50 Great Short Stories

50 Great Short Stories (Mass Market Paperback/ Reissue Edition) 외국도서 저자 : Crane, Milton 출판 : Bantam Books 2005.09.01 상세보기

1. the summer of beautiful white horse by william saroyan

2. looking back by guy de maupassant

3. the lottery by shirley jackson

4. the theft by katherine anne porter

5. a. v. laider by max beerbohm

6. the other two by edith wharton

7. putois by anatole france

8. the masque of the red death by edgar allen poe

The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse by William Saroyan

William Saroyan (August 31, 1908 – May 18, 1981) was an American dramatist and author. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film adaptation of his novel The Human Comedy.

An Armenian American, Saroyan wrote extensively about the Armenian immigrant life in California. Many of his stories and plays are set in his native Fresno. Some of his best-known works are The Time of Your Life, My Name Is Aram and My Heart's in the Highlands.

He is recognized as "one of the most prominent literary figures of the mid-20th century." Stephen Fry describes Saroyan as "one of the most underrated writers of the [20th] century." Fry suggests that "he takes his place naturally alongside Hemingway, Steinbeck and Faulkner."

 

The farmer looked into the mouth of the horse. Tooth for tooth, he said. I would swear it is my horse if I didn’t know your parents. Yet the horse is the twin if my horse. A suspicious man would believe his eyes instead of his heart. Good day, My young friends. [p.200]

Q1.To insult the honor of the Garoghlanian family would cause much more trouble than the loss of a horse, disrupting the peace of the community.If you were the farmer, what would you do?

Q2. The Gargohlanian family, as well as all Armenians, is Christians. What kind of conditions can you find out that they are Christians?

 

Looking back by Guy de Maupassant

Maupassant is considered one of the fathers of the modern short story. He delighted in clever plotting, and served as a model for Somerset Maugham and O. Henry in this respect. One of his famous short stories, "The Necklace", was imitated with a twist by both Maugham ("Mr Know-All", "A String of Beads") and Henry James ("Paste").

Taking his cue from Balzac, Maupassant wrote comfortably in both the high-Realist and fantastic modes; stories and novels such as "L'Héritage" and Bel-Ami aim to recreate Third Republic France in a realistic way, whereas many of the short stories (notably "Le Horla" and "Qui sait?") describe apparently supernatural phenomena.

The supernatural in Maupassant, however, is often implicitly a symptom of the protagonists' troubled minds; Maupassant was fascinated by the burgeoning discipline of psychiatry, and attended the public lectures of Jean-Martin Charcot between 1885 and 1886.

 

“I could never have endured the sorrow with which I come into contact every day had it been my own. I could not have seen a child of my own die without dying myself.” The Comtesse said nothing ; at last, after a long silence, she commented: “As for me, if I had not got my grandchildren, I don’t think I should have the courage to go on living.” The Cure got up without another word. [p.180]

Q1. What kind of person are you between the Comtesse and the Cure? Are you a person who can’t do anything worrying so much or who just do it once you decide?

 

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

Shirley Hardie Jackson (December 14, 1916 – August 8, 1965) was an American author. She was a popular writer in her time, and her work has received increased attention from literary critics in recent years. She influenced Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Nigel Kneale, and Richard Matheson.

She is best known for the short story "The Lottery" (1948), which reveals a secret, sinister underside to a bucolic American village, and for The Haunting of Hill House (1959), which is widely considered to be one of the best ghost stories ever written. In her critical biography of Jackson, Lenemaja Friedman notes that when "The Lottery" was published in the June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker, it received a response that "no New Yorker story had ever received". Hundreds of letters poured in that were characterized by, as Jackson put it, "bewilderment, speculation, and old-fashioned abuse". In the July 22, 1948, issue of the San Francisco Chronicle, Jackson offered the following in response to persistent queries from her readers about her intentions:

Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.

Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, “that over in the north village they’re talking of giving up the lottery.” Old Man Warner snorted. “Pack of crazy fools,” he said. “Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them. Used to be said a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.’”[p.164]

Q1. Do the townspeople know the lottery's purpose?

Q2. In the story, the people of the town are caught up in the ritual to such an extent that they have given up any sense of logic. Mob psychology rules their actions.Are you sure you are not controlled by Mob psychology? Can you take everything on your own term?

* Mob psychology 군중심리

Q3. What is more important among individual or society?

 

The Theft by Katherine Anne Porter

Katherine Anne Porter (May 15, 1890 – September 18, 1980) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. Her 1962 novel Ship of Fools was the best-selling novel in America that year, but her short stories received much more critical acclaim. She is known for her penetrating insight; her work deals with dark themes such as betrayal, death and the origin of human evil. In 1990, Recorded Texas Historic Landmark number 2905 was placed in Brown County, Texas, to honor the life and career of Porter.

 

I was right not to be afraid of my thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing. [p.228]

Q1. What should people be afraid of to avoid ruining themselves

Q2. What do relationship and financial hardships accompany in adult life?

 

A. V. Laider by Max Beerbohm

Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm (24 August 1872 – 20 May 1956) was an English essayist, parodist, and caricaturist. He first became known in the 1890s as a dandy and a humorist. He was the drama critic for the Saturday Review from 1898 until 1910, when he relocated to Rapallo, Italy. In his later years he was popular for his occasional radio broadcasts. Among his best-known works is his only novel, Zuleika Dobson, published in 1911. His caricatures, drawn usually in pen or pencil with muted watercolour tinting, are in many public collections.

Figure 1 self-caricature of Max Beerbohm

 

I said, “suppose for sake of argument that you and I are nothing but helpless automata created to do just this and that, and to have just that and this done do us. Suppose, in fact, we haven’t any free will whatsoever. Is it likely or conceivable that the Power that fashioned us would take the trouble to jot down Ichipper on our hands just what was in store for us? Laider did not answer this question, he did but annoyingly ask me another. “You believe in free will? [p.145]

Q1. Do you believe in free will or fate controlling us?

Q2. Do you believe palmistry or physiognomy?

* physiognomy 관상학

Once or twice in the course of the week it did occur to me that perhaps Laider had told the simple truth at our first interview and an ingenious lie at our second. I frowned at this possibility. [p.158]

Q3. Do you think there is anything true Laider said?

 

The Other Two by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton (January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt.

Despite not publishing her first novel until she was forty, Wharton became an extraordinarily productive writer. In addition to her fifteen novels, seven novellas, and eighty-five short stories, she published poetry, books on design, travel, literary and cultural criticism, and a memoir.

Many of Wharton's novels are characterized by a subtle use of dramatic irony. Having grown up in upper-class, late-nineteenth-century society, Wharton became one of its most astute critics, in such works as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence.

 

Q1. Why has Alice been divorced twice?

Q2. Will you divorce your husband/wife with the reasons of Alice?

 

Putois by Anatole France

Anatole France (16 April 1844 – 12 October 1924) was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académiefrançaise, and won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament". Anatole France was also documented to have a brain volume just two-thirds the normal size.France is also widely believed to be the model for narrator Marcel's literary idol Bergotte in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.

After his death in 1924 France was the object of written attacks, including a particularly venomous one from the Nazi collaborator, Pierre Drieula Rochelle, and detractors decided he was a vulgar and derivative writer. An admirer, the English writer George Orwell, defended him however and declared that he remained very readable, and that "it is unquestionable that he was attacked partly from political motive."

"'What’s your gardener’s name, dear?' "'Putois,' replied our mother promptly. "Putoishad a name. Henceforth he existed. Madame Cornouillerwent off mumbling: ‘Putois! I seem to know the name, Putois? Putois? Why, yes, I know him well enough. But I can’t recall him. Where does he live? He goes out to work by the day. When people want him, they send for him to some house where he is working. Ah! Just as I thought; he is a loafer, a vagabond∙∙∙ a good-for-nothing. You should beware of him, my dear.’ “Henceforth Putois had a character.” [p.122-p.123] "When the servant returned to the kitchen Putois was no longer there. This meeting between Putois and the new servant was never explained. But I think that from that daymy mother began to believe that Putois might possibly exist, and that perhaps she had not invented.[p.132]

Q1. Do you have any experience that your lie was getting bigger and worse?

Q2. Why do you think lies get bigger?

 

The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today. The Mystery Writers of America present an annual award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the mystery genre.

* macabre (죽음이나 다른 무서운 것과 관련되어) 섬뜩한

* cosmology 우주론

* cryptography 암호 작성/해독술

 

Q1. What do you think the masque of red death is?

Q2.What are meanings of the symbols in the story? _red death, masque, seven rooms, clock, etc.