The Best Short Stories of the Modern Age

by Douglas Angus

Hardcover, 1982

Status

Available

Call number

SC Bes

Call number

SC Bes

Barcode

2005

Publication

Fawcett (1982)

Description

The short-stroy form continues to be a rich and fertile vein of literary expression. Collected in this remarkable volume are twenty renowned writers of the modern age who brilliantly mastered the distinctive power and beauty of the form--each bringing his or her own unique vision to the page. This powerful collection includes the work of: Sherwood Anderson, Anton Chekov, Joseph Conrad, Shirley Jackson, D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Lionel Trilling, and many more.

Subjects

Original publication date

1962

User reviews

LibraryThing member pgiunta
This superb collection of 20 stories encompasses the work of such legends as Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, Shirley Jackson, Jean Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka, William Faulkner, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Anton Chekhov, and more. I'd read about half of these stories in years past and was delighted
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to find just how much detail remained with me. My favorites included

"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe - A deranged killer, sickened by an elderly man's bulging eye, murders the man in the middle of the night and buries the body under the floorboards. He considers it a perfect crime, even when the police arrive, until he hears a ringing in his ears, which turns into a ticking, then a heartbeat...

"The Jewels" by Guy de Maupassant - A young clerk becomes annoyed at his wife's penchant for collecting costume jewelry. When she passes away, he eventually takes to them to a jeweler for an appraisal...

"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" by Ernest Hemingway - A lonely man refuses to leave the outdoor cafe he frequents—to the chagrin of one young exhausted waiter, but his coworker understands that there are those, desolate and unloved, who need a clean, well-lit place...

"The Rocking Horse Winner" by D.H. Lawrence - A young boy flawlessly predicts the winners of horse races by rocking on his hobby horse, but each time he must exert more effort until...

"The Devil and Daniel Webster" by Stephen Vincent Benét - A hapless farmer strikes a deal with the devil, but when it comes time to pay up, he reaches out to legendary farmer, lawyer, and patriot Daniel Webster to save his soul.

"A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner - An reclusive elderly woman, once popular in the town and a source of gossip, passes away, leaving behind a grisly revelation.

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson - A small town, steeped in tradition, holds an annual lottery, but the winner is far from lucky.

"The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka - A young traveling salesman awakens one morning to find himself transformed into a giant cockroach.

"The Ledge" by Lawrence Sargent Hall - A fisherman and two boys venture out to a small island for Christmas morning for a day of duck hunting—until they find themselves stranded as high tide rushes in.
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LibraryThing member Marse
The stories collected here are well-known, if only by reputation. Many of them I read in junior high and thus remember them with awe, especially "A Rose for Emily" and "The Lottery", as well as "The Rocking Horse Winner". The Russian stories (Chekhov and Babel) I had read in college and grad
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school, and are very familiar to me -- though I wonder that the editor chose 2 stories that are part of group of stories that go together, and whether it makes a difference in one's interpretation, if you haven't read the accompanying stories from which it came. I would think some of the context for the stories is not apparent to the first-time reader.

Most of the other stories were ones I had heard of at some point and was glad to read them, though there was one, read for the first time here and never having heard mention of it, called "Of This Time, Of This Place." I don't understand why it deserves a place here. It is about a college professor who begins to think one of his students is insane -- though, frankly, as a one-time college teacher myself, the student comes across to me as simply slightly eccentric.
Includes:
The Tell-Tale Heart, Poe
The Jewels, de Maupassant
Gooseberries, Chekhov
The Tree of Knowledge, James
The Cat, the Goldfinch, and the Stars, Pirandello
Youth, Conrad
The Rocking Horse Winner, Lawrence
Bliss, Mansfield
The Dead, Joyce
Little Herr Friedemann, Mann
Sophistication, Anderson
The Story of My Dovecot, Babel
The Devil and Daniel Webster, Benet
A Rose for Emily, Faulkner
The Metamorphosis (Part 1), Kafka
The Wall, Sartre
Judas, O'Connor
Of This Time, Of That Place, Trilling
The Lottery, Jackson
The Ledge, Hall
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Rating

½ (14 ratings; 3.9)

Pages

334
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