlights include:
*Famous authors! Wheee!! All the cool kids are here, from Hemingway & Faulkner to Cather & Fitzgerald. You got your Welty, your Porter, your Roth, plus your Houston/Proulx/McPherson/Carver/Beattie...you name it.
*Tracing the arc of the U.S. century's history: immigrants, war, wives, war again, Jews, husbands, a little more war, experimenting, psychodrama.
*Asking yourself: When will the use of the n-word stop? I recommend placing a bet before you commence reading as to which year's story will be the last to include this deplorable term (admittedly, usually in Southern-set dialogue, often spoken by black characters and written by black authors)? You might be surprised by the answers.
*The age-old loose definition of "short" when it comes to short stories, although I don't think 32 pages can be considered a short story by anyone's definition...
I know some people hate reading short stories. But it is really interesting to go read a bunch of them, particularly gathered like this as they are, after maybe not having read this many short stories since high school, or ever.
p.s. I just realized I should tell you my favorites!
Hands down, my #1 is Susan Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers." Wow.
Also enjoyed immensely:
"Theft" by Katharine Anne Porter
"The Golden Honeymoon" by Ring Lardner
"The Key" by Isaac Bashevis Singer
"The Farmer's Children" by Elizabeth Bishop
And there were other good ones by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eudora Welty, Mary Lerner, etc.
If you just want the weird ones, go for Donald Barthelme, Lorrie Moore, E.B. White, and Mary Ladd Gavell.
*Famous authors! Wheee!! All the cool kids are here, from Hemingway & Faulkner to Cather & Fitzgerald. You got your Welty, your Porter, your Roth, plus your Houston/Proulx/McPherson/Carver/Beattie...you name it.
*Tracing the arc of the U.S. century's history: immigrants, war, wives, war again, Jews, husbands, a little more war, experimenting, psychodrama.
*Asking yourself: When will the use of the n-word stop? I recommend placing a bet before you commence reading as to which year's story will be the last to include this deplorable term (admittedly, usually in Southern-set dialogue, often spoken by black characters and written by black authors)? You might be surprised by the answers.
*The age-old loose definition of "short" when it comes to short stories, although I don't think 32 pages can be considered a short story by anyone's definition...
I know some people hate reading short stories. But it is really interesting to go read a bunch of them, particularly gathered like this as they are, after maybe not having read this many short stories since high school, or ever.
p.s. I just realized I should tell you my favorites!
Hands down, my #1 is Susan Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers." Wow.
Also enjoyed immensely:
"Theft" by Katharine Anne Porter
"The Golden Honeymoon" by Ring Lardner
"The Key" by Isaac Bashevis Singer
"The Farmer's Children" by Elizabeth Bishop
And there were other good ones by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eudora Welty, Mary Lerner, etc.
If you just want the weird ones, go for Donald Barthelme, Lorrie Moore, E.B. White, and Mary Ladd Gavell.
April 1, 2015
Yes, I finished the last four stories of this fifty-six story volume during the week that little Nico decided to arrive in this world. I found it useful to have this book at the hospital as I read outloud a few of the stories I most appreciated to Jessica and Nico during labor (yes, there are some calmer moments before the dilation and the "big push"). I noted about 20 stories for a re-read due to story construction, writing technique, or overall likability of the story, which of course, is truly subjective. This is a definite read if you favor the short story in these ever time consuming days, or if you have a short attention span. Many notable authors are enshrined in this volume - Fitzgerald, Nabakov, Hemingway, Cather, Richard Wright, E. B. White, Sherwood Anderson, Tennessee Williams, Cheever, Flannery O'Connor, Phillip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Saul Bellow, John Updike (of course, he led the editing staff), Raymond Carver, Tim O'Brien, as well as many lesser knowns and unknowns, who you may never find if not for an edition like this.
Hard to pinpoint my favorite story, but if I were forced for an answer I would recommend:
"That in Aleppo Once . . ." by Vladimir Nabokov
But this list of notable selections would also be in the running for my top story nominee:
"Defender of the Failth" by Phillip Roth
"Memeseteung" by Alice Munro
"The Way We Live Now" by Susan Sontag
"The Other Woman" by Sherwood Anderson
"Roses, Rhododendron" by Alice Adams
"The Ledge" by Lawrence Sargent Hall
"The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien
"Crazy Sunday" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Enjoy!!
Hard to pinpoint my favorite story, but if I were forced for an answer I would recommend:
"That in Aleppo Once . . ." by Vladimir Nabokov
But this list of notable selections would also be in the running for my top story nominee:
"Defender of the Failth" by Phillip Roth
"Memeseteung" by Alice Munro
"The Way We Live Now" by Susan Sontag
"The Other Woman" by Sherwood Anderson
"Roses, Rhododendron" by Alice Adams
"The Ledge" by Lawrence Sargent Hall
"The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien
"Crazy Sunday" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Enjoy!!
August 9, 2013
I'm almost done with this wonderful collection. A few stories have stood out, most recently "In The Gloaming" by Alice Elliott Dark. An absolute heart wrenching account of a mother's last days with her son, who is dying of aids. Beautiful, touching, sweet, well crafted. Worth a read on its own. On a similar subject, Susan Sontag's "The Way We Live Now" is written in a manner that I'v never seen before. It's all a bunch of run-on sentences, but it jumps from person to person mid-stream, linking several people's thoughts and words into one, rambling cross reference. Interesting technique to demonstrate the connection among people in the story and a critique, I guess, of the superficiality of people. Of course, reading "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien for like the fourth time doesn't diminish its power one bit. Anne Beattie's "Janus" struck me, maybe because my wife is a realtor, but also because of the allusion in the title. Alice Adams "Roses. Rhododendron" was another that I liked a lot, reminding me of the closeness and connections we all had with childhood friends. Donald Barthelme's "A City of Churches" was spooky. Being a reformed Catholic now agnostic, this struck home on many fronts. "The Best Girlfriend You Never Had" was an interesting look at the excuses we make for being non-committal and guarded in our personal lives. Interesting way of jumping in and out of time. All in all, a very interesting and absorbing collection.
April 30, 2019
They are all obviously well written, but to be perfectly honest most were not really my style.
I generally prefer science fiction and maybe even fantasy or horror and almost all these are of a decidedly literary style, the kind of short stories were you get a very detailed inner monologue and quite a bit of social commentary but usually not very much plot and definitely no twist ending.
Highlights:
FAVORITE: (1) Gold Coast, James Alan Mcpherson, 1969
I vaguely remembered seeing this story mentioned in some book I read as a kid and seeing it in the table of contents is what prompted me to get this collection from the library.
I liked the subtlety of the story. The politics and issues of the 1960s form the background but are infused into the story with a very light touch. Even all the relationships are handled very deftly. Beautiful.
(2) The Other Woman, Sherwood Anderson, 1920
Sort of a baffling story (what is it REALLY about?), but beautiful in a certain way.
(3) Double Birthday, Willa Cather, 1929
I have lived in Pittsburgh so I liked that it was set in Pittsburgh, I could recognize all the street names and neighborhoods. Beautiful and memorable characters. This one actually has quite a bit of a plot.
(4) A City of Churches, Donald Barthelme, 1973
Very cute story. Surreal. Absurd. It made me think a little of Pittsburgh too.
I generally prefer science fiction and maybe even fantasy or horror and almost all these are of a decidedly literary style, the kind of short stories were you get a very detailed inner monologue and quite a bit of social commentary but usually not very much plot and definitely no twist ending.
Highlights:
FAVORITE: (1) Gold Coast, James Alan Mcpherson, 1969
I vaguely remembered seeing this story mentioned in some book I read as a kid and seeing it in the table of contents is what prompted me to get this collection from the library.
I liked the subtlety of the story. The politics and issues of the 1960s form the background but are infused into the story with a very light touch. Even all the relationships are handled very deftly. Beautiful.
(2) The Other Woman, Sherwood Anderson, 1920
Sort of a baffling story (what is it REALLY about?), but beautiful in a certain way.
(3) Double Birthday, Willa Cather, 1929
I have lived in Pittsburgh so I liked that it was set in Pittsburgh, I could recognize all the street names and neighborhoods. Beautiful and memorable characters. This one actually has quite a bit of a plot.
(4) A City of Churches, Donald Barthelme, 1973
Very cute story. Surreal. Absurd. It made me think a little of Pittsburgh too.
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