I have a Ph.D. in English from Lehigh University, where I studied and published articles on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, one of the greatest short fiction collections. I have written and published a number of short stories myself. I even won a contest for one of them. The tale told around the campfire is probably the oldest literary form there is, much older than the novel. The best short fiction, I believe, can “pack everything that a novel can hold into a story,” as Jorge Luis Borges said, and this is the kind of short fiction I believe I have found.
I wrote...
Five Moral Tales
By
Theodore Irvin Silar
What is my book about?
"Cena with Tata" - Ancient Rome: An iron-willed matron tells of her once-great family’s fall, and her campaign to regain its former glory. "Hunger and Thirst" -Sadness, anxiety, dread has infected the whole world. Discovering the cause, an altruist strikes blows to save it. "The Worst Day of My Life" - The bishop’s head torturer has all a man could desire—until his scatterbrained daughter presents him with a problem. "Misericord" - Hospitalized with anaphylaxis, a man learns his life is not as blessed as he thought, and neither his loved ones nor his doctor have his best interests at heart. "Found in a Cave" - A California woman writes about how she and her family have survived the collapse of society only to end up awaiting an uncertain fate high in the mountains.
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The Books I Picked & Why
Labyrinths
By
Jorge Luis Borges
Why this book?
Labyrinths is the most uncanny short story collection I’ve ever read. No other writing I know compares to it. Borges builds each story from a philosophical concept.
For example:
What if the tree that fell in the forest really didn’t exist?
What if life was deliberately random?
What if you could only think of one thing?
What if you could remember everything?
Sound boring? No way. Just the opposite, because these mind-boggling ideas play out in the everyday world, the world of groceries, love letters, collies, fountain pens.
No matter how often I do, each time I read a Borges story, I sit back, and my mind reels off across the universe. Truly, indescribably profound.
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The Explorers
By
C. M. Kornbluth
Why this book?
I first read The Explorers when I was a child. I delighted in it then and still do. Its style got to me first. A real literary style. Some of the stories are hard-boiled, Raymond Chandler in space. Some poetic. But so much better than most clunky SF. And also, so unconventional This is not Azimov. Rather than space opera, we get a scientist drunk, bemoaning his “contributions” to space flight. Instead of wondrous inventions, we get cheesy computer art. Brainless generals celebrate nuclear war. Well-written, unusual, simultaneously funny and sad, The Explorersis a masterpiece of 50s SF.
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Six Great Modern Short Novels
By
William Faulkner,
James Joyce,
Herman Melville,
Nikolay Gogol,
Katherine Anne Porter,
Glenway Wescott
Why this book?
I recently re-read Six Great Modern Short Novels, after I’d been reading a lot of recent commercial fiction. I shook my head in amazement. A thought came unbidden into my head: “This is what they mean by great literature.” All six novels are simply so much ̶ better (I can say it no better). I had read it as a youth. But the second time was even more compelling. Even the lesser novels were light-years ahead of your run-of-the-mill bestseller. Each left me with a feeling I had forgotten literature could engender ̶ a kind of exalted acceptance, an awed wonder, a transcendence, a nobility. Read them one at a time. All at once may be too powerful.
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Four Short Stories: A Great Storyteller at His Best
By
W. Somerset Maugham,
Henri Matisse
Why this book?
Any Maugham story has to be great. This collection is no exception. Usually a character in his own stories, Maugham will play the part of reader’s confidant, recounting a story about a friend of his, or a friend of a friend, as it were second-hand. I particularly like how he handles the theme of money in this collection (unlike Balzac, who introduces money with a truncheon): no big deal; but such a bother. Each story seems a trifling anecdote, distanced, cursory ̶ until the perfect note of pathos slips in. And Matisse’s simple line drawings complement Maugham’s prose nicely.
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Selected Stories
By
Guy de Maupassant,
Brian Rhys,
Marjorie Laurie
Why this book?
I like how de Maupassant, in this collection (like Balzac, only more succinctly), runs the gamut of society: two vagrants who live in a rowboat, milkmaids, nuns, soldiers, clerks, seamstresses, shop-owners, the elegant and fashionable, counts and countesses. Likewise he runs the gamut of tone from tragedy to romance to slapstick to farce to sophisticated wit. Each story is so different, one might suspect multiple authors, but for that unmistakable, to-the-point style ̶ and that perfect kicker at the end. De Maupassant is the wizard, some say the originator, of the modern short story. This is real literature in miniature.
