[QUOTE=Dung Beetle]
Nope, it’s the one where the lady borrows an expensive necklace, loses it, works all her life at crappy jobs to repay her friend, and then finds out the necklace was a cheap fake. Bummer.
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A good short story, but not American. It did, however, serve as the inspiration for Henry James’ short story Paste.
[QUOTE=minlokwat]
Stephen King’s short story collection in **Night Shift ** is arguably his finest writing.
“Quitters Inc.” “The Ledge” and especially “Last Rung of the Ladder” are outstanding.
Throw in “Sometimes They Come Back” and “I Know What You Need” and this makes for a must-have for your short story anthologies.
[/QUOTE]
I loved Rock n Roll heaven or Poppy
[QUOTE=ddgryphon]
“And There Will Come Soft Rains”
(I’m a huge Bradbury fan, if you can’t tell).
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Oooo I forgot about that one! Amazing story…
Er…am I the only one who dislikes Flannery O’Conner? I’ve read many of her stories as lit requirements and can’t stand them. Too allegorical for my taste.
[QUOTE=kaylasdad99]
For me, there’s always Spinning in Infinity, Part One, and Spinning in Infinity, Part Two. Probably doesn’t quite meet the requirements of the OP, cause it’s not printed on dead tree, but it sure is a terrific story.
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:smack:
Oops. Make that Spinning in the Sunlight.
[QUOTE=OneCentStamp]
Oh, and nobody asked me, but my favorite short story of all time, period (American or not) is W. Somerset Maugham’s “Rain.” 
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Me, too, but it’s called Miss Thompson (1921). Stage adapter John Colton retitled it Rain. (See Joan Crawford’s version, she’s terrific!)
Nothing by O Henry?
Too bad Saki wasn’t American; “Shredni Vashtar” is one of the best short stories ever.
Hard to narrow it down. But my top 100 would have to include “One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts” by Shirley Jackson.
[QUOTE=Baldwin]
Nothing by O Henry?
[/QUOTE]
Good call on the glaring omission. I’ll nominate The Ransom of Red Chief.
[QUOTE=LunaV]
Er…am I the only one who dislikes Flannery O’Conner? I’ve read many of her stories as lit requirements and can’t stand them. Too allegorical for my taste.
[/QUOTE]
I am very literal-minded and enjoy them just for the starkness of the actual action. Plus I read them when I was a kid and didn’t know much about allegory. That’s why I should be **forced ** to go the desert island; to have to figure out what they really mean!
I love most of the stories mentioned so far. I’d like to nominate “Rappacini’s Daughter,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” by Mark Twain.
“Paper Pills” - Sherwood Anderson (1919)
(I can’t believe no one has mentioned Anderson. “Hands” is also exceptionally good.)
[QUOTE=Baldwin]
Nothing by O Henry?
Too bad Saki wasn’t American; “Shredni Vashtar” is one of the best short stories ever.
Hard to narrow it down. But my top 100 would have to include “One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts” by Shirley Jackson.
[/QUOTE]
Baldwin, we may like many of the same stories! I love both O.Henry and Saki(H.H. Munro). I named one of my cats Tobermory, for Saki’s story of the same name. Best description of “cattitude” ever! And Saki’s “The Toys of Peace” could be a story written today. I have a whole book of the man’s work, and get it out when I run into a thread like this.
Where Saki was the epitome of Britishness, O. Henry is the same for Americans. I read “After Twenty Years” in high school, and it was one of the few stories in our text that I liked. Sad, though. “The Caliph, the Cupid, and the Clock” has a happy ending, but there’s also a surprise. A twist at the end was common in O.Henry stories. And it contains one of the first depictions of a drug addict I’ve read, in U.S. literature. Then there’s “Mammon and the Archer” about the triumph of true love(oh really?) and “Memoirs of a Yellow Dog”, told from the viewpoint of a housepet.
I’ll have to nominate The Cop and the Anthem or the timeless The Gift of the Magi for O. Henry, but I liked The Ransom of Red Chief too. Definately something by E.A. Poe, probably either The Tell-Tale Heart or The Cask of Amontillado. A Rose For Emily isn’t Poe, but it’s very much in the same vein, and superbly written. And while I dispise Shirley Jackson on the whole, The Lottery is one of the best short stories I’ve ever read. And you’ve got to include Mark Twain in an American Short Stories class- The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calveras County is a classic. I’ll second pinkfreud on Rappacini’s Daughter by Hawthorne, too.
Science Fiction is very American and has a fantastic tradition of short stories; you’d be hard pressed to find an author in the genre who hasn’t written at least a few stories. If you want a really short one, try Punch by Frederick Pohl; it’s maybe a page and a half long. Some good middle-length SF might inculde Heinlein’s The Menace from Earth or If a longer, almost novella-type is more what you’re looking for, Flowers for Algernon is wonderful, and Heinlein’s By His Bootstraps is a fantastic exercise in time travel.
My favorite from Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles was the one about the guy left alone on Mars who kept from going crazy with the hobby of making phone recordings timed to start playing back to him later in life… designed to make him go crazy.
Another vote for Ambrose Bierce. I read an anthology of his Civil War stories at the same time as I did a new translation of Issac Babel’s Red Cavalry stories that was being lavishly praised by reviewers. Bierce was very much superior to Babel on a similar theme.
I regret that we’ve reached page 2 of this thread and no mention yet of John Cheever.
(John Cheever. There, now I’m happy)
My favorite short story writer of all time is Frank O’Connor. You can decide for yourself whether he was “American.” He was born and raised in Ireland and most of his stories are set in Ireland… but lived most of his adult life in the USA and published most of his greatest stories in “The New Yorker.”
His two best stories are “Guests of the Nation” (which inspired “The Crying Game,” even though there weren’t any transvestites in it!) and “Christmas Morning.”
One of the greatest short stories that I have read was “Saul Bird Says: Relate, Communicate! Liberate!” by Joyce Carrol Oates.
It has a retro plot, giving a quasi-insiders view of what went on during the campus unrest of the 60s and 70s, and in the minds of those that were led by the radicals. Has some great psychological subplots and some brilliant irony. I think that it won a Pulitzer Prize or something like that in 1971. It is rare enough to give students a refreshing break from the standard junk that can be found in any Short Story classes.
I also second “The Man Who Corrupted Hadleysburg.”
hh
I’ll add my votes to:
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
and
To Build a Fire
Oddly similar stories, huh?
Light of Other Days by Bob Shaw has always been one of my favorite SF stories.
Any of J.D. Salinger’s short works are pretty interesting. I like Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters and For Esme With Love and Squalor.
Salinger, Salinger, Salinger! Bradbury, Bradbury, Bradbury!
Also: A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud, Carson McCullers
A Clean, Well-lighted Place, Ernest Hemingway
And I strongly second The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber and The Yellow Wallpaper.
Also, I’m terribly fond of Scott Bradfield’s Penguins for Lunch, but perhaps it’s not a “must read.”
Not sure it would qualify for Best Ever, but some sort of mention should go to The Catbird Seat by James Thurber.
This thread yanked me out of long-time-lurking mode, because I had to throw my support behind:
Cathedral by Raymond Carver (runners-up: Neighbors and Fat)
Kiss by Tobias Wolff
The Moor by Russell Banks
and
A&P by Updike
and another tip o’ the hat to Gift of the Magi