Joe Carter's latest contribution to cultural literacy is a list of his twenty five all-time favorite short stories. Here are his selections:
1. Flannery O'Connor, Parker's Back (The last story [of] Flannery O'Connor is the first in my estimation of great short stories.)
2. Leo Tolstoy, Three Questions
3. Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It
4. Frank Stockton, The Lady or the Tiger?
5. Ambrose Bierce, An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge
6. W. W. Jacobs, The Monkey's Paw
7. Stephen Vincent Benet, The Devil and Daniel Webster
8. George Saunders, Pastoralia
9. Jonathan Lethem, Hardened Criminals(A strange tale that describes a prison whose walls are made entirely out of convicts.)
10. Flannery O'Connor, Good Country People (A Cinderella story -- Southern Gothic style)
11. Ring Lardner, Haircut
12. Shusaku Endo, The Final Martyrs (A great tale of cowardly regret by one of Japan's greatest Christian writers.)
13. Ernest Hemingway, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
14. Thom Jones, The Pugilist at Rest
15. Franz Kafka, A Hunger Artist
16. Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
17. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Birth-mark
18. James Thurber, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
19. Shirley Jackson, The Lottery (One of the best examples of an undderrated genre: Horror.)
20. Jack London, To Build A Fire
21. Richard Connell, The Most Dangerous Game
22. John Cheever, The Swimmer (On first reading this story I could see what all the fuss was about. But years later I still can't forget the haunting ending.)
23. Flannery O'Connor, Good A Man Is Hard To Find
24. George Saunders, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
25. Jonathan Lethem, The Happy Man (The soul of the main character in this strange story makes occasional visits to hell. His body, though, remains behind in a zombie-like state to be cared for by his exhaustively patient family. A peculiar, moving tale of speculative fiction by one of the best writers in America.)
I stand in awe of the extent of Carter's reading and his familiarity with films. I haven't read too many of the selections on this list myself, but almost anything written by Flannery O'Connor deserves to be on it.