I haven’t read all that many short stories, but I can still compose a list from those I have read, I figure:
Night they Missed the Horror Show - Joe R. Lansdale
Diary of a Mad Diety - James Morrow
The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians - Bradley Denton (This one’s a Novella I think, but I’m having a hard enough time composing this list to worry about stuff like that.)
Carnal Knowledge - T.C. Boyle
The Ugly Chickens - Howard Waldrop
In addition to many of the excellent choices above, don’t forget Ellis Island and Other Stories by Mark Helprin. White Gardens, one of the “others”, and short even for a short story, is simply stunning.
i’ll second that… i’d probably choose “araby”
also…
2. patrotism by yukio mishima
3. newlywed by banana yoshimoto
4. lust by susan minot
5. the knife thrower by steven millhauser
Okay, fine, pick what you will, but it is time for a little obnoxiousness here - sorry, I am sure this will cause people who actually take the time to read this to get a little frustrated, but lets be serious:
If you are looking for truly the best short stories (I know, the post is looking for personal faves, but I want to be a little more provocative and frankly truthful). The best American short stories are:
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber by Ernest Hemingway - is he overhyped? Racist? Misogynist? Yes, and it pisses me off, but I challenge anyone to try to name a short story that honors the criteria that make a short story truly brilliant better. If you haven’t read it, read it, then we’ll talk.
Winter Dreams, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Look, am I a sucker for big names? If that’s what you want to think, fine, but read the story. Fitzgerald’s writing, sentence for sentence, puts pretty much any other writer to shame, and the story, as a microcosm of American class struggle and dreams, doesn’t get any better.
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov - I don’t remember the exact story, but the whole collection is worth reading, and the exploration of what is human rises above the genre.
Any number of short stories by Anton Chekhov. His work is the revolutionary work in the genre - seriously. Writing in Russian magazines, he challenged the whole concept of what a short story could be - one story (sorry, I don’t remember the name) about a peasant visiting the dentist and complaining about the pain in their tooth changed the whole way writers thought about the short story - he captured the common man, and small moments in that happen in life, and by portraying them in a short story, drew attention to the meaning of small moments.
The Dead, by James Joyes - look, there is a reason why the classics are classics. I hate the fact that Joyce is held up as God - he is technically brilliant as a writer, and also puts humanity in what he is writing, but that doesn’t mean I want to kowtow to the obvious choices - but read The Dead. His ability to create a sympathetic character and her realization about what a man was willing to do for her, while at the same time giving her husband a sympathetic portrayal, doesn’t get any better. This is the stuff we enjoy for its own sake but also learn from.
In your opinion, those are the best short stories in American literature.
If obnoxiousness was your goal, congratulations.
Shit - sorry - obviously, Chekhov is Russian and Joyce is Irish, I was starting with Hemingway and Fitzgerald and got carried away…
Oh, and while Steinbeck is not the technically proficient writer that the others are (he is more of a storyteller than a writer), read the White Quail or Chrysanthemums - both are very well crafted and do what a short story is supposed to do - capture a moment and hold you until the last sentence to get you to think about the moment and all of its layers…
Fine, comment on my approach - I am sure I deserve that because of my tone - but read the stories, and you wil see my point.
As one who is always willing to try new things (If I wasn’t, I’d still be reading only Stephen King and Dean Koontz like when I was 14.), I’m sure I will, eventually. Who knows, maybe I even will see your point.
As I said though, you did come off as a bit obnoxious, and that isn’t the best approach to take when you’re trying to get people to look at something you think it’s important for them to read.
Fibber you are absolutely correct. And for the people who only see the tone of my comments, I am sorry. I am aware of the tone of my initial post. I am trying to find a way to both honor the spirit of the OP - Hey, what are your favorites? - and to cut through the crowd and say: Hey, I have read a TON of short stories, and studied them. I have really, really thought about what make a short story a good one - it has to be technically well written sentence by sentence, create a character or set of characters that the reader can care about within a paragraph or two, and, instead of taking them on a novel-size arc of realization and development and growth, instead, put that character into a situation where the reader can grasp multiple layers of emotional realization and be awed both by the character’s situation and the writer’s ability to capture it. These stories do that, and, frankly, do it better that most of the other stories mentioned here.
If that is inappropriate, again, I am sorry.
Nope, you’re wrong. “Dante and the Lobster” does all that stuff better than your picks.
So, nyahhh nyahhh.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Fibber McGee *
Diary of a Mad Diety - James Morrow
QUOTE]
OK, you reminded me who should be #5 on my list
Thanks Fibber! 
Stupid coding.
I’m glad to see everyone is playing nice now!
And the stories don’t have to be American stories, or even in English. My first list did have all English language stories, with one British and four American. That’s because the only language I’m fluent in is American.
So maybe folks got the wrong impression. And I did mean favorites, not necessarily best. But I did not mind the hijack of WordMan. Even if the initial tone of his first post was a bit brisk, on thing I love about this board is the things I learn. So, come one, come all!
I think I’ll have to read “An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge”, by Ambrose Bierce though. At least four posters have mentioned it, and that’s a story I haven’t read. While several authors have received multiple mentions here, only one other story, “The Diary of Adam and Eve”(mentioned twice), by Twain, has had more than one mention.
Short stories only:
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream – Harlan Ellison
A Good Man is Hard to Find – Flannery O’Connor
The Last Flight of Dr. Ain – James Tiptree, Jr.
The Game of Rat and Dragon – Cordwainer Smith
Coming Attraction – Fritz Leiber
Note for those who liked “Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge”: Check here for a different twist on the story.
We’re talking personal favorites, right? The ones where, if you see them listed in an anthology, you read them again before you try something new.
The Lottery – Shirley Jackson
A Municipal Report – O. Henry
The Wide Net – Eudora Welty
To Build A Fire – Jack London
Big Blonde – Dorothy Parker
Babylon Revisited – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Gertrude the Governess, or Simple Seventeen – Stephen Leacock
BTW, Bierce’s Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a near-perfect work of fiction on any scale. There is a French-made short film of this story from 1962 that is worth seeking out. (I saw it in the 8th grade, never forgot it, and rented it 25 years later from my local library.) If you don’t know the story, the ending will KNOCK YOU OUT.
“A Sound of Thunder” Ray Bradbury (IIRC)
“The Underdweller” William F. Nolan
“To Build a Fire” Jack London
“The Lottery” Shirley Jackson
And I had one of Hemingway’s in mind when I started this, but it has slipped my mind.
WordMan: I have read “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” and while I like Hemingway, I can frankly think of at least a dozen stories by Jack London, including “South of the Slot,” " An Odyssey of the North," and the one where a jury of whites try an Indian for murdering whites (sorry, can’ remember the title, tho’ I remember the story fairily well), that would be much better than Francis Macomber.
Why do you think it is so good?
A Christmas Memory, by Truman Capote, is so good I’ll just let it stand alone.
Ok, I haven’t read too many short stories and the ones I have read are pretty well-known (so they’d be kinda obvious for this thread).
Like “A Rose for Emily”
and “Cathedral.”
and “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
I would second Wordman’s recommendation of “The Chrysanthemums.”
And I forget the name of this one–but it’s very well-known so someone help me out. It’s the one about the group of young boys who tear an old man’s house down while he’s out. I remember being very moved by this story, but it’s been a long time since I read it.
The Gift of the Magi (yes I know everyone has read it, it just has a wonderful timelessness to it. It reads like a legend if you take them out of the apartment and put them in a castle.)
The Price by Neil Gaiman. Gave me chills.
Usher II by Ray Bradbury. Wonderful wonderful wonderful.
A Voice is Heard in Ramah by Spider Robinson.
The Lake by Ray Bradbury.