Fifty Great Short Stories

50 Great Short Stories

Edited by Milton Crane

Bantam, Paperback, [2005].
12mo. [xii]+571 pp. Edited by Milton Crane. "What Makes a Great Short Story" [i] and "A Note on the Making of This Book" [xi] by the editor. Title and Author Indexes [pp. 561-71].

First published thus, 1952.

Contents

The Garden Party - Katherine Mansfield
The Three-Day Blow - Ernest Hemingway
The Standard of Living - Dorothy Parker
The Saint - V. S. Pritchett
The Other Side of the Hedge - E. M. Forster
Brooksmith - Henry James
The Jockey - Carson McCullers
The Courting of Dinah Shadd - Rudyard Kipling
The Shot - Alexander Poushkin (translated by T. Keane)
Graven Image - John O'Hara
Putois - Anatole France (translated by Frederic Chapman)
Only the Dead Know Brooklyn - Thomas Wolfe
A. V. Laider - Max Beerbohm
The Lottery - Shirley Jackson
The Masque of the Red Death - Edgar Allan Poe
Looking Back - Guy de Maupassant (translated by H. N. P. Sloman)
The Man Higher Up - O. Henry
The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse - William Saroyan
The Other Two - Edith Wharton
Theft - Katherine Anne Porter
A Good Man Is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor
The Man of the House - Frank O'Connor
The Man Who Shot Snapping Turtles - Edmund Wilson
The Gioconda Smile - Aldous Huxley
The Curfew Tolls - Stephen Vincent Benet
Father Wakes Up the Village - Clarence Day
Ivy Day in the Committee Room - James Joyce
The Chrysanthemums - John Steinbeck
The Door - E. B. White
An Upheaval - Anton Chekhov
How Beautiful with Shoes - Wilbur Daniel Steele
A Haunted House - Virginia Woolf
The Catbird Seat - James Thurber
The Schartz-Metterklume Method - "Saki" (H. H. Munro)
The Death of a Bachelor - Arthur Schnitzler
The Apostate - George Milburn
The Phoenix - Sylvia Townsend Warner
The Evening Sun - William Faulkner
The Law - Robert M. Coates
The Tale - Joseph Conrad
A Girl from Red Lion, P. A. - H. L. Mencken
Main Currents of American Thought - Irwin Shaw
The Ghosts - Lord Dunsany
The Minister's Black Veil - Nathaniel Hawthorne
A String of Beads - W. Somerset Maugham
The Golden Honeymoon - Ring Lardner
The Man Who Could Work Miracles - H. G. Wells
The Foreigner - Francis Steegmuller
Thrawn Janet - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Chaser - John Collier

Title Index
Author Index

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If publication history is anything to go by, this book has been exceptionally successful. First published exactly 60 years ago, it is still in print, indeed, stupendously so. If the number line in my copy is to be believed, this is the 74th (!) printing of the 2005 Bantam Classic edition. This is as good a recommendation as any to have a serious look inside. I have been doing so, intermittently, for quite some time. Here are some random notes.

An even better recommendation, if a personal one, is that in general I am fan both of short stories and anthologies. I have the "advantage" of not being well-read at all, so such books are an excellent opportunity to sample the writing of many famous names. Of course it is dangerous. There is no guarantee that what's included here is among the best that a given author has produced. Anthologies, like everything else, are products of personal taste and prejudice. Moreover, they are often restricted by size: even if an author is at his best as a short story writer, he may be represented by a story that's too short to demonstrate all he is capable of.

I have tried to resist judging authors in this volume as much as possible. Most of them I have encountered for the first time; a few I had read once or twice before. This is surely a very limited knowledge and it may well be that this one terrible (or great) short story is an accident. However, I have a notion, stimulated by Maugham of course, that if a writer's mind is powerful enough, and if his pen able enough of course, he can offer something compelling even at his worst. Besides, two or three stories by a certain author certainly mean two or three times better knowledge about him than a single encounter, no matter how imperfect this knowledge may still be. Therefore, I have tried to indicate these few cases when I had some prior knowledge of an author.

But on the whole, let me repeat that, I have refrained from passing judgments. Not much sense in judging anything anyway, and judging on such limited grounds easily becomes ridiculous. What follows is merely a personal opinion. It neither seeks evaluation of the contents nor asks for the agreement of other readers.

The only writer among those fifty with whose works I am reasonably familiar – Somerset Maugham – is a fine illustration of the essential shortcomings of anthologies. "A String of Beads" is one of Maugham's "cosmopolitans", very short stories written on commission by the famous magazine. They are deliberately light and anecdotal in character, and they certainly do not represent Maugham at his best as a short story writer; for this you need to go to his longest stories, mostly but not exclusively set in the tropics. In other words, had I been completely ignorant of Maugham's short stories, I might have concluded that he is no great shakes. This, of course, is far from the truth.

Yet, frustratingly, even though "A String of Beads" is not among Maugham's best stories – in fact, it it's not even among his finest ''cosmopolitans'' – it is easily among the finest of those 50 Great Short Stories. For mere seven pages it delivers a well-constructed plot, natural yet amusing dialogue, and even a few stimulating observations about life. A trifle, to be sure, but a most entertaining one. Mr Crane might have chosen Maugham's other story about a pearl necklace (''Mr Know-All'', alluded to in ''A String of Beads''), or some other of his ''cosmopolitans'' (''The Bath-Tub'', ''Louise'', ''A Friend in Need'') if he insisted on a very short length, but he didn't choose badly in this case, either. I am not sure about many other cases, though.

The book on the whole is quite a mixed bag. The stories are extremely varied not just in style, but also in quality. They cover the whole range from masterpiece to silly jokes, with much too many readable but forgettable pieces thrown in for good measure. I am often baffled why Mr Crane included some of the stories at all. His first prefatory note, grandly titled "What Makes a Great Short Story?", may perhaps offer some clue:

The sudden unforgettable revelation of character; the vision of a world through another's eyes; the glimpse of truth; the capture of a moment in time.

All this the short story, at its best, is uniquely capable of conveying, for in its very shortness lies its greatest strength.

It can discover depths of meaning in the casual word or action; it can suggest in a page what could not be stated in a volume.

Such is the quality of experience offered you, in many and diverse ways, by the fifty short stories which make up this book.

Granted for some exaggeration of the value of the short story, there is some wisdom here. Note, however, that Mr Crane never mentions anything about exciting plots or sheer entertainment. (Somerset Maugham would have been amused!) Nor does he stress the quality of the writing itself. And I think this is extremely important. No matter how revelatory a story can be, if it's badly written it's useless to me. Perhaps the most painful examples in this volume are Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Wolfe and Rudyard Kipling. Now these ''stories'' are written in a language that resembles modern English but very vaguely; Shakespeare is an easy read in comparison – and much more worthwhile. Also, each of Mr Crane's four statements in his first paragraph is open to discussion.

''The sudden unforgettable revelation of character''? Yes, certainly, but only if the character is singular enough to excite interest. Should it be some thoroughly ordinary fellow, it would make for a very dull experience (unless the writing is sublime which is seldom the case).

''The vision of a world through another's eyes''? The same deal. If it's original and powerful and stimulating enough, it's an unforgettable experience to see a world – this or any other – through the eyes of somebody else. But if it's a commonplace world, only the greatest writing can make it worth experiencing (e.g. humdrum country matters and Jane Austen).

''The glimpse of truth''? We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours? Thus Pontius Pilate asked Jesus Christ. And a damn good question it is.

''The capture of a moment in time''? This is a story? It is certainly the most subjective of the four counts. Unless you can somehow identify intensely with this moment, it's difficult to believe how a short ''story'' dedicated to it might be engrossing.

So, it is no wonder that I should find many pieces disappointing when there are so many obstacles on the way to an unforgettable reading experience.

Last and least, that something is thought in schools and colleges, is still in print and frequently reviewed, in short that it's a classic, is no guarantee for stimulating entertainment, either. In his second prefatory note, Mr Crane, who apparently thought literature at the University of Chicago, mentions that he sent a list of 100 stories to many of his colleagues with a request to mark the half they thought worth reprinting in an anthology. The editor did not accept all suggestions, though he does accept all responsibility for the final selection. But I think he should have changed the title of his book to ''10 Great Short Stories – and 40 pieces of ballast''.

I also wonder if this academic background doesn't have something to do with some curious omissions. Why not even one detective story? What about science fiction? By the early 1950s Mr Crane surely had enough material to choose from. Stories like that would have added some real diversity to his selection. Why ignore them? Because they are not ''great writing''? Poor reason. Neither is 80% of the book.

Never mind. Enough preliminary rambling. Let's have a look at some examples. To begin with, as an ardent fan of Somerset Maugham, I was particularly interested in reading the contributions of Chekhov, Maupassant, Kipling and Edmund Wilson. The first three need no introduction. Maugham considered them the greatest masters in the genre and that's saying a lot (his natural modesty never allowed him to put himself beside them, and here, I think, he was wrong). As for Mr Wilson, he has the dubious honour to hold the world record for a most vicious description of Maugham's prose (''tissue of clichés'') and his literary position on the whole (''...half-trashy novelist, who writes badly, but is patronized by half-serious readers, who do not care much about writing'') So I was naturally curious what Mr Wilson, who once dismissed Maugham's short stories as ''magazine commodities'', can offer in the genre.

''The Man Who Shot Snapping Turtles'' is just as absurd and grotesque as its title suggests. It's an amusing tale about a crackpot who couldn't stand the turtles in his pond because they decimated the population of beautiful ducks. Mr Wilson certainly writes well, with charming humour and effective choice of words. The story is a trifle long-winded but an enjoyable, if decidedly light, read. It is not something I would re-read, though. And for me re-reading is one of the hallmarks of greatness. The twist in the end is a tad too lurid; the attempt to introduce some deeper meaning by reflections on God in the middle is positively pedestrian.

Kipling, Maupassant and Chekhov are in a different league altogether. Frankly, neither they nor any other writer I have encountered so far is on par with Maugham's mastery in the short story. But they at least are among the few that do come closer than most and stimulate further reading of their works. Well, at least the last two.

I was especially eager to sample Chekhov's writing. I was prepared for atmosphere and characterisation, rather than plot, and I was not disappointed. ''An Upheaval'' is merely eight pages long and it ends where it might just as well begin. Yet it packs quite a punch; there is even something like twist in the end though this is the least important part of it. Chekhov writes beautifully, with compelling simplicity and remarkable ability for choosing the right word for every occasion. This is how this type of story – supplying the material for one, rather than the story itself – should be written. The ''upheaval'' in this case is caused by a missing brooch, but it gives an excellent opportunity to have a look both inside the head of Mashenka, a young girl employed as a governess, and the frantic home life of a Russian family with aristocratic pretensions. It is a poignant, disquieting and superbly written story. It left me positively disturbed – and hungry for more Chekhov.

I wonder if ''Looking Back'' is a typical story for Maupassant. I am almost sure – out of sheer speculation, of course – that it is not among his finest, though it is definitely better than most other pieces in the book. Like Chekhov's story, it consists mostly of material for one, here presented as the autobiographical recollections of an aged priest. There is some thought-provoking stuff about the over-sensitive nature of children and the vast dangers if this persists in the adult life. The treatment may be sketchy, but Maupassant handles words with the same mastery with which Debussy and Ravel handle the symphonic orchestra. My only qualm with this very short and oddly moving story is a horrifying description of a dog that was run over by a carriage. This is difficult to stomach!

''The Courting of Dinah Shadd'' was my second encounter of Kipling's writing after ''At the End of the Passage''. What a letdown! The latter is a fine ghost story, brilliantly conveying the malaise that assailed the British in colonial India. But the former! Just about 80% of it is written in some of the most abominable English dialects ever put on paper. The language, if it can be called English at all, is nearly incomprehensible. I have no idea whether British soldiers talked like that at the time, but Kipling's characters, most of them at any rate, certainly do. It is intolerable. The story itself is remarkably unremarkable. The fabled mystique of India is overwhelmingly missing. I really cannot describe what a torture it was to finish this thing. It nearly killed me with boredom.

Kipling's story is the longest one in the volume. Twenty-four pages. Mr Crane should have been shot for reprinting it!

There are several other writers by whom I had read something before (not necessarily a short story) that I had found very enjoyable and was curious to see if they would prove as compelling now. These include the following authors and works: Aldous Huxley (Brave New World), Edith Wharton (''Roman Fever''), E. M. Forster (''What I Believe''), John Steinbeck (''The Gift''), Max Beerbohm (''Seeing People Off'') and Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter).

Objectively speaking, ''The Gioconda Smile'' is one of the longest stories in the volume. Subjectively, it is one of the finest: yet another proof that I really must read more of Aldous Huxley. To whet your appetite for this one, I'll only tell you that it has several gorgeous twists in the end and a most fascinating, if not exactly likable, protagonist. The story reflects the author's vast knowledge – ranging from Roman culture to marine zoology – but this is never obtrusive or obscure; it's used sparingly and to the point (well, except for a few phrases in French and Italian). Also, need I say it, Mr Huxley has a way with words; his style is a compelling mixture of straightforward simplicity and poetry in prose that's often profound; the former drives the plot inexorably, the latter gives me a pause to reflect on this strange creature called ''human being''. Indeed, I needn't make such lame attempts at description. Here are some quotes that seem to me quite convincing. This is what I call great characterisation, especially for a short story:

Mr Hutton was aware that he had not behaved with proper patience; but he could not help it. Very early in his manhood he had discovered that not only did he not feel sympathy for the poor, the weak, the diseased, and deformed; he actually hated them. […] It was not, he knew, a very comely emotion, and he had been ashamed of it at first. In the end he had decided that it was temperamental, inevitable, and had felt no further qualms.

Mr Hutton felt ashamed. How much was it his own lack of sympathy that prevented her from feeling well every day? But he comforted himself by reflecting that it was only a case of feeling, not of being better. Sympathy does not mend a diseased liver or a weak heart.

Whatever she said was always said with intensity. She leaned forward, aimed, so to speak, like a gun, and fired her words. Bang! the charge in her soul was ignited, the words whizzed forth at the narrow barrel of her mouth. She was a machine gun riddling her hostess with sympathy.

Mr Hutton looked on in silence. The spectacle of Janet Spence evoked in him an unfailing curiosity. He was not romantic enough to imagine that every face masked an interior physiognomy of beauty and strangeness, that every woman's small talk was like a vapor hanging over mysterious gulfs.

Mr Hutton was touched with shame and remorse. To be thanked like this, worshipped for having seduced the girl, it was too much. It had just been a piece of imbecile wantonness. Imbecile, idiotic: there was no other way to describe it. […] It had all been so stale and boring. He knew it would be; he always knew. And yet, and yet… Experience doesn't teach.

Mr Hutton is quite a character, isn't he?

''The Other Two'' does not have the delicious twist in the end of ''Roman Fever'', but it does share the same exquisite and subtle prose. Edith Wharton peels the layers of her characters, both male and female, with the same skill as an accomplished housewife might peel onion in the kitchen. And you have to love phrases like ''A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue''. Socially the story has become quite dated; hardly any happily married man today would make such a fuss about ''the other two'' ex-husbands of his wife. But psychologically the doubts and dilemmas of Mr Waythorn, his personal insecurity and anxiety, are quite as relevant today. They can easily be transferred to any time and social context. Again, this is another facet of great writing: it easily transcends what is but of fleeting interest; it deals with what changes little, yet is so complex that we can never reach the bottom of it.

Similarly, ''The Chrysanthemums'' is not on par with ''The Gift'', but it is a fine story on its own, if shorter and on a smaller scale. I reckon Steinbeck is a very fine way to visit California from the first half of the last century. He writes simply and without stylistic acrobatics, but with sharp insight into his characters combined with evocative descriptions of nature. This particular story makes an effective, indeed affecting, contrast between two very different lifestyles. On the one side of the ''life barricade'' are Eliza Allen and her husband. They do well in their ranch in the Salinas Valley, but notwithstanding dining out in the city, and going to the movies, there is a hint of dreadful monotony in their lives. Eliza's greatest pleasure seems to be her chrysanthemums, and they are not enough even for such simple creature. On the ''other side'' is a destitute tramp who lives on the road, travelling the whole year between Seattle and San Diego, sleeping in his miserable wagon and mending ''pots, pans, knives, sisors'' for fifty cents apiece. His life seems adventurous by comparison – but it multiplies the hardships almost to the point of being unendurable. It's a strange story. There is virtually no plot, yet the overall effect is deeply moving, almost heart-rending. I reckon Steinbeck's novels must be worth reading.

''The Other Side of the Hedge'' is a very peculiar story. It's a kind of fantasy, an allegory, a parable, you name it. The very first sentence sets the tone:

My pedometer told me that I was twenty-five; and, though it was a shocking thing to stop walking, I was so tired that I sat down on a milestone to rest.

So the protagonist walks and runs, on a dusty road with high hedges on either side. The road is endless. There is nothing on the other side of the hedge. At least that's what everybody on the road likes to believe. Our hero, however, knows better. He breaks to the other side – and discovers a whole new world. People here run for pleasure, not to outrun each other. The lifestyle is one of unabashed hedonism. There is no direction, no progress, no competition. Nor does anybody care about any of these things. Our protagonist is profoundly shocked that humanity can succumb to an existence that clearly leads nowhere – and that everybody is obviously satisfied with that.

This sounds like an allegorical representation of the two major types of life one can lead: one full of industry and toil, and one full of fun and pleasure. There are few questions more profound or more worth asking than this one. How is one to live? As a lotus eater or as a blue/white-collar ''slave''? The easiest, and most unsatisfactory, answer is that the truth lies in the middle between both extremities. The beautiful thing about this story is that it does show something of the both sides. Though I prefer more extended and more orthodox treatments of this eternal conundrum, such as for example ''The Songs of Distant Earth'' (Arthur Clarke) or ''The Fall of Edward Barnard'' (Somerset Maugham), Mr Forster's story is an impressive achievement for mere six pages. It's wonderfully readable, very amusing and not a little mind-expanding. Here comes yet another mental note about an author who is well-worth exploring in more detail…

''The Minister's Black Veil'' deals very much with the same subject as The Scarlet Letter - concealment of sin, and suffering from it – and is written in the same elaborate and formal, but somehow very readable and appealing, style. Also, one may guess, it is set in the same religion-obsessed times when glorification of sin and mortification of flesh was the name of the game. The only disappointment is that the end doesn't make it clear why the saintly Father Hooper wore the veil that so shocked his congregation. But that, of course, is the least interesting part of the story. It is significant that the title contains the (omitted from the table of contents) addition ''a parable''. For my part, the story's a fascinating study of appearance and reality, especially how trifle changes in the former may have profound consequences in the latter. Be careful the next time you judge the others by their appearance.

Mr Beerbohm's style is not entirely devoid of verbosity, especially when he indulges in imaginary conversations between letters, but his dry wit and subtle irony are so quintessentially English that they are not without charm. Nor is his exquisite vocabulary: you have to love phrases like ''reentanglement in metaphysics'' or ''our mutual aloofness was a positive bond between us''. ''A. V. Laider'' is an excellent story that deals, on the surface, with the far from exciting subject of palmistry. Of course there is a great deal more than that. I should like to say only that this is as fine an exploration of the human imagination as any in a short story I have read. It's funny and it's scary what the human brain is sometimes capable of.

There are two writers for whom the short story in this book was the third I have read: Ernest Hemingway and Joseph Conrad. But I still can't really place either of them. Both elicit very mixed feelings.

"The Three-Day Blow" baffles me no end in at least three aspects. How can anyone waste his time writing this? How can another have the audacity to publish this? How can a third party have the temerity to reprint it in an anthology? The whole "story" concerns two young chaps for whom everything is "swell" and whose only ambition is to get drunk. There is something about thwarted marriage in between, some vague hints about a family drama, but it is so insubstantial that I can't make anything out of it. Though plotless "stories" are not really my cup of tea, I don't mind them as long as they at least supply enough material for my imagination to work on (witness Chekhov and Steinbeck above). But Hemingway does nothing of the kind. What's even worse, his mess of a story is abominably written, mostly under the form of nearly incoherent dialogue. Apparently some people consider such writing ''inspired''. That it may be. But it is nonetheless poor for that. Inspiration is no guarantee of quality or substance. Neither, for that matter, is perspiration.

There is no excuse for writing badly except the inability to write well. This doesn't seem to be the case with Hemingway – which only makes "The Three Day-Blow" more inexcusable. My previous encounters with him were "The Killers" and "The Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber". The former is of the "plotless" type, but at least it has a kind of sinister atmosphere and it does provide the reader with some material of which to make your own story; it is certainly a great deal better than the shameful affair chosen by Mr Crane. As for the latter, this is a much longer and more accomplished story. Despite some nauseating animal violence, it has an exciting plot and sharply drawn characters. So here is a fine example of a writer whom I still can't make up my mind about. The acquaintance is much too limited and not at all all of a piece. But I think I will be reading him again.

My previous meetings with Conrad's writing were either excruciatingly dull (''Youth'') or wonderfully exciting (''An Outpost of Progress). ''The Tale'' falls somewhere in between but definitely closer to the former. It's a ponderous and dull affair. The tale within ''The Tale'' is so long-winded and wordy, so full of trite and preachy maxims (''both [love and war] are the call of an ideal which is so easy, so terribly easy, to degrade in the name of Victory''), that the moral dilemma in it is greatly diluted. There is some merit in the dark atmosphere created between the story-teller and the sick woman on the sofa, also in the evocative descriptions of sea, fog and the sailors' life, but it is by no means enough to justify seventeen pages. It was a chore.

Some first meetings with well-known names were fabulously disappointing (Katherine Mansfield, Ring Lardner). Others were surprisingly moving (James Joyce, William Faulkner). Third category consisted of so-so tales not worth returning to (Edgar Allan Poe, Alexander Poushkin).

I was fully prepared not to like ''Ivy Day in the Committee Room''. Strangely enough, I did like it, although it is hardly among the finest stories in the book. Considering my prejudices, however, it is a minor miracle that I enjoyed the piece as much as I did. To be sure, there is a great deal of bizarre slang (''wisha'', ''usha''), the pretty parochial view of Dublin as the centre of the world is not the most appealing one, nor is party politics the most exciting subject for a short story I can imagine. Despite all that, and despite my complete ignorance of English and Irish history from the 1890s (the opposite of which would probably increase one's appreciation), I have found the writing absorbing. The whole ''story'' is a long conversation around the fire in which a bunch of colourful ''canvassers'' discuss the forthcoming elections and other issues of paramount importance such as the visit of the English King or the recent death of some great politician. The latter even forms a moving ''twist in the end''. It's a beautiful eulogy titled ''The Death of Parnell'' and dated ''6th of October 1891''.

''The Evening Sun'' is a brutal story about racism, with some moments that are very graphic indeed. Unfortunately, the writing is amateurish. This refers not only to the language spoken by Nancy, the main ''Negro'', which occupies a disproportionate amount of the piece but can be translated into English fairly easily. The narrative itself may have come from some of the more brilliant inmates of a kindergarten. (Was Faulkner still there when he wrote it?) This may seem appropriate as the narrator is supposed to have been nine when the events he relates happened (how old he is now we are not told), but I think making your story-teller a kid is a very poor excuse for lame writing.

Nevertheless, the story is curiously moving. No matter how exasperated one can be with Nancy's constant moaning, caused by wildly irrational premonitions of death, it's difficult not to sympathize with her ignominious suffering caused by both white and black. The contrast with the constant and ingenuous banter by the three children – including the little James and his mantra ''I want to go home'' – is dramatically very effective. A weird story, not easy to read but worth reading, not easily forgotten but worth remembering.

Alexander Poushkin is responsible for the writing of some of the finest poetry I have come across. ''The Prophet'' (''Prorok'' in transliterated Russian) is an outstanding poem of tremendous evocative power; of course the music of Rimsky-Korsakov and the phenomenal voice and interpretation of Boris Christoff do help. But ''The Shot'' is a conventional story told in a conventional manner. Quite readable, but also quite forgettable. Moreover, the plot is based on duels (ironically, for this is how Poushkin himself died, aged only 38) which today no one in his right mind can take seriously.

''The Masque of the Red Death'' was an inauspicious beginning of my acquaintance with Edgar Allan Poe, a writer I have wanted to read for quite some time. It's a short tale of slender value. The style is laboured and turgid, with too many unnecessary descriptions of surroundings. The atmosphere of anxiety is rather well conveyed, but the ''Gothic'' elements are pathetic rather than scary. The ending is much too lurid to be engaging. I hope Mr Poe improves greatly on this lame attempt in his other stories.

Reading Katherine Mansfield is like eating chips. You put something in your mouth, but you swallow nothing. The taste is pleasant, but it's hardly exceptional. No matter how huge amounts you eat, you remain hungry - even when you get sick of overeating. Every time when I see, as I occasionally do, Katherine Mansfield hailed as one of the greatest short story writers in the English language, I cannot but wince. "The Garden Party" is exactly like the few other stories by her I have read since. There is nothing so pedestrian as plot. It's a collection of impressions. It's all about atmosphere and mood, with but very occasional, and very slight, hints of characterisation. The prose is often subtle, delicate and evocative, sometimes it is even beautiful. But in the end I am still hungry. And I decide to order something else for the next meal.

''The Golden Honeymoon'' easily ranks as one of the worst pieces of fiction I have ever read. The whole ''story'' consists of one tedious, illiterate and whining old couple taking a holiday down there in Tampa, Florida, in order to celebrate their Golden Wedding. To begin with, the writing is atrocious: such spectacular disregard of grammar passes belief, such passion for the commonplace leaves me stunned. At one place the narrator, the husband of ''Mother'', tells us six times in half page that he ''hadn't pitched a shoe in sixteen years''. For pitching shoes, playing cards and checkers, quarrelling with the stupendous inanity that only old people can manage, and describing their journey in the manner of a very cheap travel guide – that is all this ''story'' is about. Who cares about reading that? Who finds such rubbish amusing? Just about the most brilliant and witty passage is this:

St. Pete people is what folks calls the town, though they also call it Sunshine City, as they claim they's no other place in the country where they's fewer days when Old Sol don't smile down on Mother Earth, and one of the newspapers gives away all their copies free every day when the sun don't shine.

If you can stand such writing, I admire you. If you find it amusing, I regard you with awe. For my part, reprinting this trash in an anthology is a crime against literature.

Then there is Henry James. So far as I am concerned, the world of literature consists of everybody else – and Henry James. No other writer have I ever found so difficult to read. He is an aggravated prose equivalent of Polonius from Hamlet. What can be said in five words, he says it in five sentences - each five lines long. My only previous experience with Henry James was "The Beast in the Jungle". I have tried to read it at least five times and I have never managed more than five pages. (I wonder if Mr James can't enter the Guinness Book in the category ''Greatest Number of CPP [Commas Per Page] in the History of Literature''?) I am exceedingly proud that I could finish ''Brooksmith''. It's only seventeen pages long. Which means it is only ten pages too long.

''Brooksmith'' is the poignant story of the eponymous hero, the greatest butler in the world, including the hard times he had to endure after the death of his master, Mr Offord, far and away the greatest man in the world. I often hear Mr James praised for his ''subtlety''. Well, subtle he certainly is, but there is one monumental problem with this subtlety: it's often, if not always, wasted on stupendously trivial issues. From reading this story, one is left with the impression that ''the institution of the salon'', far from being a vacuous prattle over a cup of tea, is by far the greatest achievement of human civilization.

The best that I can say about ''Brooksmith'' is that it is nowhere near as unreadable as ''The Beast in the Jungle''. Yet it is a tedious, pompous, pretentious and snobbish stuff that wears out its welcome by far. It is unintentionally hilarious to read Mr James' spiritual orgasms over the sublime nature of Mr Offord's salon (for which we are told nothing specific except that they once discussed Byron) or how ''dreadful'' is the very thought of Brooksmith's opening a shop when he is jobless. I now understand how right Maugham's devastating descriptions really are:

Henry James's fictions are like the cobwebs which a spider may spin in the attic of some old house, intricate, delicate and even beautiful, but which at any moment the housemaid's broom with brutal common sense may sweep away.

I think he took himself a good deal too seriously. We look askance at a man who keeps on telling you he is a gentleman; I think it would have been more becoming in Henry James if he had not insisted so often on his being an artist. It is better to leave others to say that.
[''Some Novelists I Have Known'', The Vagrant Mood, 1952.]

He was like a man who would provide himself with all the impedimenta necessary to ascend Mount Everest in order to climb Primrose Hill.
[Introduction to Tellers of Tales, 1939.]

There are quite a few pieces in the book which are simply too ordinary, too commonplace, too boring, to deserve more than a single sentence. These are the one-offs.

''The Standard of Living'' does have some superficial charm, but on the whole it is an inferior copy of Edith Wharton. ''The Priest'' is, perhaps, an attempt for a religious satire, but certainly an eminently lame one. ''A Haunted House'' is a two-page blurb of no importance whatsoever. The passion for horses that the first person narrator and I share does not prevent ''The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse'' from being a total dud. ''The Man in the House'' is a kind of funny tale about childhood's ''abuse'' of drugs, even touching in a way, but indifferently written. ''The Phoenix'' makes an attempt to satirize the show business, but it is so crude that it's worth skipping. ''The Law'' is the closest piece to science fiction in the book, apparently trying – very unsuccessfully – to incorporate some serious reflections on the deadly effect of the Law of Average in the American way of life from the late 1940s. ''The Catbird Seat'' is a funny little anecdote, neither believable nor amusing enough to justify its ten pages. ''The Death of a Bachelor'' is pretty much the same, only a little better written and with a contrived twist in the end. The bloke known as ''Saki'' might have called himself ''Silly'' for his contribution is just as nonsensical as its title; the attempts to create some farcical fun are pathetic.

And so on, and so forth. The best that can be said about these stories is that they are indeed short. I daresay they once filled the pages of magazines and newspapers rather adequately. What keeps them still in print I haven't the least idea.

So, in conclusion, 50 Great Short Stories is a nice little book to have in your bag while travelling (this edition is very compact, if a trifle too closely printed in smallish font). But I don't think it's an especially worthy addition to your shelves at home. The great diversity of styles, locations and characters is pleasant. But the quality is very uneven indeed. Relatively few stories come close to success on at least several of the major fronts: fine writing, exciting plot, vivid atmosphere, hilarious entertainment, some food for thought. They will bear another read and their authors are honoured with a mental note for further exploration. But some pieces are either abominably written or fabulously vacuous, or both. Quite a few are merely readable and nothing more; no sooner do I finish them and they vanish from my mind without a trace. Frankly, I am a little puzzled by the stupendous publication history of this book…

P.S. The ''Author's Index'' is rather disappointing. It is supposed to contain ''biographical notes and a selected list of author's principal works''. Well, the former is merely the years of birth and death and the nationality, very scanty information, and the latter is not just perfunctory, but there is no indication what kind of books are cited. It is commendable to have the years of first publication, but it seems to me really important to know the nature of the work. In the case of Somerset Maugham, for example, there are three novels, one short story collection and The Summing Up listed. Needless to say, this is quite inadequate for a man who published no fewer than 20 novels and 9 short story collections during his life, not to mention a great deal of drama and various non-fiction. Each title in the book has a footnote with the name of the book from which it was taken; no years are given and not all titles can be found in the Index.

I wish Mr Crane had taken more trouble with this index. Suppose you like the contribution of a certain author and want to explore him further? Well, this index is quite useless. Fortunately we have Wikipedia. ( )

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This is a great collection of short stories, with a nice mix of well known tales with a few which are lesser known.

Ideal to put in your pocket and take with you when you know you're going to have thirty minutes to an hour to kill. ( )

Among other great stories, this book contains a wonderful short story called "Murke's Collected Silences," by Heinrich Böll, which I've often thought about, even though many years have since passed. ( )