MASTERPIECES OF SHORT FICTION

 

 

One of the key takeaways from a fiction writing course I took in college some twenty years ago was a lesson we either knew (given that most of us taking the course had already waded in the waters of creative writing) or learned soon into the semester; writing a short story was far more difficult than writing a novel. Both brought the same challenges, but the former offered much more limited space to develop them. Not surprisingly, great short stories are rarer than great novels as bearing genius for the latter does not necessarily mean talent for the former. And yet, short literary masterpieces abound and have made an invaluable contribution to the global literary canon. Here I salute the greatest works of short fiction I have come across over the years. Rather than going through the arduous and often foolish task of ranking them, I have listed them by author. My criteria included matters of craft and economy of words but the unifying requisite was impact. There are many different genres and styles represented here but genuine brilliance can shine through all venues.

 

Karen Blixen (April 17, 1885-September 7, 1962): Blixen (pen name Isak Dinesen) is best remembered for her memoirs Out of Africa and Shadows in the Grass. These are but the only two of her books, however, dealing with her life in East Africa. By the time she wrote Out of Africa she had already mastered the short story in the compilation Seven Gothic Tales and she would return to the craft with Last Tales.

 

Ray Bradbury (August 22, 1920-June 5, 2012): Of all of Ray Bradbury’s cautionary tales, “The Veldt” remains the most chillingly relevant. In the story, virtual reality has been improved to such a point that it is indistinguishable from the real article. Because it is a science-fiction story, the line between the virtual world and the real world blurs and the actions within the former have consequences for the latter. Bradbury was writing in fantastical terms, but is his prediction that off from where AI has brought us?

 

Willa Cather (December 7, 1873-April 24, 1947): Willa Cather and her contemporary Edith Wharton opened up an unprecedented amount of doors for women writers in America. Strangely, while Cather’s “prairie trilogy” chronicling life the life of women pioneers is a pilar of American literature, her short fiction has been largely forgotten. “A Beggars Christmas” is worth seeking out, though, as a charming early work of a young lady who was to become one of the prominent voices for the women who worked this land.

 

Joseph Conrad (December 3, 1857-August 3, 1924): Conrad adapted his style freely to the needs of his stories, consequently some of his work has been difficult to categorize. While Lord Jim an Nostromo are undoubtedly novels, Heart of Darkness has been (like Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) been qualified as a novel though it was first published in book form as part of a short story compilation. Few dispute that “The Secret Sharer” is not a novel but it is treated as a short story when it runs more like a novella. Of his work invariably considered a short story I think the best is “A Smile of Fortune” a tale of intrigue with Conrad at his best exploring his greatest fascinations: doppelgangers, the exploits of European merchants on foreign islands, the toll this takes on the locals and the mental breakdowns of the protoganist.

 

Jack Finney (October 2, 1911-November 14, 1995): It’s surprising Finney’s name is not better known in science-fiction circles as his 1955 novel The Body Snatchers was the basis for what is arguably the defining low-budget shock-horror film of the Cold War, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He is also the author of my favorite sci-fi short story, “The Third Level”. While this unsettling time-slip piece from 1952, about a commuter who stumbles upon a portal in New York’s Grand Central to the city as it was in the 1890s may not have been directly adapted to film its spirit can be felt in such classic episodes of The Twilight Zone as “A Stop at Willoughby” and “Walking Distance”

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896-December 21, 1940): Fitzgerald has been given due credit for his short stories but, to me, his best are not the most celebrated (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz”). If anything, Fitzgerald seemed to me out of his element there. A much more powerful work for me and his best short story is his early work from 1921 “O Russet Witch!” and with the poignant “The Bridal Party” almost a decade later. “May Day” is an undisputed gem as is the epic “Babylon Revisited”. For a lighter side of Fitzgerald I recommend “The Camel’s Back” a story no one else seems to have appreciated, including the author himself.

 

Ernest Hemingway (July 21, 1899-July 2, 1961): Hemingway is one of the few authors credited as much, if not more to some estimations, for his short fiction as for his novels. Indeed, there are many to choose from in Hemingway’s work in selecting just a few is a painful process. Still, his two African short stories “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” stand out. His “A Day’s Wait” is a must-read as is the haunting “Wine of Wyoming”. No other work better captures the liberating effect of a retreat into the wilderness as his two-part Big-Two Hearted River.

 

Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901-May 22, 1967): That the art of the short story should have come natural to Langston Hughes is not surprising. He was a poet, after all, renowned for the simplicity and succinctness of his prose. No matter the medium, Hughes was gifted with the unique talent of telling you all he wanted to tell you with minimal words. In 1958’s “Thank You, Ma’am” he uses much the same craft he used in his poetry (minimalistic description, short terse sentences) to create the first short story that made an impact on me when I read it in eight-grade. The story is quite simple, in a large city at night, a robust woman returning home from work is assaulted by a youth attempting to rob her. To his surprise, she overpowers him but rather than turning him in she brings him home with her. From here on, the dialogue between the two takes over the story and we learn of the hard life from both perspectives. It’s a brilliant piece not only because of its timeless potency but as an example of how much can be accomplished with scarce literary conventions.

 

Henry James (April 15, 1843-February 28, 1916): I count The Turn of the Screw and The Beast in the Jungle among the greatest works of literature, but they are not quite short stories in my eyes. Evaluations vary, but I think they are better categorized as novellas. Nonetheless, my two favorite stories by James are much like Turn of the Screw in that they are, whether one takes the apparitions as literal or not, ghost stories only on a superficial level. At heart they are examinations of the darker realms of the human mind exploring themes of jealousy, lust, sexual repression and the very real terrors they create in our minds. “The Way it Came” is about a man and a woman intended to meet in person, an event held off until death, ironically, seemingly brings them in contact…or does it? James suggests that the encounter beyond the grave could just as easily be the paranoid musing of the man’s jealous wife. “The Jolly Corner” explores the idea that our most frightful hauntings may be the ghosts of our own past, but it is also so much more than that. It is a somber tale of regret, the value we place on the people and places of our past and the toll the march of time takes on them.

 

Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865-January 18, 1936): Now, if you want a more straightforward ghost story you will not be disappointed by Kipling’s “The Phantom Rickshaw”, though it too deals with apparitions that coincide with guilt. In the tale, a British officer in India is haunted by the ghost of the woman he jilted (and who died soon after, implicitly of a broken heart) to marry another. For a change of pace, “The Man Who Would Be King”, included in the same short story compilation as the Rickshaw tale is a classic Kipling tale of adventure among the British Tommies. Finally, I pull from The Jungle Book (which after decades of popculture references exclusively to the Mowgli stories has been forgotten in its original form as a compilation of shot stories, some not even interrelated) for the charming “Toomai of the Elephants” an enchanting tale telling of the bond between the titular small boy in charge of his father’s worker elephants and on the magical night he is invited to the fabled dance of the elephants.

 

Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809-October 7, 1849): I have not included Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on this list despite being a devote fan of the Sherlock Holmes canon. The reason is because, quite simply, I take the Sherlock Holmes stories as all of one piece. Poe, however, who in many ways invented detective fiction has standalone pieces worth mentioning. “Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” take us into the dark mind of killers while “Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter” are thrilling tales of suspense. Best of all is his longer shot story, “The Fall of the House of Usher” that sends chills and melancholy in equal doses.

 

John Steinbeck (February 27, 1902-December 20, 1968): Steinbeck’s short fiction does not measure up to his novels but “The White Quail” from 1935 is worthy of consideration, offering an interesting take on a dysfunctional marriage.

 

Mark Twain (November 30, 1835-April 21, 1910): Through a career that would culminate in candidacy for America’s greatest author, Mark Twain wore many hats; humorist, satirist, polemicist, abolitionist, anti-imperialist and humanitarian. No matter his aim or his target, however, Twain’s work was always a good time. “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is a delight and the dark humor of “The Stolen White Elephant” is classic Twain. For a combination of humor and pathos, “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg” is a winner.

 

Tennessee Williams (March 26, 1911-February 25, 1983): The best short stories of Tennessee Williams owe a debt to his true calling as a playwright. Usually confined to one or two settings and a few characters, the stories are driven by dialogue and the emotions inferred from there. Among the best: “The Field of Blue Children”, “The Angel in the Alcove”, “The Mysteries of the Joy Rio” and “Something by Tolstoy”.

 

Richard Wright (September 4, 1908-Novemebr 28, 1960): The tragedy of Richard Wright is that he did not live to see the Civil Rights movement gather steam, dying of heart attack at the dawn of what would prove a revolutionary decade. Nonetheless, Wright is in many ways the literary face of the Civil Rights movement, setting the tone through his works (novels, plays, essays and stories) for many of the principles which would be taken up by Civil Rights leaders and activists in the years following his death. His body of work as a whole is an essential window into a turbulent time, but don’t neglect his ingenious piece “The Man Who Lived Underground”. The premise could not be more timeless; a Black man, Fred Daniels, is accused of a murder he did not commit and escapes the law by hiding out in the sewers of the city. The bulk of the work details his view of the life above from the grated windows of his underground hideaway which becomes a somber allegory to the view so many men like him had of the world they always felt in turn unseen by. A clarification, though. Wright intended “The Man Who Lived Underground” but left it unfinished at the time of his death. What I read was the piece published as a short story in the Signet Classics compilation Black Voices. In 2021, Wright’s estate published it in novel form through the Library of America series. I look forward to reading the story as Wright wanted it to be told.