Short-Story Month 2012: Day 20, Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville

First page of Bartleby, from here

“Why do you refuse?”

“I would prefer not to.” And for Day 20 of National Short-story month, we turn to one of the great American writers whose work serves as a foundation for all that happens this day, Herman Melville.   Today's selection is his story "Bartleby", the tale of the disenchantment of bureaucracy and the waste of human life when stamped into the system.  If you enjoy this story, you'll likely find a similar experience in Nikolai Gogol's story, "The Overcoat."

"Bartleby, the Scrivener" 

by Herman Melville 

(1853)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 19, The Babysitter by Robert Coover

Photograph by Kelly Teague,
Used under CC license

"She arrives at 7:40, ten minutes late, but the children, Jimmy and Bitsy, are eating supper, and their parents are not ready to go yet.   From other rooms come the sounds of a baby screaming, water running,  a television musical (no words: probably a dance number--patterns of gliding figures come to mind)." 

It's Day 19 of National Short-Story month.  Today's selection is Robert Coover's story, "The Babysitter" from his collection Pricksongs & Descants (1969) .  If the story were a piano piece, it would be likely subtitled Variations on a Theme.

Like the composer who shows his or her skill by performing a piece in varying styles, Coover demonstrates his skill as a storyteller-writer in "The Babysitter" by creating a larger experience of plot through weaving (or unweaving) the possibilities that arise from the well-known urban legend typically known as The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs, its several variants, and the imaginative mind-space of the characters.  

"The Babysitter" 

by Robert Coover

(1969)

Coover won the 1987 Rea award, and the jury had this to say of his work:


"For taking the dross of the ordinary and spinning it into the treasure of myth Robert Coover [is] a writer who has managed, willfully and even perversely, to remain his own man while offering his generous vision and versions of America."

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 18, The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

It is Day 18 of National Short-Story Month, and who better than Edgar Allan Poe for such a day?  Here is the first story she ever read by him, "The Tell-Tale Heart" (although she read it in fourth grade in a collection adapted for children, and at that time, she didn't know what "adapted" meant and was quite irritated to find out, once she did, that it meant she hadn't actually read the story as it was meant to be).

The following newspaper article is the original publication of "The Tell-Tale Heart" (January 11, 1843), and it comes from the Edgar Allan Poe Digital Collection virtually located at the University of Texas at Austin-Harry Ransom Center.

"The Tell-Tale Heart" 

by Edgar Allan Poe

(1843)

Original newspaper for The Tell-Tale Heart,
The New York Sun 1/9/1843. For larger version, go here 

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 17, Old Lady Lloyd by L.M. Montgomery

"The children believed she amused herself counting the gold in the big black box under her bed. Spencervale children children held the old lady in mortal terror; some of them--the "Spencer Road" fry--believed she was a witch [.  . .]" 

From Chronicles of Avonlea,
character Anne Shirley

It's Day 17 of National Short-Story Month.  Until today, every selected story has been by a United States author.  Today's selection, however, if from the United States' close relation, Canada.

L.M. Montgomery's story collection, Chronicles of Avonlea, follows the place, people, and the main character Anne Shirley, from Montgomery's popular series Anne of Green Gables. By this time, Anne Shirley is a young woman; however, knowledge of Anne Shirley's past is not necessary to enjoying these works.  Most, if not all, the characters are not from the original series.

It has seemed to her every time she had read any of Montgomery's work, whether at age 12 or 30, that Montgomery is a superior writer at, especially, the crafting of landscapes.  It is somewhat easy to have a reader imagine, let's say, an orchard.  But it is something quite other to walk the reader through the orchard as another person.  But Montgomery can do that, and does that consistently.  It is a beautiful world L.M. Montgomery gives us.  

There is a fragile lightness and cheer and underlying wish for goodness that comes beneath Montgomery's work, but that does not come from, for example, a negligence of the desperation of humankind.  No, Montgomery does not have a sort of Pollyanna-with-closed-eyes perspective but seems almost constantly aware of the precipice, and it is that that enriches her work.  

But we can save what she might think about Montgomery's work for another day.  Today we must read the story "Old Lady Lloyd", and celebrate that such a work and writer should be in the world.      

"Our Lady Lloyd" 

by L.M. Montgomery

(1912)

Text for Our Lady Lloyd by L.M. Montgomery

Continue reading 

"Our Lady Lloyd"

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 16, Of Missing Persons by Jack Finney

Walk in as though it were an ordinary travel bureau, 
the stranger I’d met at a bar had told me. Ask a few
ordinary questions—about a trip you’re planning, a 
vacation, anything like that. Then hint about The Folder
a little, but whatever you do, don’t mention it directly; 
wait till he brings it up himself. And if he doesn’t, you 
might as well forget it. If you can.

Until today, each story selected in celebration of National Short Story Month has been published online, and as such, each post has linked to where that story exists on the vast web.  However, today's selection cannot be found online (outside of a copyright-infringed version), but it should be singled out, regardless.

She originally read "Of Missing Persons" in the anthology, Stories of Suspense.  It's a story well worth checking out--a sort of time-travel story that begins in a city, in an anonymous store. The story appears in his collection, About Time: 12 Short Stories.

From here

"Of Missing Persons"
by Jack Finney

(1955)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 15, Perhaps Ernest Hemingway

According to Snopes.com, it has not been determined whether or not the famous six-word story attributed to Ernest Hemingway was actually written by Hemingway.  Regardless of the story's author, that's today's selection for National Short Story Month:

For Sale: baby shoes, never worn

by Craig Cloutier, 

Used under CC license

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 14, Hands by Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson

It's a new week and the midpoint of celebrating National Short Story Month.  And so, today's selection is a story from the Midwest, and from one of the most remarkable short-story collections written or published in the United States.   

"The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands. Their restless activity, like unto the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird, had given him his name. Some obscure poet of the town had thought of it. The hands alarmed their owner."

"Hands" by Sherwood Anderson, 

from his story collection Winesburg, Ohio (1919)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 13, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates

"He wagged a finger and laughed and said,

 'Gonna get you, baby'" [. . .]" 

Perhaps the story for Day 13 should be 

Little Red Riding Hood in order to set 

the mood for what might have been 

tomorrow's story, but instead, here's 

what she would call a contemporary 

retelling of that folktale by Joyce Carol Oates, 

"Where Are You Going, Where Have you Been?"

In Video: Joyce Carol Oates talks about

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"

(2:02 runtime)

"Where Are You Going, 

Where Have You Been?" 

by Joyce Carol Oates
(1966)

(For those  Joyce Carol Oates fans interested in seeing some of Oates's original manuscript pages  for her other stories, please visit the virtual archive at University of San Francisco. Also, if you missed Oates's winning of the 1990 Rea award for short fiction, see the NYT article.)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 12, Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Faith kept me back a while," 

replied the young man, with a tremor in his voice, 

caused by the sudden appearance of his companion, 

although not wholly unexpected.

"Trees in the Fog" by Matthew Bietz,
Used under CC license

Yesterday's selection, "The Red Bow" by George Saunders, has always reminded me of one of my favorite stories.  And so to celebrate the twelfth day of National Short Story Month, please enjoy 

"Young Goodman Brown" 

by Nathaniel Hawthorne 

(1835)  

Continue Reading

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 11, The Red Bow by George Saunders

by Zayed Hassan,

Used under CC license

"NEXT NIGHT, walking out where 

it happened, I found her little red bow.

I brought it in, threw it down on the 

table, said: My God my God."

Day 11
National

Short Story 

Month

Today's selection, by George Saunders, was originally published in Esquire, later anthologized in Not Normal, Illinois, a nominee for the Bram Stoker award, and winner of a National Magazine Award.  The story appears in Saunders's story collection, In Persuasion Nation.

But the story is more interesting than all that.

"The Red Bow" 

by George Saunders
(2009)