Posted by guillermo maynez
on 26/7/2012, 17:44:49, in reply to "Re: Dubliners"
189.178.232.47
For my part, I love to read short stories. I agree with Lale that they are like a box of chocolates, but novels are, too, and it takes much longer to find out. For example, I read 80 pages of "The Inheritance of Loss" before giving up. I could have read 6-7 stories from "Dubliners", all of which I liked. That doesn't mean I read more short stories than novels, the latter are what I read the most, including fiction and non-fiction.
Some of my favorite short-story writers: Hemingway, Chekhov, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Juan Rulfo, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Mark Twain, Maupassant, Tolstoi, and possibly my favorite, Somerset Maugham. I've read the whole 4 volumes of his collected short stories and wish there were more
--Previous Message--
: I also experience some anxiety before starting short
: stories. Short stories are like a box of chocolates,
: you never know what you will get. And by the time you
: decide you don't like it, it is finished. However,
: some of the best chocolates are encountered by going
: through the box, so if I am feeling brave I take up a
: book of short stories. I have read unforgettable
: stories, so I cannot dismiss the entire style. Gogol's
: Coat, Diary of a Mad Man, Nose... Shirley Jackson, Guy
: de Maupassant, Hemingway... Some mixed success with
: Salinger and Doris Lessing...
:
: I am now reading Heinrich Boll's Collected Stories,
: there are about 200 of them in the book. Some seem
: pointless to me but then some others are delightful.
:
: But every time a story is finished and a new one is
: starting I feel some anxiety: is this going to be a
: hit or miss?
:
: Lale
:
:
: --Previous Message--
: Good to hear from you, Joffre. You are missed.
:
: Generally, I am, as I'm sure we all recall, your
: second in our aversion to the short story. I'm
: interested and pleased to find that we both are
: willing to make an exception for Dubliners .
:
:
: --Previous Message--
:
: I reread Dubliners a year or so ago for the first time
: in more than ten years. I hadn't enjoyed it much the
: first time. You all know I don't like short stories.
: It annoys me to meet characters and then leave them. I
: enjoyed it a lot more last year. It was like learning
: more about minor characters in Ulysses.
:
: The problem with publication, I think, was that the
: book was too realistic, not very flattering to
: Dubliners.
:
: In the last year, I've reread Dubliners, Portrait, and
: Ulysses. I've mentioned my wish to fix up a class on
: reading Ulysses. It's not going very well. Difficult
: to find the time I need to put it together. I guess
: more than that it just seems rather overwhelming. The
: idea seems simple enough, put together the best
: material from my sources. But I want to get some
: personal observations into the thing. Maybe the
: biggest problem is just laziness.
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