Almost Done

[mmerriam]

All that is left to wrap up my Analyzing Short Stories class is to take the final. I can't request it until I receive my grade for my last submission, which I sent in about ten days ago. It typically takes about 21 days for my submissions to get back to me, which will leave me a little over three weeks to request and complete the final.

I thought I might start reviewing the stories, just to get ahead a little, but once I began, I realized that every one of these stories had stuck with me to the point that I may not really need to review that much. All of these stories - whether I enjoyed them, hated them, or just felt meh about them - have stuck with me, which was the point.

I am also finding myself nodding and going, "Yes, yes indeed, I get what the writer was trying to say/do/show," and while I may not have enjoyed certain stories, I admire each of them, and I am the better as both a reader and writer for having taken this class. What's more, stories that I did not enjoy - or completely understand at the initial reading - I am now looking back on with fondness and understanding. Several of these stories forced me way outside of my comfort zone, which was exactly what I needed.

For those keeping score at home, of the 135 stories in the anthology (The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction: Ann Charters, editor), I read these 45. At some point I plan to read the rest.

Achebe, Chinua: "Civil Peace"
Allende, Isabel: "And of Clay Are We Are Created"
Anderson, Sherwood: "Death in the Woods"
Anderson, Sherwood: "Hands"
Anonymous: "The Beginning of Wisdom: An Ashanti Folk-Tale"
Atwood, Margaret: "Happy Endings"
Atwood, Margaret: "Rape Fantasies"
Baldwin, James: "Sonny's Blues"
Bambara, Toni Cade: "The Lesson"
Barth, John: "Lost in the Funhouse"
Bierce, Ambrose: "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
Borges, Jorge Luis: "The End of the Duel"
Carter, Angela: "The Company of Wolves"
Carver, Raymond: "A Small, Good Thing"
Chopin, Kate: "The Story of an Hour"
Crane, Stephan: "The Open Boat"
Danticat, Edwidge: "Night Women"
Erdrich, Louis: "The Red Convertible"
Faulkner, William: "A Rose for Emily"
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins: "The Yellow Wallpaper"
Hawthorne, Nathaniel: "Young Goodman Brown"
Head, Bessie: "Woman from America"
Hemingway, Ernest: "Hills Like White Elephants"
Hurston, Zora Neale: "Spunk"
Jackson, Shirley: "The Lottery"
Jewett, Sarah Orne: "A White Heron"
Johnson, Charles R.: "Menagerie: A Child's Fable"
Kincaid, Jamaica: "Girl"
LeGuin, Ursula K.: "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"
Mason, Bobbie Ann: "Shiloh"
Melville, Herman: "Bartleby, the Scrivener"
Mukherjee, Bharati: "The Management of Grief"
O'Brien, Tim: "The Things They Carried"
O'Conner, Flannery: "Everything That Rises Must Converge"
O'Conner, Frank: "Guests of the Nation"
Ozick, Cynthia: "The Shawl"
Paley, Grace: "A Conversation with My Father"
Paz, Octavio: "My Life with the Wave"
Silko, Leslie Marmon, "Yellow Woman"
Sontag, Susan: "The Way We Live Now"
Tan, Amy: "Two Kinds"
Toomer, Jean: "Blood-Burning Moon"
Welty, Eudora: "A Worn Path"
Wright, Richard: "The Man Who Was Almost a Man"
Yamamoto, Hisaye: "Wilshire Bus"

Loved some. Hated others. Each made an impression. Each taught me something about how story works. It was a good class.

In Peace,
Michael

Comments

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Gah! Is it possible to make a short fiction anthology without "The Things They Carried"? I mean, it's not a bad story, but it's in every single freakin' one!

Err, sorry... Flashbacks.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

That's all right. The anthology also has Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" which is another of those stories that appears in every short story anthology published. When I saw it (and some other of the "usual suspects") I just shook my head.

[aino.livejournal.com]

I thought the one that was in every anthology was "The Yellow Wallpaper."

I had that one in 4 or 5 different classes.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

That one was one of the "usual suspects" I noticed.