Short Stories

“The Cask of Amontillado,” Edgar Allan Poe, 1846.

Films can help if you’ve got students.

“The Piece of String,” Guy de Maupassant, 1883.  Here is a list of Maupassant’s short stories.  Enjoy.  “The Necklace” is one of his most famous, but for some reason, I really liked “The Piece of String.”  He’s written many.

Canadian author, Alice Munro, wrote some terrific stories that to this day are still some of my favorite.  One is “The Red Dress–1946,” collected in her 1968 publication, Dance of the Happy Shades.  Though I grow weak a bit reading an unknown’s commentary on a story I’ve loved, I guess it is important to read not just what others say about a story you’re familiar with but how they phrase or capture the important elements.  Here is one such example that I am a bit loathe to share, though I must admit it is not terrible.  I’d first read a Munro short story, titled “Prue,” anthologized in a literature class I had at Pasadena City College with Professor Hertz, who truly was one of the best readers of literature that I’d ever known.  For literary criticism, perhaps the best places to check out are TLS, New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, San Francisco Review of Books, and others.

This 1990 interview was a pleasure to see, if for no other reason just to see her animated talk.  Lovely.