{"id":4275,"date":"2016-01-19T12:49:42","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T16:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=4275"},"modified":"2016-01-19T12:49:42","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T16:49:42","slug":"the-shock-value-of-short-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/the-shock-value-of-short-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shock Value of Short Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

I came across an article titled ““Can Short Stories Still Shock?”<\/a>, a title which, frankly, surprised me. There are SO MANY wonderful short stories in such a variety of anthologies, I can’t even believe that’s a question. You don’t believe that short stories have power? Take a hint from Flannery O’ Conner. Okay, she’s been dead a while now, but she’s not wrong, even when we’re talking about the current literary scene.<\/p>\n

The \"\"author of the article was really talking about “realist” literary fiction. I don’t read huge quantities of that, but I can certainly find stories there that have the ability to shock. And I really love to read them, because I can pick them up and put them back down without feeling like I need just one more chapter. You read a lot of short stories of all kinds in high school and college, because they’re required reading, and I read huge numbers of short story anthologies as a middle schooler.<\/p>\n

Anyone remember those Alfred Hitchcock anthologies, like Monster<\/strong> Museum<\/strong>? My first exposure to Stephen King was in an anthology, Skeleton<\/strong> Crew<\/strong>. Now, granted, most of these weren’t necessarily realistic, but it’s possible that is because reality isn’t all that exciting. As Walter Mitty might say, who wants to escape to reality?<\/p>\n

The author also complained that there’s nothing new out there– the plots are all tired and the tropes overused. Now, there are a lot of familiar plots and tropes out there used in unimaginative ways. I can’t deny that. But familiar plot elements and tropes don’t guarantee that you will be reading a predictable story. In an interview<\/a>\u00a0about her story “Abomination Rises on Filthy Wings”, Rachel Swirsky actually talks about her motivation in writing the story to disrupt a very disturbing trope in the horror genre.<\/p>\n

So, a list of short stories that shocked me.<\/p>\n

The Most Dangerous Game<\/a>\u00a0by Richard Connell<\/p>\n

The Lottery<\/a> by Shirley Jackson<\/p>\n

The Specialist’s Hat\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0by Kelly Link<\/p>\n

The Veldt<\/a>\u00a0by Ray Bradbury<\/p>\n

An Abomination Rises on Filthy Wings<\/a>\u00a0by Rachel Swirsky (this is a really difficult and extreme read, fair warning).<\/p>\n

The Wind in the Rose-Bush<\/a> by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman<\/p>\n

Harlequin Valentine<\/a>\u00a0(I first experienced this as a graphic novel, and it was a real shocker: this is an audio version) by Neil Gaiman<\/p>\n

The Kugelmass Episode<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Woody Allen<\/p>\n

The Hall of New Faces<\/a>\u00a0by Kit Reed<\/p>\n

The short story still has a lot of life left in it, and you’ll find that many short stories today will give you enough of a kick to jumpstart your brain and get your circuits going.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came across an article titled ““Can Short Stories Still Shock?”, a title which, frankly, surprised me. There are SO MANY wonderful short stories in such a variety of anthologies, I can’t even believe that’s a question. You don’t believe that short stories have power? Take a hint from Flannery O’ Conner. Okay, she’s been<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2637,2633,2642,83,428,905,199,2641,2634,84,2636,325,1739,1540,971,1526,1776,2635,2645,2643,1537,1541,2638,2639,2640,2644],"class_list":["post-4275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abomination-rises-on-filthy-wings","tag-can-short-stories-still-shock","tag-harlequin-valentine","tag-horror-fiction","tag-kelly-link","tag-kit-reed","tag-literary-fiction","tag-mary-e-wilkins-freeman","tag-monster-museum","tag-neil-gaiman","tag-rachel-swirsky","tag-ray-bradbury","tag-required-reading","tag-richard-connell","tag-shirley-jackson","tag-short-stories","tag-short-story-anthologies","tag-skeleton-crew","tag-the-hall-of-new-faces","tag-the-kugelmass-episode","tag-the-lottery","tag-the-most-dangerous-game","tag-the-specialists-hat","tag-the-veldt","tag-the-wind-in-the-rose-bush","tag-woody-allen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4275"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4278,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4275\/revisions\/4278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}