The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

This is a good place to tell me ideas for future rounds of Mookse Madness, should the current round not drive us mad.

Feel free to be general (e.g., short stories), or specific (which short stories?).

64 great short stories - no more than one from any author - pitted against each other in a similar vein. Would be good to have all of them easily available...

I'd like them to be easily available, but I don't want to make that a requirement. Let's see what our list looks like, and if there's a tie we'll go with the story that's online. I think we can get the list together rather soon, leaving around a year before we need to start voting. We'll figure it out, but right now let's not let that stop us from mentioning stories.

Tove Jansson, The Squirrel
Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner
Graham Greene, A Shocking Accident
Sarah Hall, Butcher's Perfume

Something by...
Will Self (personally I love this odd standalone that hardly anyone else seems to have read: A Report To The Minister: Bushy Park, but of course there are lots in collections)
Nicola Barker (will have to look back at collections/reviews)
Hassan Blasim (ditto)
Bruno Schulz (ditto)
David Foster Wallace (I'd say maybe Good Old Neon, Death Is Not the End or more controversially, Mister Squishy)

In terms of sheer volume of stories I love, however, my favourite has to be Neil Gaiman. I'd probably nominate about a third of Smoke and Mirrors if it were allowed, but in terms of the ones I'm aware of catalogued separately on here, my favourite is probably Shoggoth's Old Peculiar There are lots of short stories on his website including that one so access is not a problem.

For those who are into SFF, there are also huge numbers of short stories on the tor.com website. I don't look at these a lot but am sure from what friends say that at least a few would be up to standard for those who prefer more literary fare.

Hopelessly obscure but some really lovely ones in Bessarabian Stamps: Stories

Are we doing something similar to this year, where we try to select the big ones, even if they are not our favorites?

Either way, for now throw it all here, but maybe tell me if you think it's a classic or a personal favorite so I can keep them distinct.

considerations for "classics"--

Signs and Symbols--Nabokov
Reunion--Cheever
Cathedral--Carver
A&P--Updike
Where are You Going, Where Have You Been--Oates
Everything that Rises Must Converge--O'Connor
A Father's Story--Dubus
Redemption--John Gardner
The Dead--James Joyce
Nightfall--Isaac Asimov
To Build a Fire--London
The Horla--Maupassant
The Story of My Dovecot--Babel
The Black Monk--Chekov
The Celestial Omnibus--Forster
The Killers--Hemingway
Paul's Case--Cather
The Most Dangerous Game--Connell
The Monkey's Paw--Jacobs
Adventure of the Speckled Band--Doyle

A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Conner
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - Ambrose Bierce
A Rose for Emily - William Faulkner
A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle
The Lottery - Shirley Jackson
Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson

considerations for "contemporary"--

People Like That Are the Only People Here--Moore
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank--Englander
Labyrinth--Amelia Gray
We Didn't--Stuart Dybek
The Swim Team--Miranda July
Sister Godzilla--Louis Erlich
The Bear Came Over the Mountain--Alice Munro
The Midnight Zone--Lauren Groff
The Cheater's Guide to Love--Junot Diaz
Balto--T.C. Boyle
Cell One-- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

What are you considering contemporary? Sorry, new to group. Is there a limit to how old a short story should be?

Hi Kathy, and welcome!

I'd say just throw out any suggestions you have, be the classic (by which I mean the short stories, even contemporary, that are the heavy hitters) or personal favorites (lesser known gems by the greats or little known stories from little known authors).

We will keep working on the parameters as we go along.

Would like to see Borges, Byatt and Angela Carter in the list but I'm not sure which stories. Kafka's Metamorphosis too...

The ones in my earlier post are favourites but the Sillitoe and the Greene count as classics in Britain at least, the jansson seems to be mentioned quite often as one of her best, and the Sarah Hall won an award, and DFW is certainly a modern classic, and has to be on there for something. And Schulz obviously a classic.
I also think Gaiman is particularly excellent at short stories and deserves a place for that, although he is not an author often mentioned in the group.

Personally I'd be disappointed if this got bogged down in hoary old classroom staples like The Monkey's Paw and so forth, and lots of the creative-writing-course minimalists, as all that sort of thing is what turned some people (incl me) off short stories.
I think it would be a mistake to allow it to be dominated by that chilly, terse style that is the characteristic cliche of literary short stories. With 64 there has to be space to show there is a heck of a lot more to them than that.

Also could generally do with more of the comic. Wodehouse?

Though I read 'The Story of My Dovecote' for the first time a couple of days ago and have to agree it is pretty powerful.

Trevor wrote: “I think we can get the list together rather soon, leaving around a year before we need to start voting.”

This is a grand idea: it would be lovely to be able to leisurely read the Mookse Madness stories that we haven’t previously read, and to do so without the immediate pressure of polling.

At the risk of being overly ambitious, perhaps we could also have a lower-key spot for discussion of current (say, 21st century) short story authors and their collections that are interesting but likely can’t compete in a Mookse Madness 64 best competition. Perhaps an NIT for lesser known contemporary short story writers? Perhaps just a folder for reflective discussions? (For those of you never steeped in U.S. college basketball, the National Invitation Tournament is the lower-key, less prestigious tournament for second tier teams not invited to the larger, glitzier March Madness tournament.)

Yes, we would need to loosely agree upon criteria. Perhaps (a) easily available, meaning already published in a collection or anthology), and (b) some Mookse and Gripes participants might ask “who’s that?” upon hearing the author’s name. An example or two: Yuyin Li and Viet Thanh Nguyen might be too well known for the short story NIT, Anna Noyes or Sara Majka would fit right in.

George Saunders - The Barber's Unhappiness
Steven Millhauser - ? (Trevor? I can't think of just one...)
Lydia Davis - Television
DFW (I'll go with Antonomasia here and say Good Old Neon)
Elizabeth Taylor ?, Mavis Gallant (so many)
Alice Munro - Corrie, Stuart Dybek, TC Boyle, Elizabeth McCracken, Flannery O'Connor, Sherwood Anderson, Vonnegut, Cheever, Carver (Cathedral), Wodehouse, Baldwin, Carter, Pancake, Thom Jones, Trevor, Welty, McGuane...

Before we even started this conversation I made up a list of 70 stories/authors. I'm going to just place it here for perusal, then we can start chipping away and refining. I think there are more than enough women short story writers who should show up on the list, so it will be at least 50/50 (maybe the list will even tilt toward women).

-Alice Munro: The Bear Came Over the Mountain
-Alistair MacLeod: The Boat
-Ambrose Bierce: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
-Andrea Barrett: Servants of the Map
-Angela Carter:
-Annie Proulx:
-Balzac: A Passion in the Desert
-Bharati Mukherjee: The Management of Grief
-Bruno Schulz:
-Carson McCullers: A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud
-Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Yellow Wallpaper
-Chekhov: Lady with Lapdog
-Claire Keegan: Foster
-Deborah Eisenberg: Mermaids
-Lu Xun: Diary of a Madman
-Donald Barthelme: A Shower of Gold
-Edgar Alan Poe: The Tell-Tale Heart
-Edna O'Brien: Sister Imelda
-Elizabeth Bowen: The Demon Lover
-Elizabeth Taylor:
-Ernest Hemingway: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
-Eudora Whelty: Death of a Travelling Salesman
-Flannery O'Connor: A Good Man Is Hard to Find
-Frank O'Connor: Michael's Wife
-George Saunders:
-Gogol: The Nose
-Grace Paley:
-Guy de Maupassant: The Necklace
-H.P. Lovecraft:
-Heinrich von Kleist:
-Isaac Babel: The Story of My Dovecoat
-Italo Calvino:
-Ivan Turgenev: Bzeyhin Meadow
-Jack London: To Build a Fire
-James Joyce:
-JD Salinger: A Perfect Day for Bananafish
-Jhumpa Lahiri: A Temporary Matter
-John Cheever:
-John McGahern: The Beginning of an Idea
-Jorge Luis Borges: The Lottery of Babylon
-Joy Williams: The Skater
-Joyce Carol Oates: Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been
-Julio Cortazar: The Island at Noon
-Kafka: In the Penal Colony
-Katherine Anne Porter: The Grave
-Katherine Mansfield:
-Lucia Berlin: A New Life
-Machado de Assis:
-Margaret Atwood:
-Mavis Gallant: Dede
-Nikolai Leskov: The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
-Robert Aickman: The Inner Room
-Roberto Bolano: Gomez Palacio
-Saki: The Open Window
-Sherwood Anderson: Death in the Woods
-Shirley Jackson:
-Stefan Zweig:
-Stephen Millhauser: Eisenheim the Illusionist
-Tadeusz Borowski:
-Tim O'Brien: The Things They Carried
-Tobias Wolf: In the Garden of the North American Martyrs
-Truman Capote: A Tree of Night
-Ursula K. LeGuin: Those Who Walk Away from Omelas
-Virginia Woolf:
-Vladimir Nabokov:
-Washington Irving: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
-Willa Cather:
-William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily
-William Trevor: The Piano Tuner's Wives
-Yukio Mishima: Patriotism

...Lispector, Bolano, Paley, Murakami, Salter, Meloy, Neuman, Jansson, Capote (so many, maybe A Christmas Memory), Vollmann (can't miss out twice!), Greene, Joyce, Chekov, Maupassant (agree with Poingu - The Horla), Bowen (so many), Hadley (so many), Macleod, Dahl, Bass, Moshfegh, Porter, Chateaubriand, Ferry, Li, Diaz (a must for Trevor, this), Yates...

Cheever: The Swimmer/The Country Husband?

What's our definition of a short story? Some of these are quite long.

I would advocate removing some of those known primarily for their novels (like Bolano) or who are already represented on this year's MM (also Bolano) and replacing them with people known primarily for their short stories, such as Lydia Davis, Loorie Moore, or Raymond Carver.

I like those suggestions, Sara. I hesitate to remove the Bolano, though. It's a masterpiece!

But I'm with you generally.

Oh, and as for "short" story versus something like novella, that may be something we use to cut these down. I like the idea of these being things people can get through without too much trouble.

That said, feel free to keep suggesting what comes to mind, but if it's on the longer side then it probably won't make it without a solid case for its inclusion.

Lucia Berlin and Joy Williams are musts for me so I can second those - can't believe I hadn't mentioned them...

Lee wrote: "Lydia Davis - Television"

As I was about to say before I accidentally switched the router off when a lightbulb blew, and half a dozen more posts appeared ... I will happily second this.

And with the zeal of the newly converted, Lispector, yes.

Are there really that many Annie Proulx fans here? (Definitely not me!) She looks by far the most replaceable.

Gasp!

I do not particularly care for her novels, but I love many of her short stories. Not enough to say she's irreplaceable, but enough to gasp!

Close Range is a corking volume!:)

Tobias Wolff - Two Boys and a Girl

I love the list. I have read many of the older short stories but there are quite a lot of authors I haven't read yet. It is great to have this list as a go-to for sampling new (to me) authors. Thanks for putting this together.

Possibly already mentioned, but great short stories from:
Lorrie Moore, Saki, and Susanna Clarke.

Also what about including some classic sci-fi stories? Some of these really shine, Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, even Neil Gaiman?

Finally, a personal quirky favorite, now mostly lost to the sands of forgetting: Max Apple. The collection The Oranging of America is just fantastic.

I must second Nicole's shout for PKD...Harlan Ellison worth a go as well...

The Shawl - Cynthia Ozick

Ann Beattie

I'm late to this discussion but it does not appear we have a final list, so I thought I'd toss a few of my favorite short story writers in the mix that I do not think have been mentioned.
First, and foremost, is Bonnie Jo Campbell. I think I've given 5 stars to at least 3 of her books of short stories.
Second would be Ron Rash.
Third is Amy Bloom.
Fourth is Ted Chiang.

Thanks! I was planning to hit this hard after Booker season's hot peak.

W. Somerset Maugham, Karen Blixen, Edna Ferber (Blixen also wrote as Isak Dinesen )