I’d have to call mine a tie between Ray Bradbury’s “The Screaming Woman” and P.J. O’Rourke’s “The King of Sandusky, Ohio.”
What’s yours?
Well, mine would most-likely be a by Franz Kafka. Hmm…I’ll just say The Metamorphosis.
Neil Gaiman’s ‘Murder Mysteries’.
If you’ve got RealPlayer, you can listen to the audio version of it here: http://www.scifi.com/set/playhouse/murder/
“The Birth-Mark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne and “The House of the Fall of Usher” by Edgar Allen Poe. I hated both of these when I was in high school, but I love them now. “The House of the Fall of Usher” deals with this whole reflection/mirror concept (the reflections are reflected, and the characters are reflected, and the story itself is reflected, which leads to this sense of reality being turned on its head). In “The Birth Mark,” Hawthorne deals with a husband whose wife is almost perfect, and in trying to make her completely perfect he reduces her to pure idea.
Also, anything, anything by David Sedaris is incredible. Especially “The Youth in Asia” from Me Talk Pretty One Day and “Ashes” and “Get Your Ya-Ya’s Out” in Naked. He is one twisted, crazy motherfucker who writes what we all secretly think (or maybe it’s just me…)
The short story I’ve enjoyed the most lately has been Nick Hornby’s “NippleJesus” from his Speaking With the Angel collection. It’s too early yet to say if it will end up with a place on my all-time favorites list.
I liked several of Ray Bradbury’s short stories, but the one I find myself thinking of the most often is about a boy who didn’t get into a prep school and didn’t tell his parents. I think it was called “The Letter” but I can’t swear to it and the book is back home.
When I was a junior in high school, we read a short story by, IIRC, Maupassant wrote, titled “The False Gems.” I liked the twist ending a lot. We also read Gogol’s “The Overcoat” and Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.” I’m really, really glad I took AP English, because I would have never read them on my own.
"Repent Harlequin," said the Ticktockman by Harlan Ellison. A great story and a hell of a lot of fun to read outloud.
“The Open Window” by Saki. I have never so much want to bed a fictional character. She could have me.
Really.
Plus, the story is short, short, short; and twisty, twisty, twisty. Over before you know what hit you. Fantastic.
I would have to go with Roald Dahl’s short stories (the ones for adults). Almost everything from his Tales of the Unexpected, Kiss Kiss, Switch Bitch, and The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar. There funny, frightening, twisted, occasionally disturbing and surprising. I just love them.
A very, very close second is “The Tell-tale Heart” by Poe. Brilliant stuff.
Fran
I’ll repeat Nacho4Sara’s praise of David Sedaris (“The Santaland Diaries” is also particularly good, especially if you hear him read it aloud - it’s floating around the web in mp3 form, just so you know), but my all time favorite is “The Aurelian” (spelling might be off), by Nabokov.
“The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson.
“The Two Bottles of Relish” by Lord Dunsany
“Pig” by Roald Dahl
“The Specialty of the House” by Stanley Ellin
“The Feast in the Abbey” by Robert Bloch
And there’s a shiny new dime waiting for the first one to notice the thematic link.
Some of my favorite ones have been turned into Twilight Zone episodes like “Little Girl Lost” or “It’s a Good Life”. There’s also some Stephen King short stories that I find amusing like “The Jaunt” or “The End of the Whole Mess” (I think that’s what it’s called–I don’t have the book in front of me). I also like the original short story of “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card and “Super Toys Last All Summer Long” which is what the Steven Spielberg movie A.I. is based on.
“Tln, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” by Jorge Borges, with “Funes the Memorius” a close second.
(I know its not pronounced that way, but I can’t help thinking “Georgy Borgy, pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry…” when I see that name.)
Dijon Warlock, another Saki fan checking in here. I like most of his stories but if I had to pick ONE it is “Tobermory”. I anmed my cat that, for crying out loud.
One other story that would fight it out for favorite with me would be “True Minds” by Spider Robinson.
Most of my top ten would be by the master of the form - Flannery O’Connor. “The Displaced Person” may be the greatest of them all.
“Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby” by Donald Barthelme.
It goes too far.
[list][li]Paper Pills- Sherwood Anderson[/li][li]Hands- Sherwood Anderson[/li][li]A Good Man Is Hard to Find- Flannery O’Connor[/li][li]Who Goes There?- (Dang it! I can never remember the author’s name. This is the short story upon which the movie The Thing is based. For my money it’s the best science fiction story around.)[/li]The Displaced Person- Flannery O’Connor (Good call, riley dieffenbach.)
Some very good choices already. I’ll add a few:
My own:
“Playmates” (F&SF, May 1986)
“Pest Control” (Realms of Fantasy, October 1994)
Other (much better) authors:
Harlan Ellison* – “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”
Flannery O’Connor – “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
J. D. Salinger – “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”
Fritz Leiber – “Coming Attraction”
James Tiptree, Jr.* – “The Last Flight of Dr. Ain”
George R. R. Martin – “Sandkings”
John Varley* – “The Pusher”
Octavia Butler – “Speech Sounds”
Roald Dahl* – “Lamb to the Slaugher” Lawrence Watt-Evans – “Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers”
Jim Aiken – “The Lillith”
John Barth – “Lost in the Funhouse”
Edgar Allen Poe – “The Cask of Amontillado”
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. – “Welcome to the Monkey House”
Frank R. Stockton – “The Lady or the Tiger”
Lord Dunsany – “The Two Bottles of Relish”
Thomas Burke – “The Hands of Mr. Ottermole”
In addition to Realitychuck’s choices, all of which I would have mentioned, here are a few more faves:
The Dead by James Joyce
The Artificial Nigger by Flannery O’Connor
Nightfallby Isaac Asimov
The Fire, When It Comes by Parke Godwin
A Diamond as Big as the Ritz by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Big Blonde by Dorothy Parker
A Boy and His Dog by Harlan Ellison
A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
Fermi and Frostby Frederick Pohl
Pickman’s Model by H.P. Lovecraft
The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges
A Letter from the Clearys by Connie Willis
O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi