What is the greatest American short story?

GOODBYE, COLUMBUS

^that’s more of a novella.

"The Gift Of The Magi," by O. Henry, in my opinion.

Flannery O'Connor's "The River" is one I'll never forget.

“An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce is pretty great.

Paul’s Case by Willa Cather.

R4. “The River” is magnificent—and so are many other stories by O’Connor—“A Good Man is Hard to Find,” “”Parker’s Back,” “Everything That Rises must Converge,” but my very favorite is “Regelation.”

“I would prefer not to.”

Bartelby the Scrivener.

R6. I taught “Paul’s Case” every semester for twenty years. It may very well be my favorite American short story. That and I’Vonnor’s “Tevelation”

R9 here. Sorry for bad typing—O’Connor’s “Revelation.”

“Janus” by Ann Beattie. One of my favorites.

I also love “Out of Body” in A VISIT TO THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Egan.

It might be hard to find in the exact format I’m about to recommend, but the short story “Part of the Story” is my favorite American short story. It is humor and was written by Stephen Dobyns.

Even better is hearing it read by the greatly-missed Isaiah Sheffer, founder of Symphony Space. His reading, which I attended live at a “Selected Shorts” show at Symphony Space many many years ago, is magical. It’s on the cd in the link.

Flannery O'Connor, "Revelation"

To Build a Fire, Jack London

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"

... r5 beat me to it!

𝐀 𝐑𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐄𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 by William Faulkner.

Short stories have disappeared for some reason. James Joyce's Dubliners, Katharine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, Shirley Jackson. All great.

A Cup of Tea by Katherine Mansfield is interesting.

Mansfield was a Kiwi r18

“Why I Live At the P.O.” “Petrified Man” by Miss Eudora Welty.

It's been a while since I've read his stories, but I'm pretty sure the best would be one by Hawthorne.

OP here. This is the other one that I think about alot: Cheever's "The Swimmer"

Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain deserves mention.

“Desire and the Black Masseur” Tennessee Williams.

"The Swim Team And Me" on Nifty

R21. The Minister’s Black Veil, Young Goodman Brown, The Birthmark, and Rappicini’s Daughter are all great.

I love short stories. Especially the horror ones.

Forgot about Jack London. The best. Felt like he weighs each word for its worthiness before he inserts it. "That Spotl" "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes

I'm gonna cheat and name a Brit out of Poland and France: Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer"

I was so wanting to bust out of the narrow confines of just American short stories, thanks for that!!

I think short stories are the way to go for young readers. You can easily do it in one sitting. So perfect when you don't have loads of time, or short attention spans. A good short story writer grabs you in the first few lines. They have to. In some ways they are more masterful.

R5 here… R6 and R9 - I’ve worked in a high school library for years, and I agree that “Paul’s Case” is a story that hit me hard back in high school and is one I still think about to this day. It has themes that still resonate with teens, especially!

I like BEE’s collection of short stories The Informers.

Nightfall by Isaac Asimov

Ray Bradbury and Janet Kagen were amazing short story writers, as were Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, Roald Dahl, Sakiand Agatha Christie.

The Birds, Daphne du Maurier

The Monkey's Paw, W. W. Jacobs

^ sorry for throwing in British authors! I got distracted by R29. I'll add in Washington Irving, his "Tales of Alhambra" are excellent short stories.

I agree with OP - for me it will always be The Lottery. My sixth-grade teacher read that out loud to our class, one of my strongest memories of school.

Hemingway’s The Killer. Never a redundant word in that story.

“A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor.

“People Like That Are the Only People Here” by Lorrie Moore. Devastating.

[quote]I recently re-read Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery".

In the same vein read, "A Good Man Is Hard To Find," by Flannery O'Connor. The grandmother is a total bitch. She'd fit good on the DL.

R39, I love the part where the grandma realizes to herself that she made the family turn off the wrong road to find the house from her childhood. She is very DL.

R38, i love Lorrie Moore and most of her stories. My favorite collection is an earlier one, Self Help.

"The Boarded Window" by Ambrose Bierce. It will take you five minutes to read and I guarantee you will jump out of your chair.

"How Madonna Lost Her Virginity in the Back Seat of a Cadillac", an erotic fanfiction short story that you have to read to believe.

Richard Yates is my favorite American short story writer. Read his Collected Stories.

Alice Munro is fantastic though she’s Canadian.

OMG, r29, the BEST! I once upon a time taught "TSS." I regard it as a story of a repressed gay man (the Captain).

R33, Anyone can name several stories. The challenge is in naming one.

R27, are you into Lovecraft? I’m not, but my best friend made a name for himself by writing in that fan world. You’d find his stuff if you google: “Wilum Pugmire Lovecraft” or search Amazon.

OP enjoying The Lottery doesn't make you uniquely tasteful. Would you like to tell us about this underrated treat called pizza?

A Small Good Thing by Raymond Carver.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins

Just read it, r42. Didn't jump. But it was creepy, yes.

First time I read The Boarded Window, mentionned at R42, it took me a few seconds after the end to realise what had exactly happened. The delayed punch made it way creepier and haunting. What an eery little story.

All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury.

Who Am I this Time by Vonnegut.

Stone Boy

Great thread! I like short stories. I had the day off, but it was rainy and gross this morning, so I read some of these while I waited for the rain to stop. I read “Paul’s Case”, “The Boarded Window,” and “ People Like That Are the Only People Here.” I liked that one the most.

“You Know You Want This” by Kristen Roupenian from 2019 is a good short story collection.

Link

R57, I’ve wanted to check this out. I didn’t realize this was the author of the infamous “Cat Person.”

READ BY STRANGERS is a fantastic collection with a wide variety of stories. The final story (“Caravan”) imagines the opening hours of what a “gay Holocaust” might look like and it’s truly disturbing (and almost prescient).

The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov

I'm a fan of all things Steinbeck and so I enjoyed this dark little tale.

R59 I was waiting for someone to list Kate Chopin, one of my favorite writers. I like, "Désirée's Baby."

OP The 1969 short film The Lottery is a superb adaptation directed by Larry Yust who directed Homebodies (1973) and Trick Baby (1972)

No Dorothy Parer? YOu should all be ashamed!

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.

Not sure if it was a short story by Vonnegut, but once I saw a TV adaptation where everything looked like the 1950s and everybody was encouraged to think and act the same. Any Vonnegut fans have an inkling what I’m talking about because I would like to read that story…

R63 Who?

R65 Could it have been Harrison Bergeron?

American:

"Benito Cereno" by Herman Melville

"Silent Snow, Secret Snow" by Conrad Aiken

"The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin

"O Youth and Beauty!" by John Cheever

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates

"Everything That Rises Must Converge" by Flannery O'Connor

By non-Americans:

"The Dead" and "A Painful Case" by James Joyce

"Bliss" and "The Fly" by Katherine Mansfield

"Mysterious Kor" by Elizabeth Bowen

"The Trains" and "The Inner Room" by Robert Aickman

"Friendship, Courtship, Hateship, Love" by Alice Munro

French: Victor Hugo : A Fight with a Cannon.

R35 – that was exactly my experience with The Lottery: having the story read aloud by my sixth-grade English teacher . I never re-read the story after that – I never had to.

Funny you should cite All Summer in a Day, r53. I read that story as a teenager when I was reading voraciously, and didn’t particularly like it; it seemed so trivial. But it has stayed with me like very few other stories in the decades since. I guess it’s the petty cruelty that really gives it impact.

I was surprised when my son’s (fairly bad) English teacher chose that story as one of the few short stories he gave the class to read. Seems it really does have power.

I’ll contribute another story I read that has stayed with me for decades for its devastating understatement: A Jury of Her Peers, by Susan Glaspell. It was based on a murder case Glaspell covered as a reporter for a midwestern local paper.

Here's my vote for The Lottery as greatest American short story. That sort of tale could only have been told once to be effective, but effective it was/is. Other American short stories I have always really enjoyed:

F. Scott Fitzgerald: Bernice Bobs Her Hair

Ernest J. Gaines: The Sky Is Gray

Edith Wharton: Roman Fever

Max Shulman: Love Is a Fallacy