Like the "Books of 2015" list, a recap, as best I can remember, of every short story I read through over the past year. Most of these were for school.
"The Last Leaf", by O. Henry.
A young woman is near to death in her small Greenwich village apartment. A grouchy neighbor worries about her. One of my favorite short stories of all time.
"The Gift of the Magi", by O. Henry
Possibly the greatest short story ever written, of newlyweds' Jim and Della Young's efforts to buy the other the grandest Christmas gift possible.
"The Green Door," by O. Henry
This is strange. But it's about the spirit of adventure; so of course it would be out of the ordinary. It's really good; written in a mix of second- and third-person narration. Most of the things that we encounter in life, like Rudolf Steiner in this story, come about because we leaped at an opportunity. Fortune may not always favor the brave, but the odds are better that those courageous ones will find happiness.
"A Retrieved Reformation", by O. Henry
One of his best stories, about the country's most renowned safecracker. Might have been based on a guy he knew during his time in prison.
"Roads of Destiny", by O. Henry.
Examines how a poetic-minded shepherd's life might have gone, depending on which road he takes at a crossing while on a journey. Really interesting from the "What if THIS detail were changed?" department of storytelling.
"The Ransom of Red Chief", by O. Henry.
A kidnapping does not go at all as planned....hilarity ensues.
"Sound and Fury", by O. Henry.
Composed entirely of dialogue, in a manner resembling a sketch; a famous novelist is dictating his latest work for a magazine serial to his secretary, who keeps misunderstanding and interrupting him. It's pretty hysterical.
"The Handbook of Hymen", by O. Henry.
A miner woos the richest lady in town thanks to a handbook of unreliable information and useless trivia on basically every subject under the sun.
"The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss", by O. Henry.
A tale of how far a young man will go to earn the hand of the girl he loves.
"The Defeat of the City", by O. Henry.
A country rustic travels to the big city and becomes a famous lawyer, marrying into one of the elite families; and this is the story of him and his wife going back to the farm for a visit.
"Friends in San Rosario", by O. Henry.
A Texas banker stalls the federal examiner with the help of a friend.
"One Dollar's Worth", by O. Henry.
Counterfeit money leads to shootouts in Brownsville, Texas.
"A Ramble in Aphasia", by O. Henry.
A man from Denver loses his memory and attends a dentist's conference.
"The Poet and the Peasant", by O. Henry.
Blind luck guides what editors accept; and the city can't tolerate some people.
"The Robe of Peace", by O. Henry.
The high-society circle is dumbfounded when one of their number disappears to become a monk.
"The Voice of the City", by O. Henry
A scholar tries to academically define what the voice of New York is saying. I don't really understand it.
"One Thousand Dollars", by O. Henry.
A young man tries to figure out how to spend the inheritance from his tight-fisted father.
"The Trimmed Lamp", by O. Henry
The tale of two young women toiling away in the big city; and the abandonment of pleasures which are there for fleeting amusements of a higher quality and price.
"A Madison Square Arabian Night", by O. Henry.
A bored rich man decides to invite a homeless man for a dinner party; and the man turns out to be a too-gifted painter, capable in his portraits of bringing out the inner qualities people would prefer to keep hidden.
"The Rubaiyat of a Scottish Highball", by O. Henry
A man decides to give up drinking; only to have his wife disapprove of this plan.
"The Buyer From Cactus City", by O. Henry.
The junior partner of a West Texas department store goes to New York to replenish the year's stock and winds up getting engaged in the process.
"Badge of Policeman O'Roon", by O. Henry
A millionaire takes the place of a down-on-his-luck policeman friend for the day.
"The Tale of a Tainted Tenner", by O. Henry
Narrated by a ten-dollar bill; he's explaining his life story and journeys undertaken.
"The Piamenta Pancakes", by O. Henry
The feud between cattlemen and sheepherders heads to the kitchen in this tale of suitors angling for the hand of the lady of the neighboring ranch.
The Reformation of Calliope", by O. Henry
The terror of the small town of Quicksand must pretend to be the Marshal when the Marshal's mother comes to visit.
"Caught", by O. Henry
A detective flirts with his prey in this thriller set in a hotel in South America.
"After Twenty Years", by O. Henry
A man keeps a promise he made to wait for a friend at a restaurant that no longer exists to reunite with a friend he hasn't seen in twenty years. It's one of Henry's best.
"The Man Upstairs", by P.G. Wodehouse
A tale of neighbors all struggling in their shared pursuit of the Creation of Art; it's terrific. And there are cats. And music. And loads of snarky banter.
"The Worst Christmas Story", by Christopher Morley
A very Henry-ish/Wodehouse-like tone here; it's a great story firmly grounded in realistic details with an ending that is both completely obvious and totally surprising.
"Hills Like White Elephants", by Ernest Hemingway
Nearly perfect in subtlety, and his journalistic style is put to brilliant use here.
"In Memory of L.H.W.", by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
The lightly-fictionalized life story of a good-hearted but not-quite-all-there farmer in the community where Fisher grew up. It's a terrific read.
"The Enchanted Bluff", by Willa Cather
The narrator and a bunch of friends relate tales they've heard from relatives and dream elaborate future adventures that don't quite end up happening. One of my favorite short stories of all time.
"The Hiltons' Holiday", by Sarah Orne Jewett
This is another of my all-time favorites. A farmer takes the day off to go into town with his daughters.
"Retired", by Cynthia Rylant
An elderly woman is lonely, so she adopts an elderly collie, and life gets much better for both of them. Really great story. (Reprinted here last December.)
"Philomel Cottage", by Agatha Christie
Her best short story of all time. Very tense and suspenseful.
"The Steadfast Tin Soldier", by Hans Christian Andersen
Very sad. Totally necessary to read at least once, though.
"The Little Match Girl", by Hans Christian Andersen
This is so tragic, but so beautifully written.
"The Snow Queen", by Hans Christian Andersen
It's what inspired (very loosely, anyway) Frozen; so....there's that...
"The Little Mermaid", by Hans Christian Andersen.
The loose adaptation of the Disney musical is a lot more cheerful and less scary.
"How to Become a Writer", by Lorrie Moore
I enjoyed this. It's interesting to read about stuff you're interested in. It's also interesting to read about other people working. Also, it's written in second-person. And it's written in the style of recipe; which is a cool spin. Light on plot, more a character study.
"The Story of an Hour", by Kate Chopin
This is an odd one. And I don't really care much for Chopin's writing; she's angry and selfish. Which is understandable when you look at her life as a single mother in the 1890's, but still....
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", by Ambrose Bierce
A southern gentleman is hanged off a lonesome bridge in northern Alabama during the Civil War. It's a pretty good story.
"The Real Thing", by Henry James
James' style kind of reminds you of O. Henry or P.G. Wodehouse, which is good. This story is about a struggling artist forced to illustrate dreadful dime novels, and an aristocratic couple that he meets. Very subtle, and very long.
"A White Heron", by Sarah Orne Jewett
A lonely nine-year-old girl's life in rural New England is interrupted by a hunter and puppy love. Not quite as good as "The Hilton's Holiday", but compared to most of the things we read in American Lit, this was a good read.
"The Storm", by Kate Chopin
There's a tornado that tears through a Louisiana town, and a woman hooks up with her ex-boyfriend. Typical Chopin = A mess.
"The Yellow Wall-Paper", by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
An autobiographical character study of a deeply depressed woman. Doesn't make much sense.
"The Revolt of Mother", by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
A farmer's wife is sick of never getting to fix up the house all proper like she wishes to, and so moves into the new barn in protest. That's basically it.
"Roman Fever", by Edith Wharton
Two middle-aged women reminisce of their lives and the love affairs of their youth. This is a wonderful story, and it would have made an excellent 1950's movie with Cary Grant playing the husband of one of the women.
"Babylon Revisited", by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A former alcoholic expatriate tries to piece his life back together during the Great Depression after his wife dies. Sort of what you'd get if you asked for a sequel to The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Definitely worth reading.
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro", by Ernest Hemingway
It's my opinion that this was Hemingway predicting his own death, which really was slow and painful and tortuous and alone. Odd story, but worth reading.
"The Law of Life", by Jack London.
An elderly Eskimo slowly freezes to death in the woods; since he is of no more use to the tribe. This is extremely depressing.
"Barn Burning", by William Faulker
A sharecropper's son endures his terrible family, and then determines that he must get away from them if he wants to make something of his life.
"The Man Who was Almost a Man", by Richard Wright
An irresponsible black teenager buys a gun against his mother's wishes, shoots his boss's mule, and then runs away from home.
"Good Country People", by Flannery O'Connor
This story is impossible to describe, but it'll leave you chewing over it for a while.
"I Stand Here Ironing", by Tillie Olsen
A middle-aged black woman ponders how she raised her oldest daughter, who is now a young adult on her own. She was a pretty terrible mother, but she recognizes that. It's a pretty good story.
"Everyday Use", by Alice Walker
A elderly black farm woman and her daughter are expecting a visit from the citified sister with strange notions and no respect for history or family. One of the only things Walker wrote that is worth reading.
"Two Kinds", by Amy Tan
An Asian woman reflects on the conflicts she had with her Chinese immigrant mother; who pushed her excessively hard into becoming a genius. Resentment follows.
"This is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona", by Sherman Alexie
The author adapted this story into the script of the movie Smoke Signals; the movie was better. Two Coeur d'Alene Indians from Idaho travel to the Phoenix area after the estranged father of one of them has a heart attack.
"Fleur", by Louise Erdich
This is weird and hard to follow, but the author knows how to write a sentence. In the early 1920's along the Minnesota/North Dakota border, a Chippewa woman works in a butcher shop; is raped, bad things that happen to people she crosses paths with tend to make the town think she's a witch; there's a big tornado and she lives the rest of her life left alone by the lake with her daughter.
"Sexy", by Jhumpa Lahiri
A shallow, insecure young woman is having an affair with a married guy, until she babysits the weirdest kid ever, who tells her that affairs are dangerous and stupid. Set in Boston, heavily influenced by India Indian culture. Those two facts make it a strange tale. But it did confirm my vague definition of what the word "sexy" means: "What you say when you act like you love someone you don't know." So...why would you do that?
"The Manuscript in the Bottle", by Edgar Allan Poe
A man survives a shipwreck, is picked up by this ghost ship, and then dies when that ship goes down in a swirling vortex.
"The Masque of the Red Death", by Edgar Allan Poe
An arrogant prince tries to cheat Death by hiding in a weird, uniquely designed and decorated bunker/castle with a thousand of his closest friends(plus servants, etc); but the plague finds them anyway.
"The Pit and the Pendulum", by Edgar Allan Poe,
Someone is being tortured very graphically. At the last minute he's saved by a rescue during the Spanish Inquisition. Count Rugen is still more sadistic with his Machine.
"The Fall of the House of Usher", by Edgar Allan Poe
The narrator visits a friend he hasn't seen in years; who turns out to be insane, the friend's twin sister dies, which throws him over the edge; but then it turns out, as Andy Griffith would say, that the sister "wasn't actually daid, an' she come back and her twin, well, he expired."
"The Black Cat", by Edgar Allan Poe
An alcoholic murders cats. And also his wife. He's caught in the end; because as Agatha Christie could tell us, all murderers give themselves away. (As a class we were much more appalled by his mutilating the cats before killing them than for smashing his wife's head in with an ax...this is why 8:30 a.m. classes are a bad idea.)
"The Woman Who Came In at Six O'Clock", by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A bartender has a conversation with a hooker he has a crush on. That's literally all that happens here. Also, she's either planning to murder someone or commit suicide; it's a little unclear which.
"Nabo: The Man Who Made the Angels Wait", by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A musically-gifted farm boy is kicked in the head by a horse, and he loses most brain function. And his employers forget he exists in their attic for fourteen years. Also there's this unnamed mentally-handicapped girl who kind of shares his pain.
"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings", by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
An elderly angel lives in a poor couple's chicken coop. A circus immediately forms around him.
"The Sea of Lost Time", by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Lots of weird things happen. There are lots of strange smells. Maybe the smell kills people? Nothing in this makes any sense.
"The Handsomest Drowned Man In the World", by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
How's that for a title? Seriously, though, this gigantic man washes up on the beach of this little town, and the town adopts the corpse, imagining him to be a hero. I hate magical realism.
"Death Constant Beyond Love", by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A corrupt politician is dying of cancer and has an affair with the daughter of a longtime acquaintance. At least this one could be followed.
"The Calorie Man", by Paolo Bacigalupi
One man tries unsuccessfully to fight back against the GMO companies that rule the world in this all-too-plauisble dystopian world.
"Pump Six", by Paolo Bacigalupi
This one is even more depressing than above, but ends with a small ray of hope suggesting that books may provide the answers to societal problems.
"How the Whale Got His Throat", by Rudyard Kipling
One of his Just So Stories, this one explaining how the whale stopped being a ferocious shark-like creature and only eats little tiny things now.
"How the Camel Got His Hump", by Rudyard Kipling
Pretty self-explanatory; but be willing to work!
"How the Rhinoceros Lost His Skin", by Rudyard Kipling
Explains why rhinos are dangerous and grouchy.
"How the Leopard Got His Spots", by Rudyard Kipling
Pretty self-explanatory title.
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