posted by Sharon Shahid, August 25, 2003
“A Pair of Silk Stockings,” by Kate Chopin was an enjoyable read. Fifteen dollars wouldn’t get me to work and back for a week today, but “Little Mrs. Sommers” was able to treat herself to a pair of silk stockings (which she replaced with her cotton ones right there in the store), two magazines, a sit-down lunch (complete with wine and coffee), a pair of “kid” gloves and a play! Oh, to be a feminist in 1897!

posted by Libby Melton, August 25, 2003
I've been told that "The Yellow Wallpaper" is considered one of the first feminist writings. Apparently Charlotte Perkins Gilman had some trouble selling the story because publishers felt that the average woman wouldn't be able to identify with the strong will of the main character, who felt that writing and being active and traveling would make her well rather than the constant rest her husband recommended. In fact, Henry James ("The Real Thing") had to help Perkins get her story published. Can anyone tell me more about this, and which other writings are considered early feminist works?

Sharon, Harland lent me Interpreter of Maladies, and I really, really enjoyed it. Can you imagine winning a Pulitzer Prize for your debut work? Lahiri is releasing another book soon called The Namesake: A Novel.

Don, I can appreciate your comments on Twain's story. It really dragged on for me. You make a good point about the lack of a strong central character... it's hard to invest yourself in that story.

posted by Sharon Shahid, August 22, 2003
I don’t normally read short stories – I prefer novels, biographies and history. (One exception is “Interpreter of Maladies,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short stories that I thoroughly enjoyed.) Thumbing through the “Great American Short Stories,” I reread “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe, mainly because I last read it in elementary school. I found it as powerful today as it was back then. The sense of urgency of the story. Poe’s ability to describe the thinking of a madman. The foreboding dark room. He was able to convey all of that description and emotion in just four and a half pages. After all this time, it’s still one my favorites. Thank you, Nancy, for that little history on Poe’s mother. It makes me appreciate his writing even more.

posted by Nancy Stewart, August 22, 2003
Kate Chopin’s "A Pair of Silk Stockings"
This is a story that will appeal more to women than men, although we all know the pleasures of unexpectedly discovering a small sum of money. Chopin captures so perfectly the range of thoughts we have about how to spend such a “find.” In the end, she opts for a host of small, selfish pleasures: silk stockings (oh, the feel of fabrics when we shop); new shoes (Carrie Bradshaw of "Sex and the City" would be so proud of her!); an elegant lunch, and a new pair of gloves.

I can remember how my grandmother never went shopping without her gloves and hat. This little story evoked many memories of her, my mother, and old-fashioned department stores. The story is dated, but timeless--we can imagine new choices. (After all, something had to hold up those stockings; I bet those shoes pinched; and no one wears gloves any more.)

I didn’t know much about Chopin, but a quick search shows she did write about women’s issues. Some of her writing was controversial, if not scandalous at the time. I’m glad this story was included in the book.

posted by Max Brown, August 22, 2003
Stephen Crane’s The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky (1878) is a particularly charming story of the Old West, with a few twists. It shows how men can be boys. The gutsy, gun-slinging image of the dust-and-tumbleweed cowboy town was not always the exact truth. Sometimes feelings run deeper than stereotype...

posted by Libby Melton, August 15, 2003
Can anyone tell me what the point of "Bartleby" was?

I enjoy reading the stories that I was never forced to read in school. Still, I am very accustomed to reading the train-of-thought style of writing of Vonnegut and Dave Eggers, so this more formal style of writing from so long ago is hard for me to get through sometimes. I feel like I miss a lot of subtleties.

Nancy, I enjoyed your interesting aside about Poe and his actress mom.

posted by Nancy Stewart, August 14, 2003
I just finished reading My Antonia, by Willa Cather. I loved her descriptions of the prairies of Nebraska, and the heartwarming stories she told about the families there. After reading Poe, I decided to read "Paul’s Case", expecting something less dark and more uplifting. To my surprise, I find she is writing about a young boy in Pittsburgh, who doesn’t fit in. She’s such a descriptive writer about places; you can feel the grittiness of the city. And her own love of music and art, no doubt, influenced the main character as what he loves best. Paul yearns for the big city, and finds his way to New York…but through no honorable means. He chooses a final solution to his problems, but not one I can really embrace. I think the topic might appeal more to a younger audience.

posted by Don Ross, August 14, 2003
This volume is a splendid little Metro companion. My thanks to the library for re-introducing me to the all-but-forgotten pleasures of the short story. I've so far read five selections -- four of them clearly "American" and one of them actually "great."

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" was the least enjoyable of my readings. Although it has its moments here and there, it's clear early on where the author is going with the story and the narrative eventually grows tiresome. There's nothing here that says "American"; indeed, it had more of a British feel to it than anything else.

"The Goophered Grapevine," by Charles Waddell Chessnut, like the remainder of the selections, is distinctly American -- but that's about all that can be said for it. The plot had potential, but Chessnut failed to do anything with it, running out of steam at the end, and leaving the reader with an ending as flat as three-day-old beer. This story should also serve as a warning to would-be writers as to the perils of dealing in dialect. Chessnut strives mightily to show off his ear for dialect, but the result leaves a reader struggling to decipher the words on the page.

Not without reason do Gilman and Chessnut fall considerably short of achieving household-word status in American literature.

But I got into that realm -- and hence better writing -- with F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," a delightful look at young, upper-crust socialites in Roaring '20s America. It's pure Fitzgerald, who admires the wealthy but also is quick to see their foibles, and shallowness where it exists. In fairness I have to say that I may have read this before -- long, long ago. That said, the storyline does have a certain predictability to it, but Fitzgerald offsets that with a moderately surprising little twist to end his tale.

Mark Twain's "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed," is not one of his better-known works, and understandably so. Although it is demonstrative of Twain's wry, often self-deprecating humor, it lacks a strong central character to carry the narrative. A reader is left sort of wandering -- and wondering under what circumstances it was written. Was Twain at the time in need of some quick cash or what? And good Lord, someone take the semicolons away from this man before he harms himself with another overdose!

Saving the best for last, I come to Bret Harte's "The Luck of Roaring Camp," an ironic -- and romanticized -- tale of life in a Gold Rush mining camp. It is a wonderfully whimsical look at human nature and our better angels. OK, so the language is a bit stilted by today's standards. Who cares? Harte can pack into a single sentence what takes most contemporary writers a paragraph or more to say. This is writing you don't just read -- you savor each passage, often going back over them just to marvel. This one, yes, is a great American short story.

posted by Nancy Stewart, August 11, 2003
I never read anyone whose cadence and crescendo are more compelling than Edgar Allen Poe. From the first words of "The Tell-tale Heart" I am so caught up in what he is telling me, that I forget to ask who the narrator is and what his relationship is to the old man. After finishing the story, it doesn’t seem to matter anyway. The “madman” is so careful, so painfully careful in committing his crime, yet it is his own guilt; his own heart, that compels him to confess.

Poe’s mother was an actress, who nightly performed as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. She took little Edgar to the theatre, up until she died when he was just three years old. He watched her die on stage, night after night, and then arise after the production. Those “things” that come back from the dead are not uncommon in his writing….and in the Tell-tale Heart.