The Best Short Story

[Anonymous No.20007787]

Can we define our terms as Pound dictates? What is the best short story written? Which the highest peak?

I'm sure this gets posted everyday, but I just want to know where to start. I want to know the best before the rest.

[Anonymous No.20007796]

You literally read till you find a favorite.
I don’t care what Pound dictates. I care far more about the picture you just posted.

[Anonymous No.20007812]

>>20007787
Hahahaha why would you ever take one person’s dogmatic opinion about short stories?

Here are some short story writers (the benefit of short stories is you don’t have to dedicate a lot of time to determine if you like them):

Anton Chekhov
Ernest Hemingway
Franz Kafka
Raymond Carver
Alice Munro
Leo Tolstoy
Jorge Luis Borges
Nikolai Gogol
Flannery O’Connor
Guy de Maupassant
James Joyce
J.D. Salinger
Katherine Mansfield
Shirley Jackson
Vladimir Nabokov

Read a couple of their best and you should have a good introduction into what stories you like.

[Anonymous No.20007833]

>>20007796
It's beautiful. My favorite vallotton is of the washer-women

[Anonymous No.20007841]

>>20007812
It's not his opinion about anything. It's a method of discriminating the inventors and masters from derivative writers.

[Anonymous No.20007851]

>>20007841
>method
It’s an opinion. How can you construct an objective method…
Post it here.

[Anonymous No.20007876]

>>20007851
Not objective.

He defines the two categories of inventor and master -- the inventor pioneers/creates and otherwise inextant way of expression or technique or whatever , the master synthesises.

It isn't particularly dogmatic. His reading list is dogmatic, however. Very.

So fresh is his discrimination. A very big move to disregard so much revered literature.

[Anonymous No.20007905]

>>20007876
Twaddle. It’s pure opinion based on his own dogmatic standards.

[Anonymous No.20007918]

>>20007876
Post Pounds list of best short story writers

[Anonymous No.20007941]

>>20007787
What did Pound have to say about the short story?

Personally, I think Chekhov probably wrote the greatest short stories. But then I'm not exactly sure which one, maybe "The Lady with the Little Dog," or "The Darling," I'm not sure.

A short story, by its nature, usually is most effective when it is focused, everything contributes towards a primary question or revelation. A novel can say many things but a great short story needs to focus on one important thing. This means that short stories that are considered "The Greatest" often seem to need to deal with the extremely weighty life questions. I think "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is one of the best short stories ever, but it really doesn't say anything about romantic love, is that a shortcoming? If it's romantic love/betrayal that is important, maybe it should be Joyce's "The Dead," or Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." But is a humorless story something that can ever be considered great? Perhaps the best short story is one that intermingles the comic and the tragic, which in that case I'd say Gogol's "The Overcoat" has a good shot. Then again, on a pure humor level, Gogol's "The Nose" is even funnier than "The Overcoat," but, it doesn't bring quite the same gravity on the tragic side of the scale. Then you have an odd duck like Borges, who is not a writer of characters, but compelling ideas. The ideas are exciting to explore, extremely fun, and perhaps could even be a way for people to visualize human advancements in the future. That's pretty damn cool, so maybe it should be "The Library of Babel." Maybe it should be about friendship, grace, and mercy, then i'd say maybe Tolstoy's "Master and Man."

Maybe a short story should simply confound you, be mysterious, encourage interpretation, in that case maybe it'd be "Bartleby, the Scrivener" or "The Lottery" or "A Hunger Artist"

Or maybe its a bold brevity, maybe its the story that has the greatest effect on the reader in the shortest time, then maybe I'd say it should be Hemingway's "A Very Short Story" or one of Kafka's parables.

But then I think, wait, I really like Kafka's long stories like "Josephine, or the Mouse Folk" and "The Burrow" and "The Metamorphosis."

And then there are stories that I don't really care about why they were written, or what the message is, I just find them cool, I find them entrancing. Many Marquez stories are like that for me, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings," and "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World."

In the end, there comes a time when authors reach a virtuoso level and its not so much about who is better, or nitpicking them, but enjoying the varied perspectives, subjects, and sides of life which they take on. I don't read Kafka and think, if only he'd tried to write like Tolstoy. I don't read Hemingway and wish he wrote like Kafka. I love how different they are from each other even though they are all three masters.

[Anonymous No.20007954]

>>20007918
>>20007941
He only wrote about poetry (and a little about the novel). The method of discrimination should be applicable to anything.

[Anonymous No.20007958]

The best short story is neither short nor a story

[Anonymous No.20008134]

>>20007958
This, the best short story is actually a hot juicy burger from a roadside place outside Prineville, Oregon.

[Anonymous No.20008138]

>>20007787

[Anonymous No.20008151]

>>20007941
And thanks for your comment.

(I don't read short stories, so cant really add anything) - have you read any of Rimbaud's prose poems?