Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Notes Towards an Idiosyncratic Short Story Anthology: A Work in Progress

For whatever reason, few short stories have aroused my enthusiasm the way that a good novel can, but there are exceptions. As an ongoing project for an anthology I hope to one day hand off to my intellectually curious godchildren, I here present a rudimentary, evolving list of those stories I've loved dearly and would like to see assembled together (if Bennett Cerf could do it in Reading for Pleasure then so can I):


"There's an Owl in My Room," by James Thurber
"The Old Chevalier," by Isak Dinesen
"Country Cooking in Central France," by Harry Mathews
"The Deprong Mori of the Tripsicum Plateau," by David Wilson
"Barnabo of the Mountains," by Dino Buzzati
"The Aloe," by Katherine Mansfield
"Araby," by James Joyce
"Rosemary and the Taxi Driver," by Miller O. Albert
"Ursula," by Francis Wyndham
"Camp Cataract," by Jane Bowles
"The Burrow," by Franz Kafka
"The Legend of Saint Julian Hospitaller," by Gustave Flaubert
"The Topaz Cufflinks Mystery," by James Thurber
"Diotime et les Lions," by Henry Bauchau
"The Secret Sharer," by Joseph Conrad
"The Interlopers," by H. H. Munro (Saki)
"The Circular Ruins," by Jorge Luis Borges
"The Conversion of the Jews," by Philip Roth

To be continued...