Bill, of the Boulder Great Books Discussion Group, asked me recently if I might post a list of my 100 favorite short stories of all time, since I had earlier posted a list of my favorite stories of the 21st century.
Well, that, I discovered when I started the task, is not really so easy. In the fifty years I have been reading, teaching, and writing about short stories, I have admired many, many, many stories. When I started making a list of "favorites," I found I could not stop at 100, and only stopped at 200 because the list would have become too long to be of any interest or use to my readers. I could have listed practically all of Borges, Carver, Trevor, Munro, Dubus, Chekhov, etc. etc.
And I know for sure that in the following list of 200 stories I admire (I hesitate to use the word "favorite") I have neglected many stories that have just slipped my mind.
Please see my earlier post of 100 favorite stories of the 21st century for a supplement to the following list.
If you have a favorite story not on either list that you think I might enjoy reading, please send the author and title to me in a comment or an email.
1)
Abbott, Le K. “The
Talk Talked Between Worms”
2)
Aiken, Conrad, “Silent Snow, Secret Snow”
3)
Alexie, Sherman, “The Toughest Indian in the World”
4)
Anderson, Sherwood, “Death in the Woods”
5)
Anderson, Sherwood, “Hands”
6)
Babel, Isaac, “The Story of My Dovecote”
7)
Babel, Isaac, “Guy de Maupassant”
8)
Baldwin, James, “Sonny’s Blues”
9)
Barrett, Andrea, “Servants of the Map”
10)
Barthelme, Donald, “A Shower of Gold”
11)
Barthelme, Donald, “The Balloon”
12)
Bass, Rick, “The Hermit’s Story”
13)
Bausch, Richard, “The Fireman’s Wife”
14)
Beattie, Ann, “The Longest Day of the Year”
15)
Beattie, Ann, “Janus”
16)
Bellow, Saul, “A Father-to-Be”
17)
Bierce, Ambrose, “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”
18)
Bloom, Amy, “Silver Water”
19)
Boccaccio, Giovanni, “The Falcon”
20)
Borges, Jorge Luis, “Funes the Memorious”
21)
Borges, Jorge Luis, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”
22)
Borges, Jorge Luis, “The Lottery of Babylon”
23)
Bowen, Elizabeth, “The Demon Lover”
24)
Byatt, A.S. “The Thing in the Forest”
25)
Byers, Michael, “Settled on the Cranberry Coast”
26)
Camus, Albert, “The Guest”
27)
Canin, Ethan, “Emperor of the Air”
28)
Capote, Truman, “A Tree of Night”
29)
Carleton, William, “Wildegoose Lodge”
30)
Carlson, Ron, “At the Jim Bridger”
31)
Carver, Raymond, “Errand”
32)
Carver, Raymond, “Neighbors”
33)
Carver, Raymond, “Why Don’t You Dance?”
34)
Cather, Willa, “Paul’s Case”
35)
Cheever, John, “The Country Husband”
36)
Cheever, John, “The Swimmer”
37)
Chekhov, Anton, “The Lady with the Pet Dog”
38)
Chekhov, Anton, “Gooseberries”
39)
Chekhov, Anton, “Misery”
40)
Chopin, Kate, “Desiree’s Baby”
41)
Conrad, Joseph, “The Secret Sharer”
42)
Conrad, Joseph, “Amy Foster”
43)
Cortazar, Julio, “The Island at Noon”
44)
Crane, Stephen, “The Blue Hotel”
45)
Crane, Stephen, “The Open Boat”
46)
D’Ambrosio, Charles, “The High Divide”
47)
Dinesen, Isak, “The Deluge at Norderney”
48)
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, “The Peasant Marey”
49)
Dubus, Andre, “A
Father’s Story”
50)
Dubus, Andre, “Dancing After Hours”
51)
Dybek, Stuart, “Pet Milk”
52)
Eisenbrg, Deborah, “Mermaids”
53)
Eisenberg, Deborah, “Some Other, Better Otto”
54)
Erdrich, Louise, “Fleur”
55)
Faulkner, William, “Barn Burning”
56)
Faulkner, William, “A Rose for Emily”
57)
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, “Absolution”
58)
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, “Winter Dreams”
59)
Flaubert, Gustave, “The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller”
60)
Gallant, Mavis, “Dede”
61)
Gass, William H. “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country”
62)
Gilchrist, Ellen, “The Stucco House”
63)
Gilman, Charlotte, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
64)
Glaspell, Susan, “A Jury of Her Peers”
65)
Gogol, Nikolai, “The Overcoat”
66)
Gordimer, Nadine, “The Train from Rhodesia”
67)
Greene, Graham, “The Basement Room”
68)
Gurganus, Allan, “He’s At the Office”
69)
Hannah, Barry, “Airships”
70)
Harte, Bret, “Tennessee’s Partner”
71)
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, “The Birthmark”
72)
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, “The Minister’s Black Veil”
73)
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, “Young Goodman Brown”
74)
Hemingway, Ernest, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”
75)
Hemingway, Ernest,
“Indian Camp”
76)
Hemingway, Ernest, “Hills Like White Elephants”
77)
Hemingway, Ernest, “The Killers”
78)
Hempel, Amy, “The Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried”
79)
Henry, O. “A Municipal Report”
80)
Henry, O. “The Cop and the Anthem”
81)
Irving, Washington, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
82)
Jackson, Shirley, “The Lottery”
83)
James, Henry, “The Beast in the Jungle”
84)
James, Henry, “The Jolly Corner”
85)
James, Henry, “The Real Thing”
86)
Johnson, Denis, “Car Crash While Hitchhiking”
87)
Jones, Edward P., “Marie”
88)
Joyce, James, “Araby”
89)
Joyce, James, “Clay”
90)
Joyce, James, “The Dead”
91)
Joyce, James “The Sisters”
92)
Kafka, Franz, “A Country Doctor”
93)
Kafka, Franz, “The Hunger Artist”
94)
Kafka, Franz, “In the Penal Colony”
95)
Kafka, Franz, “The Metamorphosis”
96)
Keegan, Claire, “Foster”
97)
Kipling, Rudyard, “The Man Who Would be King”
98)
Kleist, Heinrich Von, “The Earthquake in Chili”
99)
Lahiri, Jhumpa, “Unaccustomed Earth”
100)
Landolfi, Tomasso, “Gogol’s Wife”
101)
Lardner, Ring, “Haircut”
102)
Lasdun, John, “On Death”
103)
Lavin, Mary, “The Great Wave”
104)
Lawrence, D. H. “The Horse-Dealer’s Daughter”
105)
Lawrence, D. H., “The Prussian Officer”
106)
Lawrence, D. H. “The Rocking Horse Winner”
107)
Leavitt, David, ”Territory”
108)
Lordan, Beth, “The Man With the Lapdog”
109)
Malouf, David, “Dream Stuff”
110)
MacLeod, Alistair, “The Boat”
111)
MacLeod, Alistair, “As Birds Bring Forth the Sun”
112)
Malamud, Bernard, “The Magic Barrel”
113)
Mann, Thomas, “Disorder and Early Sorrow”
114)
Mansfield, Katherine, “Bliss”
115)
Mansfield, Katherine, “The Fly”
116)
Mansfield, Katherine, “The Garden Party”
117)
Mansfield, Katherine, “Miss Brill”
118)
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”
119)
Mason, Bobbie Ann, “Graveyard Day”
120)
Maupassant, Guy de, “Madame Telliers Excursion”
121)
McGahern, John, “The Beginning of an Idea”
122)
McCullers, Carson, “A Tree, a Rock, A Cloud”
123)
Means, David, “Assorted Fire Events”
124)
Means, David, “Reading Chekhov”
125)
Melville, Herman, “Bartleby the Scrivener”
126)
Millhauser, Steven, “Eisenheim the Illusionist”
127)
Moore, George, “So On the Fares”
128)
Moore, Lorrie, “People Like That Are the Only People Here”
129)
Mukherjee, Bharati, “The Management of Grief”
130)
Munro, Alice, “The Love of a Good Woman”
131)
Munro, Alice, “Runaway”
132)
Munro, Alice, “The Bear Came Over the Mountain”
133)
Munro, Alice, “Meneseteung”
134)
Nabokov, Vladimir, “That in Aleppo Once”
135)
Oates, Joyce Carol, ”Where Are You Going, Where Have You
Been?”
136)
O’Brien, Edna, “Sister Imelda”
137)
O’Brien, Tim, “The Things They Carried”
138)
Offutt, Chris, “Melungeons”
139)
O’Connor, Flannery, “Good Country People”
140)
O’Connor, Flannery, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
141)
O’Connor, Flannery, “Revelation”
142)
O’Connor, Frank, “First Confession”
143)
O’Connor, Frank, “Guests of the Nation”
144)
Olsen, Tillie, “Tell Me a Riddle”
145)
Ozick, Cynthia, “The Shawl”
146)
Packer, Z.Z., “Brownies”
147)
Paley, Grace, “Friends”
148)
Paley, Grace, The Used-Boy Raisers”
149)
Parker, Dorothy, “Big Blonde”
150)
Pearlman, Edith,
“Inbound”
151)
Pearlman, Edith, “Self-Reliance”
152)
Pirandello, Luigi, “The Soft Touch of Grass”
153)
Poe, Edgar Allan, “The Cask of Amontillado”
154)
Poe, Edgar Allen, “The Fall of the House of Usher”
155)
Poe, Edgar Allan, “The Tell-Tale Heart”
156)
Porter, Katherine Anne, “Flowering Judas”
157)
Porter, Katherine Anne, “The Grave”
158)
Porter, Katherine Anne, “Noon Wine”
159)
Powers, J. F. “Lions, Harts, and Leaping Does”
160)
Powers, J.F. “The Valiant Woman”
161)
Pritchett, V. S. “Sense of Humor”
162)
Proulx, Annie, “Brokeback Mountain”
163)
Pushkin, Alexander, “The Queen of Spades”
164)
Rash, Ron, “The Ascent”
165)
Robison, Mary, “An Amateur’s Guide to the Night”
166)
Rosa, Joao Guimaraes, “The Third Bank of the River”
167)
Roth, Philip, “The Conversion of the Jews”
168)
Saki, “The Open Window”
169)
Salinger, J. D. “ “For Esme—With Love and Squalor”
170)
Salinger, J. D. “”A Perfect Day for Bananafish”
171)
Saunders, George, “Pastoralia”
172)
Schwartz, Delmore, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities”
173)
Singer, Isaac B.
“Gimpel the
174)
Stockton, Frank, “The Lady or the Tiger”
175)
Taylor, Peter, “Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time”
176)
Thomas, Dylan, “A Story”
177)
Tolstoy, Leo, “The Death of Ivan Ilych”
178)
Trevor, William, “The Dressmaker’s Child”
179)
Trilling, Lionel, “Of This Time, of That Place”
180)
Turgenev, Ivan,
“Bzeyhin Meadow”
181)
Turgenev, Ivan, “The District Doctor”
182)
Twain, Mark, “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg”
183)
Updike, John, “A&P”
184)
Updike, John, “Pigeon Feathers”
185)
Updike, “The Music Room”
186)
Updike, John, “Pigeon Feathers”
187)
Verga, Giovanni, “The She-Wolf”
188)
Walker, Alice, “To Hell with Dying”
189)
Warren, Robert Penn, “Blackberry Winter”
190)
Welty, Eudora, “Death of a Travelling Salesman”
191)
Welty, Eudora, “Petrified Man”
192)
Welty, Eudora, “A Visit of Charity”
193)
Welty, Eudora, “Why I Live at the P.O.
194)
Wharton, Edith, “Roman Fever”
195)
Williams, Joy, “The Skater”
196)
Williams, Joy, “Train”
197)
Williams, Tennessee, “Three Players of a Summer Game”
198)
Williams, William Carlos, “The Use of Force”
199)
Wolff, Tobias, “The Liar”
200)
Wolff, Tobias, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs”
