I love all the Hardcore Literature podcasts I’ve done thus far. But this 30-minute podcast on how to read and appreciate short stories was, hands down, my favourite. Geeking out and deep diving into the art and craft of short stories, talking about how to become a connoisseur of this wonderful literary form.
You’ve got the chance to get your hands on one of my favourite short story anthologies too, That Glimpse of Truth. There’s more information at the end of the show, but, in short, here’s how you can be in the running for receiving a copy:
How to Win a Great Book of Short Stories:
- Go to iTunes whilst you’re listening.
- Leave a review (only takes a few seconds). A star rating and a comment review. You can say what you’re reading at the moment, what show you’ve enjoyed, or what book/story you’d like us to discuss in the future.
- Contact me at ben@benjaminmcevoy.com with your details.
- If you’re a lucky one chosen at random (three copies up for grabs), I’ll send you the book with a personal note of thanks along with recommendations for which stories you might like to start with.
How to Read and Appreciate Short Stories
Quote of the show (#1):
Why do we read fiction? Why do we want a vicarious experience? It’s because we can learn. We can inhabit the mindset of somebody else. We can be put into situations that we’ll never be put into in real life. And we can reason. We can sharpen our logic. We can sharpen our rhetoric. We can enhance our empathy. We can learn how to interact with people, understand people, understand people’s motivations, understand how to be more persuasive, more loving, how to be a boon upon the world instead of a burden. All this we can learn through imaginative literature because, when you’re reading stories, you have the possibility to live a thousand lifetimes in one.
Quote of the show (#2):
Become at home in this imaginary world. Know it as if you were an observer on the scene. Become a member of its population, willing to befriend its characters, and willing to participate in its happenings by sympathetic insight as you would do in the actions and sufferings of a friend.
Timestamps:
- 1:00 – the Golden Age of short stories
- 2:00 – the decline of print media
- 2:30 – how people read in Dickens’ time
- 3:00 – the good and the bad of television and social media
- 4:30 – the good side of COVID
- 6:19 – my philosophy on how to appreciate short fiction
- 7:00 – Kurt Vonnegut on reading short stories
- 8:00 – how to rank and grade short stories
- 10:14 – how to review short stories
- 11:56 – how to read synoptically
- 12:42 – Mortimer Adler’s reading advice
- 13:17 – how to read imaginative literature
- 13:43 – why do we read fiction?
- 14:36 – don’t resist the effect of the story
- 15:45 – Coleridge’s ‘willing suspension of disbelief’
- 16:24 – latent ambiguity of words/metaphor
- 17:40 – how to criticise and find the truth of a fiction
- 19:51 – you have an obligation to befriend the characters
- 20:48 – what of it?
- 21:00 – the power stories have to change you
- 22:07 – read a short story quickly, in one sitting, with total immersion
- 21:40 – the Bradbury Trio: reading a short story a day
- 24:00 – why stories are like real life
- 24:30 – on rereading
- 24:50 – Maupassant’s ‘The Horla’ – read this short story first
- 25:16 – short story recommendation list
- 28:31 – a short story you will regret reading
- 31:00 – how to win a copy of my favourite short story collection
Sponsors of today’s show:
- Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book
- Audible – free credits/free trial here
Recommended Short Story Courses:
Mentioned in the show:
- Orson Welles talking about Hamlet’s ghost
- ‘The Horla’ by Guy de Maupassant
- How I Spent My Lockdown
- Kurt Vonnegut’s Homework Assignment
- Masters of the Modern Short Story
- Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book
- Harold Bloom’s How to Read a Book and Why
Recommended Short Story Collections:
Short Story Recommendation List:
- Guy de Maupassant’s ‘Madame Tellier’s Establishment’ (link)
- Denis Johnson’s ‘Emergency’ (link)
- D.H. Lawrence’s ‘The Rocking-Horse Winner’ (link)
- Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ (link)
- Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘Girl’ (link)
- Flannery O’Connor’s ‘A Good Man Is Hard To Find’ (link)
- Ken Liu’s ‘The Paper Menagerie’ (link)
- Ted Chiang’s ‘Understand’ (link)
- Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ (link)
- Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Lady with the Dog’ (link)
- James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ (link)
- Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Garden Party’ (link)
- Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ (link)
- Chuck Palahniuk’s ‘Guts’ (link)
- Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Veldt’ (link)
- Haruki Murakami’s ‘Kino’ (link)
- Daphne du Maurier’s ‘The Birds’ (link)
- Alice Munro’s ‘The Bear Came Over The Mountain’ (link)
- Raymond Carver’s ‘Cathedral’ (link)
- Roald Dahl’s ‘Skin’ (link)
- J.D. Salinger’s ‘For Esme – with Love and Squalor’ (link)
- Nikolai Gogol’s ‘The Nose’ (link)
- William Faulkner’s ‘A Rose for Emily’ (link)
- W.W. Jacobs’ ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ (link)
- Ambrose Bierce’s ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’ (link)
