Given this week’s weather, Tobias Wolff’s “Hunters in the Snow” seemed like a timely selection – though of course the story isn’t really about snow. Here’s how it begins: Tub had been waiting for an hour in the falling snow. He paced the sidewalk to keep warm and stuck his head out over the curb whenever … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
This weekend’s short story is Adam Haslett’s dark, powerful effort “The Beginnings of Grief“. Its gripping opening paragraphs: A year after my mother’s suicide I broke a promise to myself not to burden my father with worries of my own. I told him how unhappy I was at school, how lonely I felt. From the wing … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
This weekend’s short story is Langston Hughes’ “One Friday Morning,” first published in 1941. How it begins: The thrilling news did not come directly to Nancy Lee, but it came in little indirections that finally added themselves up to one tremendous fact: she had won the prize! But being a calm and quiet young lady, … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
This weekend’s short story comes from Alice Munro, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. “Boys and Girls” is one of her earlier stories, first published in 1968. How it begins: My father was a fox farmer. That is, he raised silver foxes, in pens; and in the fall and early winter, when … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
This week’s short story, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “Job,” was written in 1970 but not translated from Yiddish until 2012, over twenty years after the writer’s death. Here’s how it begins: Being a writer for a Yiddish newspaper means wasting half the workday on people who come to request advice or simply to argue. The manager, Mr. Raskin, tried … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
This weekend’s short story, James Joyce’s “The Dead,” is the last story in his imperishable collection, Dubliners. It takes place around this time of year, making it one of the truly great stories to read during the holidays. Here’s how it begins: Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
by Dish Staff This weekend’s short story is Tim Parks’ “Reverend,” just published in The New Yorker. You can surmise the subject matter from its title, which has autobiographical significance for Parks. In an interview, he had this to say about the story’s relationship to his own life: Reams could be written about the autobiographical links, of … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
This week’s short story, Kafka’s “The Bridge,” is very short indeed – but that just means you should read it more than once, really pondering what the strange tale might mean. Here’s how it begins: I was stiff and cold, I was a bridge, I lay over a ravine. My toes on one side, my fingers clutching … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
This weekend’s short story, Julie Hayden’s “Day-Old Baby Rats,” was recommended by a reader. Hayden died too young at age 42, and this selection comes from her only collection of stories, The Lists of the Past, published in 1976. Writing about the story, S. Kirk Walsh describes how “Hayden’s nameless protagonist embodies the acute loneliness of … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
This weekend’s short story, Virginia Woolf’s “The Legacy,” begins with a hunch that all might not be what it seems: “For Sissy Miller.” Gilbert Clandon, taking up the pearl brooch that lay among a litter of rings and brooches on a little table in his wife’s drawing-room, read the inscription: “For Sissy Miller, with my … Continue reading A Short Story For Saturday
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