Archive for the ‘Short Story’ Category

“The Swimmer” by John Cheever John Cheever’s short story “The Swimmer” opens with a flowing description of alcohol and its effect on those whose Sunday mornings are particularly trying because of it: “It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying, ‘I drank too much last night.’ You might have heard it [...]

“The Lame Shall Enter First” by Flannery O’Connor Everything That Rises Must Converge is a collection of nine short stories that Flannery O’Connor wrote before she died in 1964 and was released posthumously a year later. In some way each story deals with themes of race, religion, and morality amongst tragically flawed characters inside of [...]

“A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’Connor “Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.” –Flannery O’Connor Before I listened to the Slate Audio Book Club’s critique of “A [...]

The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett “I see it all now as I couldn’t when I was young.” The Country of the Pointed Firs was first serialized in 1896 in The Atlantic Monthly and made a name of Sarah Orne Jewett, though her name was mostly relegated to literary and local [...]