What are your favorite short stories or short story collections, anthologies etc. [more inside]
posted on May 28, 2008 - 54 answers

Do you recognize this short story, possibly written by David Mamet? A Japanese couple scrimps and saves so they can incrementally improve their lives, and they go to a shopping mall/set of stores for fun, where they purchase candies/cookies that look like 1000 or 10000 or 1000000 yen. (More inside.) [more inside]
posted on Jun 20, 2007 - 5 answers

Dorothy Parker has beguiled and confounded me! And she's dead. What a gal. I'm looking for help figuring out a puzzling casual remark from one of her short stories. [more inside]
posted on May 25, 2006 - 22 answers

Can you name short stories, preferably from the classics, about a birthday? [more inside]
posted on Apr 13, 2006 - 5 answers

a short story by a continental european writer that directly addresses or suggests conflicts within human nature-- the desire to perform "good" acts vs. our tendency (the temptation) to commit "evil" ones? [more inside]
posted on Mar 8, 2006 - 10 answers

Fuzzy Memories Please help me identify a book I read as a child. [more inside]
posted on Mar 22, 2005 - 8 answers

I love Raymond Carver's short stories because they're complete and perfect without much happening in them, in terms of action and plot development. What I'd like to find is some novels that are similarly "plotless"? Do they exist? [more inside]
posted on Mar 8, 2005 - 38 answers

Can someone please explain to me either what A Perfect Day for Bananafish is about, or why people like it? I really don't get it.
posted on Jan 17, 2005 - 27 answers