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Short Story Appreciation Discussion - July 2024 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-07-26 20:33:22
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2026-06
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Dear Book Club Readers ---

Your comments in our last short story appreciation thread made for wonderful reading. So it would be lovely to hear what short stories you are enjoying alongside your other reading this month.

Our short story appreciation thread is a place to mindfully check in and share what works of short fiction have resonated with us recently.

The best way to appreciate the magic of short stories is to dive into some great ones and start discussing your insights and impressions with others. So let us know:

What short stories are you appreciating at the moment?

Let us know anything that has resonated with you during your short story excursions:

  • Powerful subtext

  • Compelling themes

  • Resonant passages

  • Your favourite writers

  • Beautifully crafted lines

  • Complex character studies

  • Elements you want to examine

  • Stories you want to recommend

  • Reflections, musings, and insights

  • How the stories inform your wider reading

This is the place to put your short story appreciations and get other readers weighing in on your thoughts!

Curated Short Stories:

We'll be deep-diving into the nightmare world of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis this weekend. But, if you would like more short story recommendations, I have specially curated three stories for you to enjoy. This is, of course, completely optional. Don't feel like you need to read all three.

I recommend sampling the opening lines, or the first few paragraphs, of each one and seeing which one pulls you in. Spend time with the story that most speaks to your heart and make a note of the author that resonates with you.

My aim is to offer you short masterworks that will inform your wider reading, our ongoing big reads, and prove to be thought-provoking in and of themselves. I love these works, and believe that being attentive to the themes, characters, and style of writing will prove to be very rewarding.

The short stories I would like to recommend for you are:

I would love to know what you make of the chosen stories. Which one did you focus on? Why did the style or theme resonate with you? If you read a different short story, let us know your thoughts on it. Or tell us about your favourite story.

All short stories can be found in the anthology That Glimpse of Truth, which makes an excellent collection for deepening your appreciation of the short story form.

Thank you so much for sharing your love of great literature with us.

Happy reading, everybody!

Files

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Comments

Allison Trago

I picked up a copy of Ryunosuke Akutagawa's "Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories" a few weeks ago, which coincides well with the Tale of Genji that I'm still slogging through. It has been nice to break up Genji just a bit. I knew nothing about Akutagawa and was excited to see that a few of the tales mentioned in Genji were retold in this book. However, I was very wrong... The Bamboo Cutter mentioned in Genji is not, in fact, Akutagawa's In a Bamboo Grove. I got through reading that short story and thought to myself, well, that was an incredibly morbid retelling of that story. I had to read then the translator's notes, which I usually skip over, to find that it is, in fact, based on a twelfth-century tale, but the notes don't actually say which story it is based on. I'm in the middle of "Hell Screen," which is incredibly good. I don't find it hard to lean into the dark aspects of the artist in this book, as it reminds me of Orhan Pamuk's "My Name is Red," which describes artists in a very similar fashion. Initially, I was surprised by how dark, morbid, and almost paranoia-filled these short stories are, but after reading a little more about him, I feel like he seems typical of male Japanese authors. I feel like so many have this dark side to them and have tragically taken their own lives. Earlier this year, I read "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea" by Yukio Mishima, who also took his own life. This response took a dark turn, but I wondered if anyone else has seen this common theme among Japanese writers or if it just happens to be what I am picking up to read.

Donna F.

Hi. I've been away from the book club for some time, dealing w/some health problems. they're not over, but I can check in w/the book club right now. I am at chapter 35 of Genji. I still don't care for the male characters, and I feel sorry for the female ones, but at least I'm still going through the book. I find the book tedious. I'm farther along than when I tried to read it last year. At least now I can start listening to the lectures. I'm listening to the Washburn audiobook. I will have to get to Infinite Jest at some other point. I would like to get into Kafka's work soon. I read Kafka a long time ago, and it wou;d be interesting to visit it again in the book club.

Bobbe Nunes

This community has literally changed my life by introducing both new to me and old favorites in this season of my life where I am mostly absorbed by my role as caregiver for my husband of 55 years in the later but not the last stage of Alzheimer’s. He loves listening to the lectures. Like music to our ears and hearts, opening our imagination to fall in love with the human capacity to celebrate “the mundane and the magnificent” within the realm of possibilities. The short story has always called to me, Tillie Olson and James Still have collections that will make you wonder and weep. Metamorphosis is an old favorite but as with all things I will read as a beginner, my favorite way. Thank you for your vision and generosity.

Kristen Egener Chaddah
>>144894969

Beautiful post. I feel as you do, the richness of this community is a blessing. I am imagining you and your husband together listening to Benjamin’s lectures. Lovely. 🥰

Vida
>>144863136

Welcome back, Donna. I hope everything goes well for you.

Julie Nevin

Absolutely love Gimpel the Fool. So many crossovers with the other books we are reading. A society that feels almost Kafkaesque - a Buddhist Genji feel with "No doubt the world is entirely a imaginary world" etc ...

Sonny Booth

Loved Report on the Shadow Industry. The mixture of consumerism and soul searching was quite chilling. I think Gimpel the Fool also is a really good side dish for The Metamorphosis, it's very Kafkaesque. Thanks for sharing them Ben.

David

I just finished the Death of Ivan Ilych during a perfect length plane read for this read. What a dark story ! If you want an uplifting book then this is not the one for you; however I was fascinated and intrigued by Tolstoy telling this story from the perspective of the person who was dealing with their pending death and the emotions, thoughts and questions that Ivan had. I drew parallels with Metamorphisis in that both Gregor and Ivan seemingly had few “true” friends and both were disappointed with their lives. Ivan did at least have one close friend, Gerasim, who provided some peace and comfort, until the end, that unfortunately Gregor was missing. One of Ivan’s sad, dark questions to himself at the end ….”what if my whole life was wrong?” It is my first reading of Leo Tolstoy and I wanted to test out one of his short stories before venturing into one of his big reads. It was a bit dark (from start to finish!). Any input on the nature of Tolstoys larger works would be appreciated!

Clare Shepherd

I have read the Kafka stories, and the Extras. I used to not be keen on Kafka as a young woman, but have been very impressed by this reread. It is wonderful counterpoint to Ij. I have been a great fan of Isaac Bashevis Singer since I was read a few of his stories in the original Yiddish by my grandfather. Then he would translate it for me. Gimpel has always been a favourite, it is even funnier in Yiddish. Sadly, I know no Yiddish speakers now, and it is sad to say 40 years after his death at 95, I'm losing Yiddish as a language. Maybe I should read more and get a good dictionary. Tonight I shall read The Jorges Luis Borges. I really do think The Glimpse of Truth was a great book investment. Right time for Montaigne. Thanks for a wonderfully revealing lecture, Ben.

Marnie
>>145088604

Hi Clare, I so envy your having had the good fortune to hear your grandfather read Singer’s delightful stories in Yiddish! My mother, born in Frankfurt in 1925, never taught me German, but she often told funny stories first in Frankfurt dialect before translating into English. I will read “Gimple” again today. Perhaps there exists Yiddish translation I might hear.

Linda Hall

I told myself I’d only read one story this time, but as I typically do, I got curious and read them all. Report on the Shadow Industry felt bleak but believable, as does IJ, at least so far. I am grateful to be reading IJ, but it can be difficult to bring myself to the necessary work of IJ when the “real” world is almost as crazy. In that respect, it was a joy to read Gimpel the Fool. He seemed like a character who was in this world but not of it.

Vida
>>145053375

If you licked this story, you would love Anna Karenina. It is one of my favorites of all time.

Clare Shepherd

Oh, thanks for the reminder, I've been meaning to watch it for ages. I've put it in my bullet journal for tomorrow. My Jewish Grandfather said I had mongrel vitality from the mixed blood. The whole range is Devonian, Scots Highland, Scots lowland or as they say "laland, Polish Jewish, German, and French. I always think it made me a restless learner and reader of history, literature and philosophy seeking understanding of myself and my roots. It's been a fun trip.

Phil

Reading Gimpel has left me bewitched and enamored with its author, Isaac Bashevis Singer. He also wrote a Montaigne-style collection of essays that I discovered and I find to be profound and engaging. Allow me to share an excerpt from one on writing that has left me complexly spellbound: Yes, God is a writer and we are both the characters and the readers. A novel written by the Lord cannot be just for one short season. As characters in God’s novel, we are all immortal. A great writer’s work can be understood on many levels, and this implies that our existence has more than one meaning. We exist in body. We exist as symbols, parables, and in many other ways. When the critics praise writers they say that their characters are three-dimensional, but God’s characters have more than three dimensions. Their dimensions are numberless. Good novels are often translated into many languages, and so is the novel called Life. Versions of this work are read on other planets, on other galaxies of the universe. Apropos of the critics. Like all writers, the Almighty has his critics. We know that the angels have nothing but praise. Three times a day they sing: sublime! perfect! great! excellent! But there must be some angry critics too. They complain: Your novel, God, is too long, too cruel. Too little love. Too much sex. They advise cutting, condensing. How can a novel be good when three-fourths of it is water? They find it inconsistent, sensational, antisocial, cryptic, decadent, vulgar, pointless, melodramatic, improvised, repetitious. About one quality we all agree: God’s novel has suspense. One keeps on reading it day and night. The fear of death is nothing but the fear of having to close God’s book. We all want to go on with the serial forever. The belief in survival has one explanation: we refuse to have any interruptions in reading. As readers, we are burning with a desire to know the events of the next chapter, and the next, and the next. We try hard to find the formula for God’s bestseller, but we are always wrong. The heavenly writer is full of surprises. All we can do is pray for a happy ending. But according to the Kabbalah, God’s novel will never end. The coming of the Messiah will only be the beginning of a new volume. Resurrection will bring back some characters the reader has already forgotten, but not the writer. What we call death is but a temporary pause for purely literary reasons. The coming of the Messiah became for me identical with the ushering in of an era when everyone would be able to create freely and search for new creative possibilities. Excerpt from: "Old Truths and New Clichés: Essays by Isaac Bashevis Singer" by Isaac Bashevis Singer.