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What is the greatest American short story of all time?

By YPB Team

Ten pages can hold a whole marriage, a village ritual, a war. Pick the one that does the most with the least.

  1. The Lottery (Shirley Jackson) — ranked #11
    The Lottery (Shirley Jackson)
    Jackson's 1948 New Yorker story about a village ritual that ends in stoning.
    1000pts
  2. A Good Man Is Hard to Find (O'Connor) — ranked #22
    A Good Man Is Hard to Find (O'Connor)
    Flannery O'Connor's 1953 story of a family road trip that meets an escaped killer.
    581pts
  3. The Snows of Kilimanjaro (Hemingway) — ranked #33
    The Snows of Kilimanjaro (Hemingway)
    Hemingway's 1936 story of a writer dying of gangrene on safari, taking stock of unwritten work.
    481pts
  4. A Rose for Emily (Faulkner) — ranked #44
    A Rose for Emily (Faulkner)
    Faulkner's 1930 story of a Southern recluse and the room nobody enters until she dies.
    481pts
  5. Brokeback Mountain (Annie Proulx) — ranked #55
    Brokeback Mountain (Annie Proulx)
    Proulx's 1997 New Yorker story of two Wyoming ranch hands across twenty years.
    440pts
  6. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge — ranked #66
    An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
    Ambrose Bierce's 1890 Civil War story whose escape turns out to last only a moment.
    440pts
  7. The Swimmer (John Cheever) — ranked #77
    The Swimmer (John Cheever)
    Cheever's 1964 story of a man crossing his suburb pool by pool as the seasons turn against him.
    394pts
  8. Hills Like White Elephants (Hemingway) — ranked #88
    Hills Like White Elephants (Hemingway)
    Hemingway's 1927 story told almost entirely in dialogue at a Spanish railway station, published in Men Without Women.
    281pts
  9. Babylon Revisited (Fitzgerald) — ranked #99
    Babylon Revisited (Fitzgerald)
    Fitzgerald's 1931 story of a reformed drinker returning to Paris to win back his daughter.
    281pts
  10. Cathedral (Raymond Carver) — ranked #1010
    Cathedral (Raymond Carver)
    Carver's 1981 story in which a blind visitor guides a skeptical host through drawing a cathedral.
    281pts
  11. Bartleby, the Scrivener (Melville) — ranked #1111
    Bartleby, the Scrivener (Melville)
    Melville's 1853 Wall Street story of a copyist who would prefer not to.
    281pts
  12. The Tell-Tale Heart (Poe) — ranked #1212
    The Tell-Tale Heart (Poe)
    Poe's 1843 confession of a murderer undone by a sound only he can hear.
    212pts
  13. Where Are You Going (Oates) — ranked #1313
    Where Are You Going (Oates)
    Joyce Carol Oates's 1966 story of a teenager and the stranger who pulls into her driveway.
    212pts
  14. The Gift of the Magi (O. Henry) — ranked #1414
    The Gift of the Magi (O. Henry)
    O. Henry's 1905 Christmas story of two sacrifices that cancel each other out.
    131pts
  15. The Yellow Wallpaper (Gilman) — ranked #1515
    The Yellow Wallpaper (Gilman)
    Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1892 story of a woman confined to a room for a rest cure.
    131pts
  16. The Things They Carried (O'Brien) — ranked #1616
    The Things They Carried (O'Brien)
    Tim O'Brien's 1986 story cataloguing what a platoon hauled through Vietnam, physical and otherwise.
    131pts
  17. Sonny's Blues (James Baldwin) — ranked #1717
    Sonny's Blues (James Baldwin)
    Baldwin's 1957 story of a Harlem teacher and his jazz-musician brother, told across a nightclub set.
    36pts

#usa291#books87#classics474#fiction16#short stories3

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