Greatest short stories?

Congratulations are certainly in order for President Clinton for successfully bringing back our two women being held in North Korea. I'm certain the success was arranged before he agreed to go, but it was still a job well done by everyone involved and it will probably result in an easing of tensions between our two countries.

As virtually all talk now has to do with the ongoing health care issue, and as it is not at all clear what is going to happen, and as it is also the case that the MSM will speculate daily on what is likely to happen, having little or no idea what will happen, I have decided for the time being to just ignore it and turn to issues of no real importance whatsoever. In this case, short stories.

I know a person who often asks me questions like, ‘What is your favorite movie?” Or “Who is your favorite President?” Things like that. Now I have been asked “What are the greatest short stories?”

I am sure that in the course of my lifetime I have read hundreds of short stories, perhaps even more than a thousand. I can’t remember them all, in fact, I can’t remember most of them. So, assuming the ones that I do remember most vividly might be the best (a criterion probably as good as any other) I would offer the following opinions.

The first story that comes to mind in this context is W. Somerset Maugham’s “Rain.” It is my personal belief that Maugham was one of the truly great short story writers. As he was enormously prolific there are many of his stories that I can remember but here I would only mention one other, “Mr. Know-it-all.”

Another rather haunting story that I have never forgotten is Honore de Balzac’s, “Passion in the Desert.” I have read a great deal of Balzac, but this is the one story that has remained in my mind the most. Balzac, of course, was even more prolific than Maugham.

Who could ever forget O’Henry’s famous story, “The Last Leaf?” As short stories go I regard this one as really quite a masterpiece. On a lighter note there is “The Ransom of Red Chief.” O’Henry (a pen name) was a prolific writer of short stories, famous mostly for their surprise endings. He was not, I think, one of the truly great writers in the genre.

Another short story that has long stuck in my mind is Guy de Maupassant’s, “A Piece of String.” Believed to be one of the fathers of the short story, de Maupassant was prolific and a genuine master of the genre.

Although I do not regard Ernest Hemingway as a great writer of short stories (or even as half as great as a writer as his reputation might have us believe), I do remember his story, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” I also think very highly of “The Old Man and the Sea,” but it is more properly considered a novella.

Still another short story that I have never forgotten is George Orwell’s, “Shooting an Elephant.” I tend to think of Orwell as more of an essayist than a writer of short stories. Shooting an Elephant in a way is a kind of essay as well as a short story.

Although Jack London is remembered mostly as a novelist he did write a few short stories. One of these, “How to Build a Fire,” is to me absolutely unforgettable (as well as sort of terrifying).

“Big Blond,” by Dorothy Parker is probably her most famous work, although she is not necessarily regarded as a short story writer. This story, written, I believe, in 1929, made quite a splash, and I think she won the O’Henry award for short stories that year. It has been analyzed and critiqued in detail, and I’m sure it is has been reprinted in collections repeatedly.

Who could ever forget F. Scott Fitzgerald’s bizarre tale, “The Strange Case of Benjamin Button?” I think, as do most people, that Fitzgerald may have been one of the greatest masters of prose ever, but this story is perhaps more unforgettable because of its subject matter than its prose. That it was recently made into a motion picture will keep it in everyone’s mind for a long time, even if the written version dims in memory.

Although Anton Chekhov was a prolific short story writer, and some say almost single-handedly shaped the genre in the late 19th century, and although I know that I have read many of his stories at one time or another, I cannot remember a single one other than, “Misery.” As this story does not immediately come to mind, it should probably not be considered one of the great short stories. I think this is strange as I know I enjoyed Chekhov years ago when I first read him.

How could one ever forget Salinger’s, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish?” The title alone sticks in your mind, the rather strange dialogue and the unexpected and blunt ending are also hard to forget. I have always felt it is a shame that Salinger was not more prolific.

And who could ever forget an Edgar Allan Poe story like, “The Cask of Amontillado?” Poe’s stories are remembered mostly because they began the horror story genre, but I think they should be remembed as more than merely horror stories as Poe was quite a fine prose writer as well.

This leads me to one further story of a similar kind, “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” This may seem an odd choice as we do not ordinarily think of Sherlock Holmes as fine literature. But remember, the criterion here is merely those stories that I remember the most vividly.

I must confess that for me the story is always more important than the prose itself. This is certainly not the best way to judge which short stories are the best, or which writer of short stories was the greatest, but would it be better to judge a story completely upon its prose style? As is obvious there are probably as many opinions on what makes a great short story as there are about who was the greatest prose stylist.

So…are these really the greatest short stories? Of course not. Are they even the greatest short stories I myself have read? Probably not. They are merely the stories I remember reading. Do I remember them because they were truly great, or because they were horror stories that I cannot forget, or because they are by authors I happen to admire, or because they are the greatest prose ever written, or for some unconscious reasons I do not understand? How would anyone decide what the greatest short stories are, anymore than how could anyone decide who the greatest President was, or what was the greatest baseball game ever played, or whether cats are smarter than dogs, or whether roast beef is better than roast pork, or whether Henry Aaron was greater than Babe Ruth, and so on. Is there any criteria on which to judge which short stories are the greatest? That is, any criteria that everyone would agree on? The answer, of course, is “no.” Perhaps the nearest example in which we might find unanimity would be that Tiger Woods is the greatest golfer ever (but I bet there are people even here who would disagree). I really wish people would stop asking me such nonsensical questions, and I wish I would stop even thinking about them. Fat chance.