Short Shorts is a delightful anthology of miniature masterpieces. Here are thirty-eight brief, brilliant flashes of fiction, both classic and contemporary. Each work is superb,intense, and speaks to the human condition in a profound, often provocative way--a truly outstanding collection by some of the world’s greatest authors.

LIKE OTHER GREAT EVENTS in history, this collection of short short stories (hereafter called short shorts) has its origin in family talk around the kitchen table.

One editor was reading "Swaddling Clothes," a marvelous story by the Japanese writer Mishima,and naturally enough urged the other editor also to read it. Which the other editor did and, of course,agreed: yes, a superb piece of work. There soon followed a conversation in which the two editors found themselves noticing that Mishima’s story seemed different from the usual kind of short story.How so? It is fiercely condensed, almost like a lyric poem; it explodes in a burst of revelation or illumination; it confines itself to a single, overpowering incident; it bears symbolic weight. Struggle. to define this story’s distinctiveness, the two editors began to wonder: Were they talking about a separate literary genre, or subgenre, which might be called the short short? And if there is some good reason for talking about the short short, are there perhaps others, not as great as Mishima’s but still worth gathering, that might be put together in "a little book’?

IRVING HOWE

Introduction

Part One

LEO TOLSTOY

The Three Hermits

LEO TOLSTOY

Alvosha the Pot

HEINRICH VON KLEIST

The Beggarwoman of Locarno

GOTTFRIED KELLER

A Little Legend of the Dance

ANTON CHEKHOV

After the Theatre

GIOVANNI VERGA

The Wolf

STEPHEN CRANE

An Episode of War

GuY DE MAUPASSANT

An Old Man

JOAO GUIMARAES ROSA

The Third Bank of the River

SHOLOM ALEICHEM

A Yore Kippur Scandal

I. L. PERETZ

If Not Higher

Part Two

JAMES JOYCE

Eveline

D. H. LAWRENCE

A Sick Collier

LUIGI PIRANDELLO

The Soft Touch of Grass

FRANZ

The Hunter Gracchus

FRANZ

First Sorrow

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

The Untold Lie

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

Paper Pills

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

GIUSEPPE DI LAMPEDUSA

Joy and the Law

KATHERINe. ANNE PORTER

Magic

ISAAC BABEL

The Death of Dolgushov

MIKHAIL ZOSCHENKO

The Bathhouse

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

The Use of Force

YUKIO MISHIMA

Swaddling Clothes

JAMES THURBER

If Grant Had Been Drinking

at Appomattox

DORIS LESSING

Homage for Isaac Babel

JORGE LOIS BORGES

The Dead Man

VARLAM SHALAMOV

In the Night

OCTAVIO PAZ

The Blue Bouquet

JEROME WEIDMAN

My Father Sits in the Dark

GRACE PALEY

Wants

GABRIEL GARCLA MAROUEZ

Bitterness for Three Sleepwalkers

AUGUSTO MON-TERROSO

The Eclipse

HEINRICH BOLL

The Laugher

PAULA FOX

News from the World

MARIA LUISE KASCHNrrz

Going to Jerusalem

LUISA VALENZUELA

The Censors

About the Authors