A Short Story Mixtape

Can I recommend my favorite short story to you? How about my top twelve?

Awesome!

1. Puppy - George Saunders¹

2. Zombies - Chuck Palahniuk²

3. Rebecca - Donald Barthelme³

4. Off - Aimee Bender⁴

5. Father, Son, Holy Rabbit - Stephen Graham Jones⁵

6. The Approach To Al-Mu’tasim - Jorges Luis Borges⁶

7. In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried - Amy Hempel⁷

8. Scars in Progress - Brian Hodge⁸

9. These two go well together:

   1. A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O’Connor

   2. On Slide Inn Road - Stephen King

10. A World Without Selfie Sticks - Etgar Keret⁹

11. The Man Who Failed to Whack Off - Peter Christopher¹⁰

12. Strays - Mark Richard¹¹

13. The Fog Horn - Ray Bradbury¹²

14. The Stone Boy - Gina Berriault¹³

15. ????

What would you recommend?

1. I love Puppy. Other favorites include Sea Oak, Pastoralia, The Semplica Girl Diaries, and Jon. They’re perhaps more typical Saunders (theme-park amok, surreal capitalism)

2. I was one of the many in the audience who teared up hearing Chuck read Zombies on tour. Other favorites include Exodus, Let’s See What Happens, Red Sultan’s Big Boy, and The Lady (spookiest non-fiction ghost story I’ve ever read).

3. Barthelme’s The School is maybe his most accessible/popular, but I find myself re-reading Rebecca more.

4. Another favorite that is atypical of the author. Bender’s stories usually have some kind of magical realism element; somehow makes the sadness even sadder. Like James Tate, I don’t have specific stories in mind to recommend because I’ve loved them all.

5. I enjoy horror stories. Stephen Graham Jones is the reason. Welcome to the Reptile House is another favorite, it gave my wife shivers! Also, The Dead Are Not.

6. My wife calls him Jorges Luis Boring. I am fascinated by how he got famous in the United States as an older man for stories he wrote as a younger man since they were translated to English 40 or so years after he wrote them.

7. One of the most anthologized stories, the mama gorilla still breaks my heart every time I read it. And this was her first story??? Wow.

8. I’d buy horror anthologies if they had a Stephen Graham Jones story, which is how I discovered Brian Hodge. I’m working my way back through his amazing catalogue. Insanity Among the Penguins was the first to really catch my attention, West of Matamoros, North of Hell cemented my admiration. He stitches real world events into his horror tales (at least in his recent stuff).

9. From McSweeneys. I loved this so much, after I read it, I took photos of the pages and texted it to all my friends. You can read it on his substack:

A World Without Selfie Sticks

10. Palahniuk highly recommends Peter Christopher, this was my favorite. Another story I texted my friends screenshots after I read it.

11. Another Palahniuk recommendation. Her Favorite Story from the same collection, The Ice at the Bottom of the World is another favorite.

12. I highlighted Bradbury’s description of the creature’s cry, or maybe it was the sound of the fog horn, and emailed the paragraph to my friends.

13. Saunders recommended this one, which just breaks my heart.