For one reason or another I read a lot of short stories this year (I tend to read stories when traveling, sometimes after reading very long novels for a break in pace, sometimes when I can't quit decide what novel to engage w/ next) - many in the New Yorker, some in anthologies I've had around or borrowed from the library, a few from collections, quite a few on recommendation of fellow blogger Charles May who writes exclusively about short stories. So as the B-side of my Sunday post on the top ten books (I read) in 2015, here are the top ten stories I read in 2015. This list (alphabetical by author) is of classic stories only; I will follow in a future post of a list of the best contemporary stories I read in 2015. I have intentionally not included stories I read this year by writers from the absolute pantheon of short-story writers: Borges, Chekhov, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Kafka, Lawrence - everyone's read them, and if you haven't you can pretty much choose your pick. But here are great stories by somewhat lesser-known or less-often-read (today) writers:
Isaac Babel, "Guy de Maupassant" - one of the great and sometimes overlooked Russian writers. His stories are rough, sometimes difficult, always provocative.
Heinrich Boll, "Murke's Collected Silences." - German Nobelist; in this strange story he wrestles with what it is to remain silent when one ought to be shouting "No!"
Tomaso Landolfi, "Gogol's Wife" - a totally odd, surreal story about a great writer married to a balloon.
Katherine Mansfield, "The Garden Party" - Why is this writer almost forgotten today? Could have picked any of a # of her stories, but this one lays bare the whole English class structure in the simplest of settings.
W. Somerset Maugham, "The Outstation" - Another writer who has fallen far out of fashion, and another story that looks at the dark underside of social class and caste.
Alberto Moravia, "Bitter Honeymoon" - Sex, jealousy, passion, sorrow - I'm sure someone has tried to turn this one into a movie, but it's best left in its original, succinct style and format.
Katherine Anne Porter, "Theft" - She became famous with a late-life best seller but her early stories may be her greater legacy, including this one about 20-somethings in NYC nearly a century back.
Alan Sillitoe, "Isaac Starbuck" - The English writer best known for honest protrayal of working-class life, and this story is a great example.
John Steinbeck, "The Chrysanthemums" - From another Nobelist-novelist - but this short story about a lonely woman on a remote California farm is as fine in its small scale as (almost) anything else he wrote.
William Carlos Williams, "The Use of Force" - Often anthologized and rightly so - compact, honest, clear, and striking, like all of WCW's work, especially his poetry.
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