The Best American Short Stories of the Century

The Best American Short Stories of the Century is a volume in The Best American Short Stories series, was curated by John Updike and co-edited by Katrina Kenison. It consists of 55 stories from 1915 to 1998. The volume was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Background The series is considered one of the "best-known annual anthologies of short fiction""Short and Sweet" by Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly, 11/05/99, issue 511, page 73. and has anthologized more than 2,000 short stories, including works by some of the most famous writers in contemporary American literature, curated by well-known guest editors since 1915."The Best American Short Stories of the Century," Publishers Weekly, 3/8/1999, volume 246, issue 10, page 47.

In particular, the Willa Cather Review wrote that The Best American Short Stories series "became a repository of values" for creative writing programs, college libraries, and literary magazines."'Long-Cellared Wine': 'Double Birthday,' Edward J. H. O'Brien, and the Best American Short Stories Series" by Timothy W. Bintrim and Scott Riner, Willa Cather Review, spring 2023, volume 64, issue 1, page 18.

Critical reception In a starred review, Publishers Weekly stated that "Life on this continent may be brutal, but this extraordinary collection offers up dazzling writing that salves the wounds, as well as stories full of the pleasures of life."

The New York Times stated that "Updike has made some surprising—even striking—selections, and in consequence this collection seems far less predictable than it might have been" and that "Finding wonderful stories that you don't already know is one of this collection's great pleasures."

The Observer noted Updike's curation based not in national themes but rather human sentimentality, stating that "The result is a most interesting mix of good and great, of obscure writers and much-anthologized classics, of literary curios and polished diamonds... In sum, this is a terrific collection that ought to be read by anyone interested in good writing or curious about the 20th-century American social scene."

Short stories included YearAuthorStorySource1915Benjamin Rosenblatt"Zelig"The Bellman1916Mary Lerner"Little Selves"The Atlantic Monthly1917Susan Glaspell"A Jury of Her Peers"Every Week Magazine1920Sherwood Anderson"The Other Woman"The Triumph of the Egg1922Ring Lardner"The Golden Honeymoon"Cosmopolitan1923Jean Toomer"Blood-Burning Moon"Prairie1927Ernest Hemingway"The Killers"Scribner's Magazine1929Willa Cather"Double Birthday"The Forum1929Grace Stone Coates"Wild Plums"The Frontier1930Katherine Anne Porter"Theft"The Gyroscope1931William Faulkner"That Evening Sun Go Down"The American Mercury1931Dorothy Parker"Here We Are"Cosmopolitan1933F. Scott Fitzgerald"Crazy Sunday"The American Mercury1934Alexander Godin"My Dead Brother Comes to America"The Windsor Quarterly1935William Saroyan"Resurrection of a Life"Story1938Robert Penn Warren"Christmas Gift"Virginia Quarterly Review1939Richard Wright"Bright and Morning Star"New Masses1940Eudora Welty"The Hitch-Hikers"The Southern Review1943Paul Horgan"The Peach Stone"The Yale Review1944Vladimir Nabokov"That in Aleppo Once..."Atlantic Monthly1947Jean Stafford"The Interior Castle"Partisan Review1948Martha Gellhorn"Miami-New York"The Atlantic Monthly1948E. B. White"The Second Tree from the Corner"The New Yorker1949Elizabeth Bishop"The Farmer's Children"Harper's Bazaar1951J. F. Powers"Death of a Favorite"The New Yorker1951Tennessee Williams"The Resemblance Between A Violin Case and a Coffin"Flair1955John Cheever"The Country Husband"The New Yorker1956Flannery O'Connor"Greenleaf"The Kenyon Review1960Lawrence Sargent Hall"The Ledge"The Hudson Review1960Philip Roth"Defender of the Faith"The New Yorker1962Stanley Elkin"Criers and Kibbitzers, Kibbitzers and Criers"Perspective1964Bernard Malamud"The German Refugee"The Saturday Evening Post1967Joyce Carol Oates"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"Epoch1968Mary Ladd Gavell"The Rotifer"Psychiatry1969James Alan McPherson"Gold Coast"The Atlantic1970Isaac Bashevis Singer"The Key"The New Yorker1973Donald Barthelme"A City of Churches"The New Yorker1975Rosellen Brown"How to Win"The Massachusetts Review1976Alice Adams"Roses, Rhododendron"The New Yorker1978Harold Brodkey"Verona: A Young Woman Speaks"Esquire1979Saul Bellow"A Silver Dish"The New Yorker1980John Updike"Gesturing"Playboy1981Cynthia Ozick"The Shawl"The New Yorker1983Raymond Carver"Where I'm Calling From"The New Yorker1986Ann Beattie"Janus"The New Yorker1987Susan Sontag"The Way We Live Now"The New Yorker1987Tim O'Brien"The Things They Carried"Esquire1989Alice Munro"Meneseteung"The New Yorker1990Lorrie Moore"You're Ugly, Too"The New Yorker1993Thom Jones"I Want to Live!"Harper's Magazine1994Alice Elliott Dark"In the Gloaming"The New Yorker1994Carolyn Ferrell"Proper Library"Ploughshares1995Gish Jen"Birthmates"Ploughshares1997Pam Durban"Soon"The Southern Review1998Annie Proulx"The Half-Skinned Steer"Close Range: Wyoming Stories1998Pam Houston"The Best Girlfriend You Never Had"Other Voices

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