Short Books, Short List

Five best works of short fiction! Longer than a short story, shorter than a play or novel, any language, any time

In no particular order:

(1) Hour of the Star!!! A Salon Special.
(2) Transposed Heads, because I'm only giving each author one and it's better than Death in Venice
(3) Gilgamesh - on the list for thousands of years
(4) Miss Lonelyhearts, up in January!
(5) A Dissertation upon Roast Pig by Charles Lamb - is it essay, fiction or legend?

The list is shorter because the works are?

Exactly. And to make it tougher. So we'll argue more. And I want to see how what warm and fuzzy pictures Medellia gives us then.

Are you keeping the list at 5 or do we get to change them and argue them?
belva

I just threw my five out there. What happens now is up to the Salon. I'm looking forward to the ideas.

1. Hour of the Star!
2. The Loved One
3. Tonio Kroeger
4. Beowulf
5. Of Beren and Luthien

Five best works of short fiction! Longer than a short story, shorter than a play or novel, any language, any time

In no particular order:

Your list:

(1) Hour of the Star!!! A Salon Special.
(2) Transposed Heads, because I'm only giving each author one and it's better than Death in Venice
(3) Gilgamesh - on the list for thousands of years
(4) Miss Lonelyhearts, up in January!
(5) A Dissertation upon Roast Pig by Charles Lamb - is it essay, fiction or legend?

My list:
Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector,
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann,
The Lifted Veilby George Eliot,
The Eyes by Edith Wharton, and
The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway

Interesting little test here.
belva

I'm breaking my no list rule because I just can't restrain myself anymore.

My list:

Atala/Rene by François-René de Chateaubriand
Sarrasine by Honoré de Balzac
The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat
With the Flow by Joris-Karl Huysmans
Ruslan and Ludmila by Alexander Pushkin
Walpurgisnacht by Gustav Meyrink

I couldn't get it down to five.

I love The Loved One and Death in Venice too.

The film adaptation of The Loved One is one my favorite films by the way.

I'm having the opposite problem. I can't think of too many off hand.

I'd grab a couple already mentioned. I've enjoyed Gilgamesh and Death in Venice. Is Candide perhaps too long for this selection?

I'd also add:

Death of Ivan Ilyich

and the dark, weird, unfinished Mysterious Stranger

>9 Sandydog1:, Sandydog,

I think Candide is an excellent choice. Let us all tend our gardens!

Oof! Of course Death in Venice counts, duh. I drop Tonio, and also Tolkien (part of larger work) and Beowulf (poem!) and adopt Tod in Venedig and Candide and the Old Man. Such consensus!

Also, Loved One movie! Stuff like this gets me excited about living.

Whoo Hoo!~!

In chronological order:

The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
Jacob's Ladder by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings found in Short Stories by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings -- though it's much longer than a short story.
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

Honorable mention:
Candide
The Old Man and the Sea
The Princess of Cleves

I think The Turn of the Screw counts as a novel, doesn't it?

Are you speaking of Twain's Mysterious Stranger? It made quite an impression on me when I was a teen. Read it again a couple of weeks ago. Very good; abrupt ending.

I also read The Loved One recently. Very very funny.

The Turn of the Screw is easily read in one sitting -- may be shorter even than Death in Venice

Princess of Cleves is a little long to be considered a short story, I would think...

On the Marble Cliffs / Auf den Marmorklippen
by Ernst Junger

The Old Man and the sea
by Ernest Hemingway

The Jolly Corner by Henry James

The Blood of the Volsungs by Thomas Mann

Summer by Edith Wharton

I read Storm of Steel recently and want to read some of Junger's fiction. I'll start with On the Marble Cliffs.

I love Mann, but haven't read The Blood of the Volsungs. I'll pick up a copy soon.

Here's a great clip from The Loved One(1965).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOMm86R_67w

I like the list on message # 17. It's pretty well rounded.
Can we read it?
belva

18: Mann's short stories are a hoot. Angst, illness, lust, perversions of all sorts.

In #17, I was doing a little compensating:

Compensating Wharton and Mann for the fact that they wrote 2 better known short works that I wouldnʻt think of letting near a Favorites List of mine. ( Ethan Frome and Death in Venice ).
Their "Summer" and "Volsungs" are not necessarily among my all time favorites.

Old Man and the Sea I read near the time of its publication (1950s). I am compensating here for the many bad reviews it got in another thread (I think the "Awful Classics")

But it turned out so well!~!

18> Try Ernst Junger's 'The Glass Bees'. And I agree, Storm of Steel is very very very good. He published more extended memoirs much later in life I think, and they are supposed to be very good. Of course one has to try to see past his militaristic ideology, although he at least managed to avoid being a Nazi...

How about Ivan Ilyich for the list?

"Ivan Ilyich for the list..." #23

Definitely!

And Dostoevskyʻs Notes from Underground is short enough and great enough; only if it strikes you as it did me, it wonʻt SEEM short.

Russian literature is full of these short things. Here are 5 by Dostoevsky alone.

1. The Gambler
2. Poor Folk
3. An Unpleasant Incident
4. The Crocodile
5. White Nights

25: Tolstoy and Gogol have terrific short stories as well... I think I mentioned some of my favorites in the Russian hit list thread.

My God, when did this become a Russian short list? Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!~!
belva

I'm with you , belva. I love the Russian stuff, but how about we make room for Pale Horse, Pale Rider or Wise Blood or The Metamorphoses or Heart of Darkness?

What about Benito Cerino?

Are we talking novellas only or including short stories?

I certainly agree about the Dostoevsky, Gogol, Conrad, and Flannery O'Connor.

Tolstoy is a stinky old goat though. Never washes his beard.

Don't know Benito Cerino, yet.

Novellas AND short stories? I wondered about that, too. Agree with A_musing's additions. How about some love for Chekov?

I think we should focus on novellas and similarly long other works (like Beowulf - narrative poetry gets no love!). Someone do another thread for the true short story.

I agree with stinky and old for Tolstoy, but remain the defender of the honor of the goat. No goat slurs! He was a stinky old cheese or a stinky old cat or some other such stinky old thing.

I think it is pretty much anything that is "short".
Chekov is good and his shorts are superlative.

Billy Budd is probably Melvilleʻs best short novel, maybe even his best novel.

Benito Cereno is one of those "downers" of Melvilleʻs that was discussed in another thread.

Some of Edward Arlington Robinsonʻs longer poems (metrical, unrhymed) are good, and are short enough to be considered short novels, e.g.:
Matthias at the Door and

The man who Died twice

Ring Lardnerʻs Alibi Ike is short novel length, but he speciallized in the even shorter short story.

We doesn't wish to read the Melville.

I'm all about Flatland, which is technically a novella. It's a great allegory, math lesson, and criticism all wrapped into one.

I agree about Billy Budd. I'll crack open my collection of Melville Stories and read Benito Cereno tonight, thanks.

Belva, one more disparaging remark about the great Melville and I may be forced to read all 897 pages of Clarel. Do want that on your conscience?

. . . "read Benito Cereno tonight ....." (36)

OK, but donʻt say you werenʻt warned. (See #33)

Really, I should disqualify myself. I havenʻt read it. Ever hear a favorable review of a book, in which the review itself turned you off so much that you eventually -- never did read it? A friend, informally laid such a review of "Cereno" on me, way back in the 1950s, and I never have read it. His favorite line in the book was (said by Cereno): "I cannot forget The Black!" (not sure of the punctuation of that, but a guess it was Melvilleʻs conversion of a Black character, a bad guy to the abstract idea of blackness--which may have been something like his idea of whiteness in Moby Dick -- evil.)

This thread is giving me a sad. How to possibly choose?

You could say that Clarel has been on my TBR list for a long time, but buried, so to speak, under hundreds of others. It wouldnʻt even be high up among the American TBR works.

The dissing of it in this thread kind of raises my curiosity about it. Can it really be that bad?

I've enjoyed what I've read of Clarel thus far, but it is a self-consciously heavy and philosophical work, and won't be for everyone. It has some pretty substantial admirers, ranging from Robert Penn Warren (whom I generally adore) to Harold Bloom (whom I generally despise).

>#36:
DavidX;

"Belva, one more disparaging remark about the great Melville and I may be forced to read all 897 pages of Clarel. Do want that on your conscience?"

Well, seeing as how it is on it's way to me from Amazon.com I may as well take that "hit" from you as well David. Don't ask me why I ordered it. I am just learning so much here with this group that I guess I thought if you all were going to read it, I must as well, if I want to learn something about what you all are talking about. However, I will say and do not doubt me: "We doesssssssssssn't like the Melville. In fact, we hatesssssssss the Melville.
belva

Belva!!! I'm so happy!!

Now, what are the odds that when we read everyone will hate it but you?

F_cking nil!~!

Belva, I have twice tried Moby Dick and have not been able to finish. But Billy Budd was fine, at least for me.

solla;
I have not tried Billy Budd. I'm glad he worked for you and I guess I will give him a try. I think at last count I was at 9 attempts for M/D. But I have heard others say the same as you did about The Budd book. So perhaps I should be a little more open minded? Hmmm.
BTW----------did you do the "self portrait" on your profile? It is very good. I quite like it.
belva

Yes, it's my self-portrait. At Ohio State they had these stuffed birds that you could check out and draw.

Wonderful job that!~! You are very good.