Comments on: Over 2000 classic short stories

Over 2000 classic short stories

Kattullus — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 09:32:36 -0800

Over 2000 classic short stories from American Literature as well as an option to sign up for a short story of the day rss feed. Among the authors on offer are Kate Chopin, Saki, O. Henry, Louisa May Alcott, Ambrose Bierce, H. P. Lovecraft, Jack London, James Joyce, Willa Cather, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Dickens, Herman Hesse, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Franz Kafka, Honoré de Balzac, Edith Warton, P. G. Wodehouse, Virginia Woolf, Langston Hughes, Leo Tolstoy, Aldous Huxley, Roald Dahl, Henry James, Katherine Mansfield and I could keep going for a while. The point is, there's over 2000 short stories in there.

By: Miko

Miko — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 09:40:29 -0800

Neat! Roald Dahl's short stories for adults are fiercely underrated. They're subtle and creepy - several were turned into 'Twilight Zone' episodes. Good stuff!

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 09:41:46 -0800

Kattullus: shoots, scores.

By: chara

chara — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 09:44:10 -0800

cool beans! thanks kattullus!

By: ibmcginty

ibmcginty — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 09:47:49 -0800

I'm not sure all those people are American. That said, they may be worth reading despite their foreignness. Thanks for the link, Kattullus.

By: ibmcginty

ibmcginty — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 09:48:24 -0800

Ohh... the site bills itself as "American Literature." Well, ok, I'll allow it.

By: billybobtoo

billybobtoo — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 09:49:38 -0800

isn't the internet american?

By: KokuRyu

KokuRyu — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 09:58:05 -0800

Mexicans and Panamanians consider themselves to be American.

By: SaintCynr

SaintCynr — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 10:14:50 -0800

>>several were turned into 'Twilight Zone' episodes. Also 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' and Dahl's own 'Tales of the Unexpected', which ran on ABC (iirc)from '79-'80. So many great writers here, but Miko, you're right: His stories are underrated. Sweet post, Kattullus!

By: 3.2.3

3.2.3 — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 10:31:43 -0800

This is a subset of Project Gutenberg, without attribution, and with ads. Fail.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 10:46:39 -0800

Terrific! And let me say that I as an American am proud as can be of Dickens, Kafka, and Tolstoy. U S A!!

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 11:15:10 -0800

I, for one, welcome our Gutenberg scrapping American Author overlords from France, England and Russia.

By: IndigoJones

IndigoJones — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 11:20:42 -0800

Less proud of Hermann Hesse, but that's just me. And is Orwell's Shooting an Elephant not an essay? Has anyone proven it to have been made up?

By: misha

misha — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 11:23:04 -0800

Love the rss feed. Thanks!

By: mediareport

mediareport — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 11:31:36 -0800

I'd just like to note, Gutenberg-scraping aside, that Kate Chopin's "A Pair of Silk Stockings" is one of the best short stories I've read. I was pleasantly surprised at a bunch of her stories, actually, when I picked up a collection last year - for instance, at "The Storm," a scandalous follow-up to "At the 'Cadian Ball." It's not often in the 1800s you see a serious story about the healing power of adulterous sex.

By: kamikazegopher

kamikazegopher — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:28:52 -0800

Some great stories here. Thanks for sharing the link!

By: Busithoth

Busithoth — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:32:58 -0800

This link, combined with my printer and a case of fiddich would allow me to brick up my room's door and get into some serious plugging of holes in my reading list. And then some. For this I thank you.

By: timsteil

timsteil — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:47:29 -0800

several were turned into 'Twilight Zone' episodes. Good stuff! posted by Miko at 9:40 AM on February 17 [+] [!] Any idea which episodes Miko?

By: eye of newt

eye of newt — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:00:16 -0800

These are great. Thanks!

By: Iridic

Iridic — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:14:44 -0800

Any idea which episodes? "Man from the South" is the famous one - Peter Lorre and a young Steve McQueen negotiating the essential Dahlian grisly twist. "Lamb to the Slaughter," "The Landlady," "Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat," "Poison," and "Dip in the Pool" were the other ones.

By: Iridic

Iridic — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:39:44 -0800

Oh, excuse me - those were Dahl's Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes. Dahl never actually provided any scripts for the Twilight Zone; perhaps Miko was thinking of Way Out, a 1961 Zone rival that Dahl hosted himself. Since I've already cannibalized my planned Dahl post... Some episodes of Way Out, With Roald Dahl: Dissolve to Black William & Mary I Heard You Calling Me The Croaker Death Wish Dahl biographer Jeremy Treglown's article about the adult fiction. And I should be remiss at this point if I didn't mention that Metafilter's own web-goddess is also a Roald Dahl Information Goddess.

By: Cranberry

Cranberry — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:41:00 -0800

Doyle? I expected American-born Brian Doyle, the award winning editor of Portland, the magazine of the University of Portland. But is seems the Doyle listed is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, one of Brian's many writer-type relatives, but not American.

By: gwint

gwint — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 14:36:06 -0800

This thread kind of feels like a Twilight Zone episode: Alien 1: Hey there's a web site with a bunch of stories you can read for FREE. With ads. Alien 2: Wow, that's the coolest thing since Twitter! Alien 1: Yeah, the design is ugly but I can just print them all out and then the ads will be less distracting. Astronaut: Why don't you just take some books out of the library? Aliens: What's a library? Astronaut: Noooooooo!!!!!!! Fade to black.

By: voltairemodern

voltairemodern — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 15:19:51 -0800

Some of the transcription is questionable. For instance, the closing line of one of the Lovecraft short stories is written as: The creature I had killed, the strange beast of the unfathomed cave, was, or had at one time been a MAN!!! Somehow I doubt the exclamation points capture authorial intent.

By: Miko

Miko — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 16:01:29 -0800

perhaps Miko was thinking of Way Out, a 1961 Zone rival that Dahl hosted himself I've definitely conflated all these things, and am thankful to those whose knowledge is far sharper than my dim fuzzy memory!

By: BoringPostcards

BoringPostcards — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 16:39:37 -0800

Needs more Shirley Jackson. But, this is excellent.

By: omegar

omegar — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 20:13:17 -0800

they may be worth reading despite their foreignness Funny, I had the exact opposite thought.

By: omegar

omegar — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 20:18:26 -0800

Mexicans and Panamanians consider themselves to be American. Really? I thought we hated you for your freedom.

By: syzygy

syzygy — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 05:39:04 -0800

Kattulus: It's "Edith Wharton" - Might want to correct the tag. Thanks for the link!

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 05:58:00 -0800

So it is! Thank you, syzygy.

By: 80onelove

80onelove — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:41:08 -0800

BIG BIG omission... why name Huxley if you can't name Asimov? Bread and butter here...

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:55:50 -0800

That's weird. I could've sworn there were a couple of Huxley stories on there. I'll remove Huxley from the tag list.