Armchair BEA: Short Stories

Novellas/Short Stories 
Now it is time to give a little love to those little stories in your life. Share your love for your favorite shorts of any form. What is a short story or novella that doesn’t get the attention that it deserves? Recommend to readers what shorts you would recommend they start with. How about listing some short story anthologies based upon genres or authors? 

I am not an avid reader of short stories or novellas. I like the long haul, veering towards chunksters over shorties. Lately, however, I have been more inclined to read short works due to my serious lack of reading time. This led me to put together a short story packet for my Introduction to Literature course which includes some of my favorite short stories.

First and foremost, I must call attention to Annie Proulx's "55 Miles to the Gas Pump", short but definitely not sweet. Here's the story in its entirety:

Rancher Croom in handmade boots and filthy hat, that walleyed cattleman, stray hairs like the curling fiddle string ends, that warm-handed, quick-foot dancer on splintery boards or down the cellar stairs to a rack of bottles of his own strange beer, yeasty, cloudy, bursting out in garlands of foam, Rancher Croom at night galloping drunk over the dark plain, turning off at a place he knows to arrive at a canyon brink where he dismounts and looks down on tumbled rock, waits, then steps out, parting the air with his last roar, sleeves surging up, windmill arms, jeans riding over boot tops, but before he hits he rises again to the top of the cliff like a cork in a bucket of milk.

Mrs. Croom on the roof with a saw cutting a hole into the attic where she has not been for twelve years thanks to old Croom’s padlocks and warnings, whets to her desire, and the sweat flies as she exchanges the saw for a chisel and hammer until a ragged slab peak is free and she can see inside: just as she thought: the corpses of Mr. Croom’s paramours – she recognizes them from their photographs in the paper: MISSING WOMAN – some desiccated as jerky and much the same color, some moldy from lying beneath roof leaks, and, all of them used hard, covered with tarry handprints, the marks of boot heels, some bright blue with remnants of paint used on the shutters years ago, one wrapped in newspaper nipple to knee.

When you live a long way out you make your own fun.

Holy crap right!?!? Talk about packing a lot of wallop into a tiny space. This is the story we read on day 1 of Intro to Lit. Then there's:

Article of Faith by Mike Resnick:
Robot finds God but Church Members Say No

The Hotel of Suicides by Mike Resnick:
Custom Order Suicides for the Down and Out

Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.:
Imposed Handicaps Equalize Society

The Veldt by Ray Bradbury:
Crazy Ass Kids Use Technology Against Parents

A Respectable Woman by Kate Chopin:
Married Woman Does Not (Yet) Commit Adultery (Review)

I could go on and on these days about short stories, and I highly recommend you check them out if you haven't yet. If you are already a short story aficionado, please please please let me know which ones I should be reading.

Another short I like called "The Scarlatti Tilt":

“It's very hard to live in a studio apartment in San Jose with a man who's learning to play the violin.” That's what she told the police when she handed them the empty revolver.

Oh, and here's one more I like: