Fiction Gallery Teaching Guide
About Fiction Gallery
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See also:
Writing Fiction
Writing Movies
“”
Fiction Gallery is a wonderful selection for the general reader and writing student alike. The editors have chosen stories with great range of period, style, form, and subject, stories that brilliantly convey the possibilities of the genre.
Thomas C. Foster
author of How To Read Literature Like a Professor
author of How To Read Literature Like a Professor
Teaching Hints from Fiction Gallery
Click a title below to read an excerpt
| Author: | Anton Chekhov, the father of the contemporary short story, perhaps the author most revered by short story writers. Russian. | |||||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in a Russian periodical, 1886, included in many of the author’s collections. Though not one of the author’s most famous works, much admired by Chekhov connoisseurs. | |||||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this starkly realistic story, a young boy converses with his mother’s current beau, and learns the nature of deceit. | |||||||||||||||
| Opening: | A well-fed, red-cheeked young man called Nikolay Ilyitch Belyaev, of thirty-two, who was an owner of house property in Petersburg, and a devotee of the race-course, went one evening to see Olga Ivanovna Irnin, with whom he was living, or, to use his own expression, was dragging out a long, wearisome romance.” | |||||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | omniscient/informal | |||||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | character, plot, POV, dialogue | |||||||||||||||
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| Recommended book: | Essential Tales of Chekhov |
| Author: | Frank O’Connor, one of the masters of the short story. Irish. | ||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in Harper’s Bazaar, 1939, included in the author’s Collected Stories of Frank O’Connor. Selected for Best British Short Stories 1940. | ||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this gently humorous story, a young boy faces his first confession, saddled with a very big sin—thoughts of murder. | ||||||||||||
| Opening: | “All the trouble began when my grandfather died and my grandmother—my father’s mother—came to live with us.” | ||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | first person, informal | ||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | character, plot, dialogue, humor | ||||||||||||
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| Recommended book: | Frank O’Connor Collected Stories |
| Author: | ZZ Packer, one of the most acclaimed fiction writers of today. American. | ||||||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in Harper’s, included in the author’s collection Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, 2003. Selected for Best American Short Stories 2000. | ||||||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this seriocomic story, a troop of black Brownies plan an attack on a troop of white brownies, one of whom has dared to use the “N word.” | ||||||||||||||||
| Opening: | “By our second day at Camp Crescendo, the girls in my Brownie troop had decided to kick the asses of each and every girl in Brownie Troop 909.” | ||||||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | first person peripheral, informal | ||||||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | character, POV, description, theme | ||||||||||||||||
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| Recommended book: | Drinking Coffee Elsewhere |
| Author: | Peter Markus, a relatively unknown master of flash fiction. American. | ||||||
| Background: | First published in Quarterly West, 2001. A prime example of the very short story. | ||||||
| Premise: | In this myth-like story, a pair of brothers go to extreme measures to avoid moving from their home. | ||||||
| Opening: | “We watched our father hammer and pound, into our front yard’s ground, a hand made sign that said, in letters big enough for us brothers to read what it said, all the way down from where we were watching, down by the muddy river’s muddy shore: HOUSE FOR SALE.” | ||||||
| POV/Voice: | first person plural, lyrical | ||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | setting, voice, the very short story | ||||||
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| Recommended Book: | The Signing Fish |
| Author: | Myla Goldberg, author of the bestselling novel Bee Season. American. | ||||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in failbetter, 2001 | ||||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this innocently cynical story, an adolescent girl receives lessons in the art of sexual allurement from her grandmother. | ||||||||||||||
| Opening: | “It’s not only about looking good. If you’re just looking good, you’ll probably be able to get a cone or a soft pretzel, but definitely not an Orange Julius.” | ||||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | first person, informal | ||||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | character, POV, setting, voice | ||||||||||||||
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| Recommended book: | Bee Season |
| Author: | Claire Davis, a rising fiction star of today. American. | ||||||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in Ploughshares, included in the author’s collection Labors of the Heart, 2003. Selected for Best American Short Stories 2001. | ||||||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this non-sentimental story, an overweight janitor, inexperienced in love, seeks to woo a woman who has sworn off men. | ||||||||||||||||
| Opening: | “The remarkable thing in dreams: people say what he never hears in waking. Fat. They say it to his face, not behind his back, or clear of earshot. The word is succulent in their mouths—“faaat”—stretching out like the waist on his sansabelt pants.” | ||||||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | third person, informal | ||||||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | character, plot, POV, description | ||||||||||||||||
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| Recommended book: | Winter Range |
| Author: | Lou Mathews, an accomplished dramatist who moonlights as a fiction writer. American. | ||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in Crazy Horse, 1990. Winner of the Pushcart Prize. | ||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this hyper-realistic story, a girl in the barrio fights to protect her boyfriend from drugs, dangerous friends, and a murder rap. | ||||||||||||
| Opening: | “Chuey called me from the jail. He said it was all a big mistake. I said, Sure Chuey, like always, que no? What is it this time, weed or wine? He said it was something different this time.” | ||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | first person, conversational | ||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | character, POV, setting, voice | ||||||||||||
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| Author: | Pam Houston, perhaps the first and best of the chick-lit writers. American. | ||||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in Mirabella, included in the author’s collection Cowboys Are My Weakness, 1992. | ||||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this good-natured story, a happily independent woman goes on a blind date with a soap-opera cowboy. | ||||||||||||||
| Opening: | “You’ve come, finally, to a safe place. It could be labeled safe place, marquee-style in bright glittering letters. You’ve put the time in to get there. You’ve read all the books. You have cooked yourself elaborate gourmet meals. You have brought home fresh-cut flowers. You love your work. You love your friends. It’s the single life in the high desert.” | ||||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | second person, informal | ||||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | POV, description, pacing, voice | ||||||||||||||
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| Recommended books: |
Cowboys Are My Weakness
Waltzing With the Cat |
| Author: | T.C. Boyle, one of the most acclaimed fiction writers of today. American. | ||||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in Playboy, included in the author’s collection After the Plague, 2001. | ||||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this impishly realistic story, a cynical man seeks to find a mate after disease decimates almost all of the earth’s population. | ||||||||||||||
| Opening: | “After the plague—it was some sort of Ebola mutation passed from hand to hand and nose to nose like the common cold—life was different. More relaxed and expansive, more natural. The rat race was over, the freeways were clear all the way to Sacramento, and the poor dwindling ravaged planet was suddenly big and mysterious again.” | ||||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | first person, informal | ||||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | plot, setting, voice, suspense | ||||||||||||||
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| Recommended books: |
T. C. Boyle Stories
After the Plague Drop City |
| Author: | Dorothy Parker, the legendary member of the Round Table. American. | ||||||||||||
| Background: | First Published in Cosmopolitan, 1931, included in the author’s Dorothy Parker: Complete Stories. Selected for Best American Short Stories 1931 and Best American Short Stories of the Century. | ||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this bitingly ironic story, a newlywed couple enroute to their honeymoon find themselves intensely disliking each other. | ||||||||||||
| Opening: | “The young man in the new blue suit finished arranging the glistening luggage in tight corners of the Pullman compartment. The train had leaped at curves and bounced along straightaways, rendering balance a praiseworthy achievement and a sporadic one.” | ||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | objective, informal | ||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | character, pov, dialogue, humor | ||||||||||||
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| Recommended book: | The Portable Dorothy Parker |
| Author: | Raymond Carver, the writer credited for the renaissance of the contemporary short story. American. | ||||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in the New Yorker, included in the author’s collection Where I’m Calling From, 1988. One of the author’s final stories, and not one of his more well-known works. | ||||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this amusingly realistic story, a married couple spend a sleepless night in bed contemplating such things as dreams and death. | ||||||||||||||
| Opening: | “The call comes in the middle of the night, three in the morning, and it nearly scares us to death. ‘Answer it, answer it!’ my wife cries. ‘My God, who is it? Answer it!’” | ||||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | first person, informal | ||||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | character, dialogue, pacing, voice | ||||||||||||||
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| Recommended book: | Where I’m Calling From |
| Author: | Anthony Doerr, one of the most acclaimed fiction writers of today. American. | ||||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in North American Review, included in the author’s collection The Shell Collector, 2002, winner of the Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers award. | ||||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this tall-tale-like story, two sisters – one flashy, one drab – follow separate paths in life all the while heading for a big collision. | ||||||||||||||
| Opening: | “In 1979 Griselda Drown was a senior volleyballer at Boise High, a terrifically tall girl with trunky thighs, slender arms and a volleyball serve that won an Idaho State Championship despite T-shirts claiming it was a team effort.” | ||||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | first person plural, lyrical | ||||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | character, description, voice, tone | ||||||||||||||
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| Recommended book: | The Shell Collector |
| Author: | Hannah Tinti, one of the rising fiction stars of today. American. | ||||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in Epoch, included in the author’s collection Animal Crackers, 2004. Selected for Best American Mystery Stories 2003. | ||||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this documentary-like story, a neighborhood is turned upside down by a double murder, and the thoughts of everyone involved are explored. | ||||||||||||||
| Opening: | “Pat and Clyde were murdered on pot roast night. The doorbell rang just as Pat was setting the butter and margarine (Clyde was watching his cholesterol) on the table.” | ||||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | omniscient, journalistic | ||||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | character, plot, POV, voice | ||||||||||||||
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| Recommended book: | Animal Crackers |
| Author: | Daniel Orozco, exceptional but relatively unknown fiction writer. American. | ||||||||||
| Background: | First appeared in The Seattle Review, 1995. Selected for Best American Short Stories 1995. | ||||||||||
| Premise: | In this wickedly funny story, a new employee at an office is given an orientation tour. | ||||||||||
| Opening: | “Those are the offices and these are the cubicles. That’s my cubicle there, and this is your cubicle. This is your phone. Never answer your phone. Let the Voicemail System answer it.” | ||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | dramatic monologue/conversational | ||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | POV, setting, voice, humor | ||||||||||
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| Recommended story: | “I Run Every Day” |
| Author: | John O’Farrell, a popular newspaper columnist who moonlights as a fiction writer. British. | ||||||||||||||
| Background: | Commissioned by Nick Hornby for the anthology Speaking with the Angel, 2000. | ||||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this slyly humorous story, a mime pursues his art, pathetically unaware of the world’s disinterest and disdain. | ||||||||||||||
| Opening: | “There’s a moment when you’re up on stage when you suddenly become aware that everyone is looking at you; that the entire room is totally focused upon what you are doing. In that terrifying split second your performance can crash to the ground or it can soar to great new heights.” | ||||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | unreliable first person, informal | ||||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | POV, pacing, theme, humor | ||||||||||||||
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| Recommended book: | The Best a Man Can Get |
| Author: | Edwidge Danticat, one of the most acclaimed fiction writers of today. Haitian. | ||||||||||
| Background: | First published as “Voices in a Dream” in the Caribbean Writer, included in the author’s collection Krik? Krak! | ||||||||||
| Premise: | In this dreamlike story, a poor woman in Haiti attempts to shield her young son from her life as a prostitute. | ||||||||||
| Opening: | “I cringe from the heat of the night on my face. I feel as bare as open flesh. Tonight I am much older than the twenty-five years that I have lived. The night is the time I dread most in my life.” | ||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | first person, lyrical | ||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | description, setting, voice, tone | ||||||||||
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| Recommended books: |
Krik? Krak!
The Dew Breaker |
| Author: | Ethan Canin, one of the most acclaimed fiction writers of today. American. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in the Paris Review, included in the author’s collection The Palace Thief, 1994. Made into the film The Emperor’s Club, starring Kevin Kline. A prime example of a long short story. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this high-minded story, a classics teacher at a prestigious boy’s school strives to pass on the ideals of the ancient leaders to the leaders of tomorrow. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Opening: | “I tell this story not for my own honor, for there is little of that here, and not as a warning, for a man of my calling learns quickly that all warnings are in vain. Nor do I tell it in apology for St. Benedict’s School, for St. Benedict’s School needs no apologies.” | ||||||||||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | first person, formal | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | character, plot, POV, voice, theme, the long short story | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| Recommended books: |
The Palace Thief
Emperor of the Air |
| Author: | Jorge Luis Borges, the father of magic realism. Latin American. | ||||||||||
| Background: | First published in the New Yorker, around 1970, included in the author’s Collected Fictions. A landmark tale of magic realism. | ||||||||||
| Premise: | In this fable-like story, a man purchases a never-ending book from a bible salesman. | ||||||||||
| Opening: | “The line consists of an infinite number of points; the plane, of an infinite number of lines; the volume, of an infinite number of planes; the hypervolume, of an infinite number of volumes . . . No—this, more geometrico, is decidedly not the best way to begin my tale.” | ||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | first person, informal | ||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | dialogue, theme, magic realism | ||||||||||
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| Recommended book: | Collected Fictions |
| Author: | Charles Baxter, considered the “writers’ writer” by many of today’s fiction authors. American. | ||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in The Sound of Writing, included in the author’s collection Believers, 1997. | ||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this mysterio-comic story, a bland banker begins questioning his own life when he discovers a threat to bomb a public building. | ||||||||||||
| Opening: | “In the parking lot next to the bank, Harry Edmonds saw a piece of gray scrap paper the size of a greeting card. It had blown up next to his leg and attached itself to him there. Across the top margin was some scrabby writing in purple ink.” | ||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | third person, informal | ||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | character, POV, theme, suspense | ||||||||||||
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| Recommended books: |
Believers
Through the Safety Net |
| Author: | Jess Row, one of the rising fiction stars of today. American. | ||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in Ploughshares, 2000. Selected for Best American Short Stories 2001, winner of the Pushcart Prize. | ||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this other-worldly story, an American schoolteacher in Hong Kong tries to help a Chinese girl obsessed with the echolocation technique of bats. | ||||||||||||
| Opening: | “Alice Leung has discovered the secrets of bats: how they see without seeing, how they own darkness, as we own light. She walks the halls with a black headband across her eyes, keening a high C—cheat cheat cheat cheat cheat cheat—never once veering off course, as if drawn by an invisible thread.” | ||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | first person, informal | ||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | plot, description, setting, suspense | ||||||||||||
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| Recommended book: | The Train to Lo Wu |
| Author: | Jhumpa Lahiri, one of the most acclaimed fiction writers of today. American. | ||||||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in the New Yorker, included in the author’s collection Interpreter of Maladies, 1999, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Selected for Best American Short Stories 2000. | ||||||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this warmly realistic story, an Indian man strives to acclimate himself to the people and ways of his new life in America. | ||||||||||||||||
| Opening: | “I left India in 1964 with a certificate in commerce and the equivalent, in those days, of ten dollars to my name. For three weeks I sailed on the SS Roma, an Italian cargo vessel, in a cabin next to the ship’s engine, across the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and finally to England.” | ||||||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | first person/ informal | ||||||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | character, plot, POV, dialogue, setting | ||||||||||||||||
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| Recommended books: |
Interpreter of Maladies
The Namesake |
| Author: | John Cheever, one of the masters of the short story, the father of the New Yorker story. American. | ||||||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in the New Yorker, around 1964, included in The Stories of John Cheever, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. One of the most revered short stories of all. | ||||||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this dramatically realistic story, a middle-aged man attempts to swim across the county via the swimming pools. | ||||||||||||||||
| Opening: | “It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying, ‘I drank too much last night.’” | ||||||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | third person, informal | ||||||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | character, plot, setting, pacing, theme | ||||||||||||||||
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| Recommended books: |
Stories of John Cheever
The Wapshot Chronicle |
| Author: | Kate Chopin, groundbreaking feminist fiction writer. American. | ||||||||||
| Background: | First published in Vogue, 1894. Included in most collections of the author’s stories. One of the most revered short stories of all. | ||||||||||
| Premise: | In this oddly realistic story, a woman experiences a kaleidoscope of emotions upon being informed of her husband’s sudden death. | ||||||||||
| Opening: | “Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.” | ||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | third person, informal | ||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | character, plot, the very short story | ||||||||||
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| Recommended book: | The Awakening and Selected Stories |
| Author: | Thom Jones, one of the most acclaimed fiction writers of today. American. | ||||||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in Harper’s, included in the author’s collection The Pugilist at Rest, 1993. Selected for Best American Short Stories of 1992 and Best American Short Stories of the Century. | ||||||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this unflinching yet funny story, a woman battles against the trials and terrors of cancer. | ||||||||||||||||
| Opening: | “She wondered how many times a week he had to do this. Plenty, no doubt. At least every day. Maybe twice…three times. Maybe, on a big day, five times. It was the ultimate bad news, and he delivered it dryly, like Sergeant Joe Friday.” | ||||||||||||||||
| POV/Voice | third person, conversational | ||||||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching | character, POV, description, voice, tone | ||||||||||||||||
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| Recommended book: | The Pugilist at Rest |
| Author: | Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the inventors of the short story. American. | ||||||||||||
| Background: | First published in Knickerbocker, from the author’s collection Twice-told Tales, 1837, included in many of the author’s collections. One of literature’s first short stories in the very first collection of short stories. | ||||||||||||
| Premise: | In this wryly sinister story, a doctor offers four elderly friends water from the Fountain of Youth to see if they will act any differently the second time around. | ||||||||||||
| Opening: | “That very singular man, old Dr. Heidegger, once invited four venerable friends to meet him in his study. There were three white-bearded gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, and a withered gentlewoman, whose name was the Widow Wycherly.” | ||||||||||||
| POV/Voice: | omniscient/formal | ||||||||||||
| Ideal for teaching: | description, voice, theme | ||||||||||||
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| Recommended books: |
Selected Tales and Sketches
The Scarlet Letter The House of Seven Gables |
