Still reading from Great American Short Stories. You know in high school when your English teacher made you read short stories and you decided you hated short stories because of it because of all the SYMBOLISM and SERIOUSNESS and IMPORTANT TOPICS THAT NEED TO BE CONSIDERED: this book is entirely like being forced to read dull short stories in stuffy classrooms with poster board on the walls. Perhaps this is a consequence of the book being compiled in the 1950s. Still, I hope my short stories have a bit more life to them than most of these.
In any case, I’m done. I wish I could remember exactly my reasoning for deciding to read a short story per day. Likely just for something to do.
Number $$\iff$$ date.
WEEK FOUR:
- He by Katherine Anne Porter: It was a hard winter.
- Silent Snow, Secret Snow by Conrad Aiken: For the secret world must, at all costs, be preserved.
- The Man Who Saw through Heaven by Wilbur Daniel Steele: They’ve hardly started yet — a mere twenty centuries on their way — leaving them something like eight hundred and thirty centuries yet to come before they reach the earth.
- Unlighted Lamps by Sherwood Anderson: The truth is I may die at any moment. I would not tell you but for one reason — I will leave little money and you must be making plans for the future.
- The Open Boat by Stephen Crane: This fact was somehow so mixed and confused with his opinion of his own situation that it seemed almost a proper reason for tears.
- Roman Fever by Edith Wharton: And I was wondering ever so respectfully, you understand … wondering how two such exemplary characters as you and Horce had managed to produce anything quite so dynamic.
- A Municipal Report by O. Henry: It carries on an extensive trade in stoves and hollow-ware with the West and South, and its flouring mills have a daily capacity of more than 2,000 barrels.