Short-Story Month 2012: Day 16, Of Missing Persons by Jack Finney

Walk in as though it were an ordinary travel bureau, 
the stranger I’d met at a bar had told me. Ask a few
ordinary questions—about a trip you’re planning, a 
vacation, anything like that. Then hint about The Folder
a little, but whatever you do, don’t mention it directly; 
wait till he brings it up himself. And if he doesn’t, you 
might as well forget it. If you can.

Until today, each story selected in celebration of National Short Story Month has been published online, and as such, each post has linked to where that story exists on the vast web.  However, today's selection cannot be found online (outside of a copyright-infringed version), but it should be singled out, regardless.

She originally read "Of Missing Persons" in the anthology, Stories of Suspense.  It's a story well worth checking out--a sort of time-travel story that begins in a city, in an anonymous store. The story appears in his collection, About Time: 12 Short Stories.

From here

"Of Missing Persons"
by Jack Finney

(1955)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 15, Perhaps Ernest Hemingway

According to Snopes.com, it has not been determined whether or not the famous six-word story attributed to Ernest Hemingway was actually written by Hemingway.  Regardless of the story's author, that's today's selection for National Short Story Month:

For Sale: baby shoes, never worn

by Craig Cloutier, 

Used under CC license

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 14, Hands by Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson

It's a new week and the midpoint of celebrating National Short Story Month.  And so, today's selection is a story from the Midwest, and from one of the most remarkable short-story collections written or published in the United States.   

"The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands. Their restless activity, like unto the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird, had given him his name. Some obscure poet of the town had thought of it. The hands alarmed their owner."

"Hands" by Sherwood Anderson, 

from his story collection Winesburg, Ohio (1919)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 13, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates

"He wagged a finger and laughed and said,

 'Gonna get you, baby'" [. . .]" 

Perhaps the story for Day 13 should be 

Little Red Riding Hood in order to set 

the mood for what might have been 

tomorrow's story, but instead, here's 

what she would call a contemporary 

retelling of that folktale by Joyce Carol Oates, 

"Where Are You Going, Where Have you Been?"

In Video: Joyce Carol Oates talks about

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"

(2:02 runtime)

"Where Are You Going, 

Where Have You Been?" 

by Joyce Carol Oates
(1966)

(For those  Joyce Carol Oates fans interested in seeing some of Oates's original manuscript pages  for her other stories, please visit the virtual archive at University of San Francisco. Also, if you missed Oates's winning of the 1990 Rea award for short fiction, see the NYT article.)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 12, Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Faith kept me back a while," 

replied the young man, with a tremor in his voice, 

caused by the sudden appearance of his companion, 

although not wholly unexpected.

"Trees in the Fog" by Matthew Bietz,
Used under CC license

Yesterday's selection, "The Red Bow" by George Saunders, has always reminded me of one of my favorite stories.  And so to celebrate the twelfth day of National Short Story Month, please enjoy 

"Young Goodman Brown" 

by Nathaniel Hawthorne 

(1835)  

Continue Reading

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 11, The Red Bow by George Saunders

by Zayed Hassan,

Used under CC license

"NEXT NIGHT, walking out where 

it happened, I found her little red bow.

I brought it in, threw it down on the 

table, said: My God my God."

Day 11
National

Short Story 

Month

Today's selection, by George Saunders, was originally published in Esquire, later anthologized in Not Normal, Illinois, a nominee for the Bram Stoker award, and winner of a National Magazine Award.  The story appears in Saunders's story collection, In Persuasion Nation.

But the story is more interesting than all that.

"The Red Bow" 

by George Saunders
(2009)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 10, Mirrors by Carol Shields

Today's story selection

comes from a writer whose

line and work always

has a quiet patience to its

tone and content.  One of

the master writers of the

20th century who is most

known for her novels such

as the Pulitzer-Prize winning

Stone Diaries, Carol Shields.

"Untitled" by Daniel Oines,
Used under CC license

"From June to August they choose to forget who they are, or at least what they look like, electing an annual season of non-reflectiveness in the same way other people put away their clocks for the summer or their computers or door keys or microwave ovens."

Please, enjoy

 "Mirrors" 
by Carol Shields
(1996)

(Shields was originally from Illinois 

but later moved to Canada, so she's often 

thought of as a Canadian writer, but 

to this writer and also native of Illinois, 

Shields's concerns have always

seemed Midwestern.)

Box of Delights Anthology on Kindle

Aeon Press's Box of Delights, Cover
Winter 2011 - KINDLE VERSION

Box of Delights, edited by John Kenny and published out of Dublin, Ireland, is now available on the Kindle.

It may be National Short Story Month in the U.S., but if you want to make your celebration an international one,  try Box of Delights, an anthology of contemporary horror fiction by 16 writers around the world.  Her story, "The Lightning Tree", is one of those stories.

Box of Anthology writers 

(links follow to the writer's webpage)

Don D’Ammassa

Taylor Grant

Erik T. Johnson

Sean MacRoibin

Eleanor Marney

David Murphy

Robert Neilson

Erin Pringle

Steve Rasnic Tem

Mike Resnick

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Craig Saunders

Priya Sharma

N.A. Sulway

John F.D. Taff 

Ian Wild

CLICK!

a) here for the U.S. Kindle edition of Box of Delights

b) here for the U.K. Kindle edition

c) here for a print copy of Box of Delights

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 9, Concerning Ghosts by Michael Stewart

"Fan" by Mike Schmid,
Used under CC license

"My ghosts move as trees age." 

National

Short

Story

Month 

Day 9.

                                          Selection.

                                                            "Concerning Ghosts" by 

Michael Stewart

Send Giants: Maurice Sendak Left Today

Photo by Michael M. Hughes, All Rights Reserved ,
used with photographer's permission

Send Giants:

An Elegy in 2012

May 8, 2012

Dear Mr. Sendak:

Please tell the lion that you care (even if you don't), and it will maybe let you come back. Speak very loudly because it's dark in there, and according to the newspapers, its mouth is shut tight. And this lion never gets sick when it eats. 


Or maybe we can send giants. They can shake you out. 

Then the newspapers can print a correction tomorrow, like they do and nobody catches the correction because they're not looking or don't even get the paper the next day and so they keep thinking the wrong thing the reporter wrote.  But I'll look for it. 

Your Friend,

Erin, age 5 30

*

From Pierre by
Maurice Sendak (June 10, 1928-May 8, 2012)

"I have nothing now but praise for my life. I'm not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more. ... What I dread is the isolation. ... There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready." 

---Maurice Sendak  

NPR interview with Terri Gross

(2011)