When Eudora Welty published The Golden Apples in 1949, critics did not know whether to treat it as an experimental novel or as a collection of interconnected short stories. But Welty included the separate pieces from The Golden Apples in… Read More ›
“Gold,” the title story of Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection, fittingly mirrors Isaac Asimov’s half-century writing career. Asimov’s work has defined science fiction as a multilayered genre, ranging from the simple rearrangement of history to more complex manipulation of… Read More ›
Go Down, Moses, William Faulkner’s 12th novel, is generally ranked as one of his greatest—not least because it doubles as a unique collection of short stories. Most of these stories had been published separately between 1935 and 1942, in such… Read More ›
Widely regarded as Isaac Bashevis Singer’s masterpiece as well as one of his most frequently anthologized stories, the Yiddish version of “Gimpel the Fool” appeared in the Jewish Daily Forward (1953) before SAUL BELLOW translated it into English for publication… Read More ›
Appearing in Story magazine and traditionally considered Zora Neale Hurston’s most accomplished story, “The Gilded Six-Bits” had a favorable reception that helped call Hurston to the attention of critics and publishers and resulted in the publication of her first novel,… Read More ›
Although many critics do not view O. Henry’s stories as first-rate literature, some of his many hundreds of tales have become classic. “The Gift of the Magi,” touching as it does a common human cord, is one of those stories…. Read More ›
“Flowers for Algernon,” first published in 1959, is considered a landmark work in both science fiction and disability literature. It was expanded into a novel of the same name, which was published in 1966. Both the short story and the… Read More ›
In this novella from her first collection, Flowering Judas and Other Stories, published in 1930, Katherine Anne Porter creates a totally rootless character, an American expatriate in Mexico with ties to neither the past nor the future. Laura finds no… Read More ›
John Steinbeck‘s “Flight” first appeared in his collection of short stories The Long Valley in 1938. It is a carefully constructed coming-of-age tale that chronicles a 19-year-old boy’s ascent to manhood, quick regression to hunted animal, and thence to his… Read More ›
John Cheever’s story, first published as part of the collection The Housebreaker of Shady Hill (1958), is notable for the way it presents, through an apparently uninvolved, objective third-person narrator, a man’s callous and reprehensible treatment of a female employee…. Read More ›
Bernard Malamud’s “The First Seven Years” was initially published in the Partisan Review (September–October 1950). In 1958 it was published as the first story in Malamud’s first collection of short fiction, The Magic Barrel. In the long opening paragraph Malamud… Read More ›
Anne Tyler recalls that as a young child she often made up stories, “Westerns, usually,” in which she pretended to be other people. “So far as I can remember,” she says, “mostly I wrote first pages of stories about lucky,… Read More ›
Andre Dubus, a Louisiana native and devout Catholic, created fiction often noted for its psychological realism and gentle morality. His short fiction emphasizes character study and examines moments of affection, violence, and self-discovery in American life. Dubus’s straightforward narrative contrasts… Read More ›
Long considered Edgar Allan Poe‘s masterpiece, “The Fall of the House of Usher” continues to intrigue new generations of readers. The story has a tantalizingly horrific appeal, and since its publication in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, scholars, critics, and general readers… Read More ›
The seriocomic tale “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” first appeared in American Review in December 1845 as “The Facts of M. Valdemar’s Case.” The revised tale was reprinted with an introductory note by Poe that noted the… Read More ›
Although Grace Paley has written a comparatively small body of work, publishing primarily short stories and poetry, she figures prominently among late 20th-century fiction writers. Part of her third collection of short stories, Later the Same Day (1985), “The Expensive… Read More ›
As do many of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, “Everything That Rises Must Converge” deals with the Christian concepts of sin and repentance. The specific sin O’Connor focuses on in this story is pride. As a Catholic, O’Connor considered this offense… Read More ›
Probably Alice Walker’s most frequently anthologized story, “Everyday Use” first appeared in Walker’s collection In Love and Trouble: Stories by Black Women. Walker explores in this story a divisive issue for African Americans, one that has concerned a number of… Read More ›
“Europe,” originally published in the story collection The Soft Side, is a useful encapsulation in short story form of the symbolic use of Europe that Henry James had employed so successfully in the novella Daisy Miller and later in a… Read More ›
Lou Epstein, the eponymous narrator of “Epstein,” is having a hard time. At age 59, he finds himself experiencing a postmidlife crisis. His once-beautiful wife, Goldie, sags and nags; his daughter, Sheila, “a twenty-three-year old woman with ‘a social conscience!’… Read More ›
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