My 2019 Reads, The Short Stories, Part 2

You can read the main post on my 2019 reads here. 

And you can read Part 1 of the 2019 short story reads here:

Here is the list of the stories again by my assessment.

Exceptional:

“The Background,” a short story by Saki (H. H. Munro).

“Mother,” a short story by Sherwood Anderson.

“Wilde in Omaha,” a short story by Ron Hansen.

“A Child's Christmas in Wales,” a short story and prose poem by Dylan Thomas.

Good:

“A Sin Confessed,” a short story by Giovanni Guareschi, translated by Adam Elgar.

"Why Bugsy Siegel Was a Friend of Mine," a short story by James Lee Burke.

"Thunder and Roses" a short story by Theodore Sturgeon.

“The Worst You Ever Feel,” a short story by Rebecca Makkai.

“The Light of the World,” a short story by Ernest Hemingway.

“Blood, Sea,” a short story by Italo Calvino and translated by William Weaver.

“Where Love is, There God is Also,” a short story by Leo Tolstoy.

Ordinary:

“Poldi,” a short story by Carson McCullers.

“Gibberish,” a short story by Thomas Berger.

"A House on the Plains" a short story by E.L. Doctorow.

“The Sin of Jesus,” a short story Isaac Babel.

Duds:

“In the Snow,” a short story by Stefan Zweig, translated by Anathea Bell.

“Social Error,” a short story Damon Runyan.

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Before I get to the best stories, let’s look over the varieties of stories.  Six are known for their short story craft (Saki, Babel, Anderson, Hemingway, Guareschi, and Calvino).  Six are well known literary novelists (Hemingway, Tolstoy, Doctorow, Hansen, McCullers, and Calvino); four are popular genre novelists (Berger in comic novel, Sturgeon in science fiction, Burke in mystery, and Runyan in radio dramas); Thomas as a poet, and Makkai as an up-and-coming novelist.  This may be as diverse a group as I’ve ever read in a year.  As to their ethnicities, two writers are Russian, two Italian, two British, one Austrian, and ten American.  So seven stories by European writers and ten by American is a reasonably good split. 

Four stories I categorized as exceptional.  “Mother” by Sherwood Anderson, “Wilde in Omaha” by Ron Hansen, and “A Child's Christmas in Wales” by Dylan Thomas.

 “The Background,” a short story by Saki (H. H. Munro).

-          Story of a man who has a tattoo put on his back by a brilliant Italian artist.

-          After the tattoo is completed but before the man can pay him, the artist dies.

-          The man doesn’t have the money the artist’s wife thinks he should pay and so reneges and tries to flee the country.

-          The artist’s wife is so indignant that she causes an international incident and has the man held on the border for trying to take out of the country prized art.

-          You can read the story online here.  

-          You can listen to the story at YouTube here.  

“Mother,” a short story by Sherwood Anderson. 

-          One of Anderson’s stories from Winesburg, Ohio short story collection which centers on stories from a small town in Ohio at the turn of the twentieth century told from a young man’s (George Willard) point of view.

-          Mother is a character study of George’s mother, Elizabeth.

-          Elizabeth is a gloomy and unhappily married woman to a man named Tom Willard

-          Tom manages a hotel where the family lives and is involved in politics but is basically not a great provider.

-          Elizabeth places all her hopes in life onto George and prays to god that he not be as unhappy as she but not as carefree as her husband.

-          You read the story online here.  

-          You listen to the story being read on YouTube here.  

“Wilde in Omaha,” a short story by Ron Hansen. 

-          A fictional account of Oscar Wilde’s true stop in Omaha, Nebraska in 1882

-          The story is told in first person from Robert Murphy, a journalist who spent the day with Wilde on that stop in Omaha.

-          In Omaha they are met by the city’s elite, “the peasantry of the west” as Wilde calls them, and is taken to the finest hotel where he is given a grand luncheon and asked to read one of his poems.  He chooses a sonnet, “The Grave of Keats,” an ode to the poet John Keats.

-          That evening he gives his lecture at the Boyd Opera House to the paying crowd, the subject being “The Decorative Arts,” the importance of beauty in life of a community.

-          That evening, instead of going back to his hotel with the entourage, he escapes with Murphy to Murphy’s apartment, where the two share a few drinks of Scotch whisky and where Murphy gives him some harsh criticism. 

-          You cannot find this story online.  It is part of Ron Hansen’s short story collection, She Loves Me.  

“A Child's Christmas in Wales,” a short story and prose poem by Dylan Thomas. 

-          A story of the harsh but joyful winters spent as a child in Wales.

-          The events revolve around Christmas family celebrations and holiday rituals.

-          The story is told by an adult reminiscing on his childhood and has the air of a mostly tall tale of boyish adventures.

-          It is mostly a static story, but beautifully written in a sort of prose poetic style, invoking the fun of childhood, the life in Wales of its day, and the brutal winters of its place.

-          The story ends with a prayer and cozy bedtime that conveys the joy and innocence of the narrator’s nostalgic past.

-          You can read this story online here.  

-          You can listen to this story being read by the author himself on YouTube here.  

-          I wrote up a two part short story analysis of this story on this blog Part 1 here and Part 2 here.  

First off, I realized now that I wrote up a detailed short story analysis of Ron Hansen’s “Wilde in Omaha” and forgot to post it.  I will post it as a follow up and come back here and provide the link.

Selecting the winner this year is a really hard choice.  Any of the four stories could win.  They are all that good.  But I have to pick.  Drum roll please.

Runner Up: “Wilde in Omaha,” by Ron Hansen.

Another drum roll please.  And the winner is…

Best Short Story Read in 2019: “A Child's Christmas in Wales,” by Dylan Thomas.

What gave the edge to the Dylan Thomas story is the poetic prose. 

Please go out and read these four stories.  You won’t be disappointed.