Winesburg, Ohio is essentially a loosely connected collection of short stories, of which “Sophistication” is one. It can stand alone just fine. Whence the confusion?
(Weren’t many of the “chapters” in Winesburg, Ohio originally published as stand-alone short stories? Seems like I read that somewhere.)
“Christmas Morning” by Frank O’Connor
“The Jaunt” by Stephen King
“The Great Sermon Handicap” by P.G. Wodehouse
“The Musgrave Ritual” by Arthur Conan Doyle
“Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” by Mark Twain
“Paper Pills” - Sherwood Anderson
“Indian Camp” - Ernest Hemingway
“The Man Who Would Be King” - Rudyard Kipling
“Chickamauga” - Ambrose Bierce
“The Displaced Person” - Flannery O’Connor
“The Last Question” - Isaac Asimov
“The Dead” - James Joyce
“The Year of the Jackpot” - Robert A. Heinlein
Give It Up by Franz Kafka
“The Machine Stops” - E.M. Forster
In no particular order…
There are some days… by Frederick Forsyth (Actually, all the short stories in No Comebacks are excellent, IMHO)
The Nine Billion Names Of God- Arthur C. Clarke
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream- Harlan Ellison
The Man Who Would Be King- Rudyard Kipling
A Scandal in Bohemia- Arthur Conan Doyle
“The Pit and the Pendulum” - Poe
“The Lottery” Shirley Jackson
Those are the only 2 truly memorably ones for me, it’s been like 10 years since I read a “Short Story”.
“The Green Hills of Earth” by Robert Heinlein.
“How the Heroes Die” by Larry Niven.
“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Anne Porter.
“The Street” by H.P. Lovecraft.
“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe.
I am pretty sure none of the Winesburg, Ohio was published prior to the publication of the novel of in 1919. And it is a novel. It may be experimental in form, but it is still a novel. Just because you can take a section of novel out and have it stand alone, that does not make what you take out a short story.
Mr. Botibol by Roald Dahl
The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell
Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut
I can’t conclusively name another two; there would be lots of Dahl and Stephen King stories among the candidates, though. If we’re including novellas, I’d pick Gene Wolfe’s “The Fifth Head of Cerberus” (and stick it at the top of the list) and King’s “The Long Walk.”
Some pieces were published before 1919. Cite.
From the same source:
By their author’s own admission, then, the individual chapters appeared to stand on their own, and early readers generally followed this lead, seeing in Winesburg a short story collection. Only later…did Anderson’s readers seriously consider the possible unity of Winesburg as a novel.
Its “possible unity” (which I agree with, by the way) doesn’t change the fact that the stories can stand on their own – and, historically, some of them did so.
…without reading the thread:
I almost included this as a second selection on my list of one…
Aiken’s “Silent Snow, Secret Snow”
Faulkner’s “Spotted Horses”
Lawrence’s “The Rocking-Horse Winner”
Salinger’s “For Esmé with Love and Squalor”
Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron”
Asimov’s Nightfall, The Last Question and **The Dead Past ** and Clark’s The Nine Billion Names of God are the ones that come to mind.
Toni Morrison’s Recitatif is my favorite short story to teach, because 95% of the sudents don’t get the point of it until the class discussion.
The story is about two girls, one white and one black – but never tells you which is which. Nearly all readers make an assumption about which of the girls is white/black; but which you think is which has more to do with you and your assumptions than anything the story says.
This seems like a good thread to ask this question in; I read an excellent short story a while back on the 'net but I can’t remember what it was called. It was about a woman trying to convince an paranoid A.I. chip inside a car to tell her where it was, but without acting suspicious enough for it to set off the alarm, or unsuspicious enough for it to set off the alarm. Any ideas?
Out of several dozen (including a few from the early twentieth Century) and in no particular order:
“Robots Don’t Cry” Mike Resnick
“The Ruum” Arthur Porges
“Last Enemy” H. Beam Piper
“A Martian Odyssey” Stanley G. Weinbaum
“Fondly Fahrenheit” Alfred Bester
The Man to Lazy to Fail - Robert A. Heinlein
Yes, I know it is technically a chapter in Time Enough For Love, but it is a great short story in its own right.
An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge - Ambrose Bierce
I love his writing and since I can’t include The Devil’s Dictionary as a short story . . .
The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet - Stephen King
Surprisingly not a supernatural or horror story, but with a few elements that make you say, “Wait a minute.”
Caught in the Organ Draft - Robert Silverberg
I’ve just discovered his writing and it is so brutal. This is my favorite of his so far.
The Empire of Ice Cream - Jeffrey Ford
The ending is simultaneously tragic and WTF?!
Of course, tomorrow I may pick a completely different 5.
In no particular order,
Strawberry Spring - Stephen King
The Wendigo - Algernon Blackwood
Person to Person - Richard Matheson
The Last Question - Isaac Asimov
Metzengetstein - E.A. Poe
I see many of my favorites in this thread, but here’s my list:
“Noon Wine,” Katherine Anne Porter
“Cass Mastern’s Wedding Ring,” Robert Penn Warren
“The Ballad of the Sad Cafe,” Carson McCullers
“A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor
And … I can’t choose just one story, so the last place goes to the entire short fiction output of Eudora Welty and Stephen King. 