For some reason I thought that short was called Ladyfingers. Looking up the description, that’s one of my favorites also.
This illustrates one of the odder realities of knowing Stephen King. Apparently he approached his neighbor, who was a doctor, and said, ''So theoretically, how much could a person eat himself before he died?"
Par for the course, i’m guessing.
Well, since you already spoilered it, what my cousin goes on about, is that you raise your caloric requirements when you undergo major surgery. I said, “What about controlling infection?” and she said, “Well, let’s say he didn’t die from blood loss without arterial clamps in the first place,” or something like that. I’m not sure why she’s got a thing about that story, when she doesn’t even read Stephen King (although, her husband does). She doesn’t go on about stupidity in medical dramas in general. Well, not always.
I apologize, I didn’t really think of this as spoiler-worthy.
The protag was a surgeon so at least King gave lip-service to that.
[SPOILER]Loss of blood was the most critical factor. As a surgeon, I was vitally aware of that. Not a drop
could be spilled unnecessarily. If a patient hemorrhages during an operation in a hospital, you can
give him blood. I had no such supplies. What was lost–and by the time I had finished, the sand
beneath my leg was dark with it–was lost until my own internal factory could resupply. I had no
clamps, no hemostats, no surgical thread.
As far as infection goes, it’s entirely possible he did get infected. He didn’t make it long. The first operation was Feb 7th but he quickly lost track of time after that, and it’s hard to say between ingesting copious amounts of heroin and hacking off various parts of his body exactly what caused his descent into incoherency.[/SPOILER]
There’s probably something wrong with me that I’m so interested in the details of this.
Doh! I usually don’t do that. :o
Yeah, but King, wasn’t a surgeon, and you can’t replenish blood loss along with all the healing you have to do on an inadequate diet.
What my cousin says is that your body is actually set up to “eat” itself, so to speak, in starvation situations, and extremely efficiently. There is nothing you can do to extend the process. What the guy did was waste resources. He wasted it in lost blood, and by raising his caloric requirement by needing to heal. She says a doctor should have known that.
Like I said, she’s got a real thing about this story. Maybe she perceives it as making doctors look stupid. I dunno.
Neither is Granny Gumption Solves A Murder.
(Which isn’t Thurber. But which does deserve mention in this thread.)
That’s probably it, unless Mr. Dahl started out as an antiques dealer, I think it’s fiction. Hilarious twist at the end, after thinking he got a real steal of a deal from the three rubes!
A.S. Byatt is a superlative novelist - Possession is my desert island novel - but I think she’s even better at the short story. Hard to pick a favorite, but I periodically go back to “Cold”, " Christ In The House Of Martha And Mary", and, above all, “A Lamia In The Cevannes”, which contains one oif my favorite lines in all literature: “He was happy, in one of the ways people have found to be happy.”
I would throw “The Djinn In The Nightingale’s Eye”, but that’s really a novella.
One of my favorite memories is getting snowed in with friends, making a fire and brownies, and having a Short Story party. We each read something less than 25 pages long to the group, and I tried to find something that serious lit types, light readers and SF fans would like.
“Light of Other Days” by Bob Shaw. By the twist at the end, shivers down backs had ensued.
Sounds like a must read. Were you cloistered in a library?
I read another one of the “slow glass” stories, this one about a murder “witnessed” by slow glass. The judge gave a verdict, despite being urged to wait until the slow glass could prove innocence or guilt. Now, everyone is waiting to see if he was right…
I just read this, and I have to say that the ending was totally obvious the moment it became clear what slow glass was. I found the story very amateurish, dated, and not worth reading. Sorry!
YES! This one!
Go read it.
And keep in mind that I first came across it (as a wee lad) in a collection of Alfred Hitchcock ghost stories. What a fiendishly brilliant place to publish it…
ETA: Hey, GreenWyvern, maybe you’ll like this one better… (sorry you didn’t like the last one, but it’s a short story, so not too much time wasted)
Digs, I read Saki’s story, and it’s not bad. But I guessed the ending half way through. To me this kind of story, where the only point is some little twist, isn’t too appealing.
Compare it with the following short story - which also has a ‘twist in the tale’. However, it’s a powerful, moving story in its own right, the quality of the writing is very high, and the twist is integral to the story.
The Gardener by Rudyard Kipling
Be sure to read the lines of verse at the beginning, and also the poem *The Burden *which follows after it, as they both relate directly to the story. (A better formatted copy of The Burden is here.)
It’s a story about Victorian/early 20th century social morality and keeping up appearances. You may want to keep a box of tissues handy. 
I’m interested to hear your opinion!
Thanks for the link. I had not read The Gardener.
There are interesting parallels between Saki’s The Storyteller and Kipling’s The Gardener, even though Kipling is profound and Saki is absurd. Both deal with lies and Victorian social norms.
What criteria are we using for comparison of Short Stories, craft, story, or?
I believe *The Storyteller *is more tightly crafted than The Gardener. There is nothing subtle about *The Storyteller *and I read it occasionally just to enjoy the craft, removed from the tale. I am a slow thinker, so, for me, *The Gardener * will require multiple readings to pick up on it’s subtleties. I don’t understand the significance of the name swapping or the function of Mrs. Scarsworth.
Crane
I don’t know what you mean by ‘name swapping’.
In case the story wasn’t clear, here’s a spoiler:
Michael is Helen’s son, not her nephew.
She went away to the South of France with some excuse and came back with a baby and a reasonably plausible story.
Everyone in the village accepts everything she says just a little too readily. They strongly suspect the truth, but go along with her story.
The statement that “Helen was as open as the day, and held that scandals are only increased by hushing them up” is highly ironic.
The passage where the young boy is allowed to secretly call her ‘Mummy’ is revealing. Helen allows this, then feels that it may come out sooner or later and decides to preempt it.
You can see that the village knows after Michael is killed:
“She observed to the Rector’s gardener: ‘It’s Miss Helen’s turn now.’
He replied, thinking of his own son: ‘Well, he’s lasted longer than some.’”
i.e. He thinks of Michael as Helen’s son.
Mrs Scarsworth has a secret of her own, and totally misunderstands Helen’s reaction.
The poem at the end also makes the situation clear:
To dream on dear disgrace
Each hour of every day–
To bring no honest face
To aught I do or say:
To lie from morn till e’en–
To know my lies are vain–
And in case you are not familiar with the Bible, when Mary Magdalene goes to Jesus’ tomb looking for him, she mistakes Jesus for the gardener. John 20:11-15
True Minds—Spider Robinson
The Man Who Traveled in Elephants—Robert Heinlein
Tobermory— Saki (H.H. Munro)
A Retrieved Reformation—O. Henry
Heinlein’s story is one that brings tears to my eyes every time I read it. It’s the part about the veterans having to ride in the parade, “because. merciful Heaven forgive us, they could not walk.”
GreenWyvern,
Yep, that went right over my head, but the story makes sense if you just take it at face value.
I do agree that the story is part of the two poems. The ending is Deus Ex Machina. I’ll have to read it again. May get a different understanding.
Thanks,
Crane