A list of my top 10 Short Story Writers based entirely on my own criteria. I got this idea from watching @ShawnDStandfast video: • Top 10 Short Story Wri...
A list I shall not quibble with. Shocking, I know. I would add to your honorable mentions: Shirley Jackson, Edith Wharton because I love a twist ending more than almost anything, and my admiration for Wharton knows no bounds.
thanks for mentioning Lorrie Moore! I have looked at many "Top Ten Short Story Writers" on youtube and you are the first I've found that includes her on any list Her stuff is so unique and original and the writing is breathtaking I'm baffled as to why she isn't massively famous
Love this and am sorely tempted to put together my own response to it. Like you I read fewer short stories than I used to, but I do like to revisit the form which was one of my first entry points into reading. Too many on your list that I have never read... challenge accepted.
Thank you so much for the recommendations. I had intended to include Joyce, but when I pulled the books from my shelves I forgot him. I really should script my videos a bit more.
This is the first I have seen on your channel. I really enjoyed this video. I really love short stories and found your list very interesting. I am so happy that you named William Trevor as the top of your list. I really love his short stories as well as his novels. My favorite collection of his is the Hill Bachelors. In fact, I find that some of the best short story wriiters are Irish. Some of the writers that I like are Mary Lavin, Elizabeth Bowen, Benedict Kielty, Liam O'Flaherty and Joseph O'Connor.
Trevor is one of my favorite authors full stop, but his short stories are glorious! Some of the best writers in general are Irish. Thank you for the list of recommended authors and for your comment.
Shopping for a BookTube "soulmate" and this Top Ten list tells me I've found a match. Read all but two of these authors and love your judgment. Now to explore your "hodgepodges." Thanks for being here!
@@BookishTexan She was reportedly fond of chickens as well, so anyone with a taste for poultry might have been okay in her book! (As long as they didn't consume her own--I've read she even knitted sweaters for them). By the way, there was a special frisson in hearing your mention of Alief. I made countless visits to Sugar Land when my grandparents lived there, and heard of the area sometimes through its proximity.
Great list. Thanks for reminding me that I have Up In The Old Hotel on my shelf. A couple of my faves are How To Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa and All The Acorns on the Forest Floor by Kim Hooper. 😊💙
I need to reread Raymond Carver. I remember being enthralled through the entirety of Where I'm Calling From. Same for John Cheever (a Pulitzer winner!). It's interesting that both of those were compilations but it seems they worked better than Welty's. I need to read Welty, McCullers, Trevor. and O'Connor. I've never read a Hemingway novel but I have read a good chunk of his stories.
Welty's second and third collections of stories (included in the complete stories edition) were thematic and somewhat experimental. It was a bit jarring after the first collection.
The short story! I have a bunch of unread collections around and so many favorites. The other day Shawn mentioned the writer Alice Elliott Dark who has just published a novel and a commenter mentioned that she wrote stories. I looked her up and sure enough she was included in the Best American Short Stories of the 20th Century, chosen by John Updike. So I did read that story, In the Gloaming, which was about a mother and her adult son as he was dying. Anyway, all that to say I read a story on a whim and it was fun. (I also bought Dark's novel and it was excellent.) I like your list and I have still never read anything by Trevor.
I have a bunch of short story collections too and almost none have been read all the way through. I'm not sure I have ever really heard of Alice Elliot Dark, "In the Gloaming" sounds powerful.
Omg, I love short stories! I have at least 60 books of them, but seem to go through phases when it comes to reading them. I probably should just put a volume on my nightstand and tackle them all one at a time. My oldest is (I think) an 1874 copy of Balzac's Droll Stores from the Abbey's of Touraine, illustrations by Gustavo Dore. I ought to read it, but I don't want to wreck it. Dumb huh?! I do love Wm. Trevor, Flannery O'Connor, John O'Hara, and others, but would like to try Cheever, Carver, Jean Stafford, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings among others. There's just too many. My senior brain is boggled!
I didn't feel like I had read enough John O'Hara to put him on the list, though I have enjoyed some of his stories. I have the exact same experience with short stories. I used to read alot of them, now I just have a bunch of volumes of short stories with bookmarks stuck half way to three quarters of the way through.
I have read an liked a few O'Hara stories, but not enough where I felt comfortable putting him on my list. Thank you for the other suggestions and for your comment.
I'm a great fan of John O'Hara. Something I think about from time to time is a scene from one of his novels that I read many years ago. I think it was either "The Big Laugh" or "From the Terrace". A married couple (husband of English background, the wife Pennsylvania German who speaks with a German accent) are arguing about whatever and the argument turns to their son and the husband says, "That kid of yours is getting so Dutchy I can't understand half of what he's saying". I burst out laughing when I read it because it sounded like my own father would have said. I like You Tube videos about exploring abandoned houses. It was said in one of the videos I saw a while back that it was the house of an author; I was heartsick when it was mentioned that it was John O'Hara's house. I've also read most of Alice Munro books. More novella than short story, but Stephen Kings's "The Fog" had me shaken for days afterward.
Glad to see Raymond Carver up here. "Cathedral" is one of my all time favorite short stories: a smoking blind guy talking about art ... I had Carver's autograph on a his story, "Pheasant," once. Ive not read much Welty nor O'Connor, yet. I _know._ I need to rectify that ... same goes w Mr Trevor. I *know.* I suggest Vonnegut's _Welcome to the Monkey House,_ a recent read of mine (w Stephanie and Greg) that I bet youd really like. But, Brian, my friend, how could you forget: _Dubliners._ "Eveline" or "Two Gallants" or "The Dead" or--your favorite--"Araby?!?" 😂😳😆 Good one, Brian. Like Greg said, here, in his comment: I think IMA V.R. to this 👍
@@BookishTexan yes Yes YES I said yes. That great "Anniversary Edition," that I like. Mine's "in a box in Phoenix" plus? Plus, this'll give me something to talk and tease you about in my v.r. 😆😳😂
@@BookishTexan Woah! I know he's best known for his children's stuff, but Lamb to the Slaughter is definitely NOT for kids! It's about an ingenious way to get away with murdering a spouse. It's only like four pages, so I'd recommend just looking it up on line!
@@CestKevvie Totally agree. Not that some of his kid's books aren't kind of creepy but his short stories for adults are really good and really creepy. You should try reading some Richard Matheson. He and Dahl were brothers of other mothers.
I haven't read all of these. I definitely agree with Garcia Marquez. I'll mention some you haven't listed. My two favorites are the Australian writer David Malouf (the four novels of his I've read are also amazing), and Graham Greene. I also recommend Somerset Maugham, Ursula K. LeGuin, Tom Hanks (the actor: he really is good with getting you inside the characters) and John Crowley.All of these are known for their novels (some of them much better known for their novels) but their short works are as good, I think.
I love short stories and actually have a spreadsheet to keep track. I've got everybody on there at least once from Voltaire to Chekhov to Annie Proulx. The list is something like 2200 stories long so far and still growing. Two of my favorite short story writers are Tim Gautreaux and Richard Matheson. Tim Gautreaux's "Easy Pickings" from his Welding with Children anthology caused me to embarrass myself by getting me to laugh out loud in a crowded McDonalds during lunch. His characters generally live in a shotgun house along Highway 90 and are lovingly drawn souls living on the edge of modern American. Richard Matheson had many of his short stories turned into episodes of Twilight Zone including the famous "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" but my favorite is "The Nearly Departed." They might not be the most 'serious' of authors, but they excel at the craft and are very entertaining.
2200 short stories read! That is impressive. Thank you so much for the recommendations. They sound great. Despite possible appearances I don't put much stock in the idea of "serious" authors anymore. 😁
@@BookishTexan I follow the Duke Ellington Rule which applies just as much to literature as it does to music. "There are simply two kinds of music [stories], good music [stories] and the other kind the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good it’s successful; if it doesn’t it has failed." 🙂
Hawthorne, Lovecraft, Borges, Harlan Ellison, Maupassant, Paul Bowles, Steinbeck.. Only mentioning ones I don't see otherwise mentioned, and I'm not sure how I would compare these with others already mentioned. Lots of great mentions here.
I love this list. Some I’ve read and some I want to get to but I cannot disagree with Raymond Carver and Gabriel Garcia Marquez on this list. Marquez was just a vivid writer so I’ve been enjoyed both his long books and his shorter works
You can't beat Cheever, Trevor, and O"Connor! (I secretly hope my face ages as spectacularly as Trevor's did). I would add Tobias Wolff to this list, and if you haven't his collections, you must!
Great selection! I don’t read many short stories I’m afraid… but I recently read a couple by Erskine Caldwell (from his collection, Georgia Boy). Have you read his work? If so, what did you think of it? Thanks.
I don't think I have ever read Erskine Caldwell but I had another comment recommending his work. I have some short story anthologies and I bet there is at least one story of his in one of them. I'll definitely look for it and give Caldwell a try.
Apparently, Falkner never wrote a short story. Tee Hee. Ted Chiang's Exhalation is brilliant. Stephen King's Different Seasons with Shawshank Redemption and The Body (Stand by Me) movie screenplay is excellent. Ray Bradbury the Martin Chronicles is very imaginative and well written. Annie Proulx's Close Range has great western stories. And yes, the old dead white guys and gals you mentioned had some pretty good stories also. Some are just standard fair though.
Thank you for the recommendations. Of the author you listed I have really only read Proulx's short stories and that was because I had a subscription to the New Yorker long ago. So many of Faulkner's best stories were later folded into his novels that I didn't think about him as being a great story writer. Of course he does have some great stories. Maybe with Faulkner in August involving three Faulkner books in three months I was a little burned out.
I be think he’s a good writer, but I don’t enjoy his stories very much. I thought Lincoln in the Bardo was good, but my favorite thing by him was his book about writing.
Hey thanks for setting me straight. I must have mistyped the first line in the show notes where I said I had based these choices on my own criteria and not the criteria of ograro. You know what you should do? Make your own video in which you talk about your top 10 favorite short story writers.
