I love short stories. Each one like a puzzle piece in this wonderful thing called humanity.  My brain - as far back as I can remember - trying to piece existence together into a whole, awaiting the moment when I drop the last piece in and can shout, “A-ha! I knew it!”  A couple of literary subscriptions, Best Of collections, author collections (along with 2 novels a month) and I figure I’m good for 300 puzzle pieces a year over each of the last four years, which feels like a pace I can continue even as I work, husband, and father.  Add a dozen short stories I manage to write each year and give me the benefit of this much - I know a thing or two about the short story.  The first thing I know is this: when speaking about short stories ‘good’ is always, always a subjective term.  I’ve read contest winners that make we wonder what the editors were thinking.  I’ve been touched by stories that a maybe 500 people will ever read and – if they are like me – only a handful will remember.  The second thing I know is this: I’ve read so many, that only the remarkable commit themselves to memory.  Which leads me to the third thing I know, although this one is about me, not the short story: I want to be moved.  Already I have confessed I am intrigued by humanity, so a story that moves me, touches me will be committed to memory in such a way when confronted with a bout of insomnia I will be tempted to, say, make a list of my favorite short stories of all time and post it on this site.

1)The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula Le Guin.  This story provides the perfect punch to the gut after a beautiful set-up.  Only 5 pages long in the Anthology in which I first read it, the story is split almost evenly down the middle.  The first half of the story describes the idyllic land of Omelas – the perfect society in the perfect setting.  The reader is then asked if they could believe it such a place before with the sucker punch response ‘of course not’ implied.  The second half of the story will give all of that beauty back if you will accept one more detail into the setting.  I’ll not spoil it for anyone who has read this far (but has not read the story), but I will tell you that the one detail changes much for you, the reader.  You will empathize with those in the story’s title. You might just become one.

2)The Star, Arthur Clarke. Normally, I am not one much for science fiction, but this story jumps immediately to a realm I constantly explore: the struggle for faith.  A space mission scientist who happens to be a Jesuit priest performs a simple math calculation on the timing of the demise of a lost civilization – and has his entire existence challenged by his finding.  The idea itself is so incredibly simple, but this compact story bursts with implications.  This is the first short story I remember reading that does what I thought at the time unthinkable – leaves everything up in the air (literally and figuratively).  The poor troubled man has 3,000 light years to contemplate his findings.  Twenty plus years after my first reading of the story, I do the same.  A couple of years back I penned a story for my son – not realizing until I read it to him just how much the story owes to this Arthur Clarke gem.  See The Crestwood Expedition under the Literary Shorts section of my home page.

3)The Vertical Ladder, William Sansom.  In effort to do that which so many have done before him – impress a girl, young Flegg boasts of his ability to scale an abandoned tower.  Upon hearing his words of bravado, his so-called friends force him to walk the walk, so to speak.  What ensues to the most terrifying story I have ever read.  Not ghost or monster terrifying, but afraid-of-heights terrifying.  When I was in my late teens, my father would have me climb an aluminum ladder to clean the rooftop gutters.  As I neared the top – fretting the move from the ladder to the roof – I would hear my father’s words of reassurance, “I’ve got the ladder, Pete.”  My lips stayed shut, but my mind responded, “Your’s ain’t the end the worries me!”  This story builds with every step Flegg manages, and evokes the same level of fear I would feel when swinging from the top rung to the rooftop.

4)A Fable Ending in the Sound of a Thousand Parakeets, Kevin Brockmeier.  The title alone almost makes this one memorable.  What do a thousand parakeets sound like?  And how is this worked into a fable?  This is a recent read (Kevin Brockmeier’s collection The View from the Seventh Layer was released in 2008), but I still find myself turning back to it.  A simply written fable that answers a question that I never would have imagined asking: what sound would parakeets – those natural mimics – make if they were raised in the house of a mute?  Nice story.

5)The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway.  About twenty years ago I probably had a Literature professor explain to me where the short story stops and the novella begins.  I have no idea where that line is.  (I did, however, just get the visual of two hoary headed, tweed-coated state college professors getting into a shouting match over the same point.)  What I know is this: when I started into this story, I could not stop.  Read it end to end in one sitting.  Like the fish – and like the old man himself – I was hooked, had no choice but to stay on for the whole ride.  I was genuinely worried for the old man as he fought his fish, and elated at the outcome.  Hemingway’s stories often capture the mundane and challenge the reader to find deeper meaning.  This story serves it all up for the reader.  Its enduring stature is no surprise.

6)Charlie in the House of Rue, Robert Coover.  I’d recommend almost anything by Robert Coover.  His writing is phenomenal.  I’m also a long-time fan of Charlie Chaplin films.  Chaplin’s ability to capture the human condition – to make the viewer relate to his characters is a thing of beauty.  Robert Coover’s story places the silent film great in a more macabre setting, but you will be amazed at how he uses the English language to bring Charlie to life.  More than any other story I’ve read, this one jumps off the page.  Appropriately, it was published in a collection called A Night at the Movies.  Reading this story was like being there.

7)The Kugelmass Episode, Woody Allen.  Fun – surprise – from Woody Allen.  A frustrated college professor finds a magician who can add some excitement to his life by allowing him to travel into the literary works of his choice.  The poor fool chooses Madam Bovary and finds himself having an affair the title character. What so funny about that?  His antics are visible to anyone who happens to be reading the book at the time, causing some unintended consequences.  Oh, and Emma wants to run off with him to his present day New York.  The story, published in The New Yorker in the early 70s, might well have been the blueprint for his  excellent 1985 film The Purple Rose of Cairo.