I. GETTING STARTED. 1. Reading and Responding. 2. Plot, Character, Theme. 3. Narrative Point of View. 4. Allegory and Symbolism. II. AN ANTHOLOGY OF FICTION. My Kinsman, Major Molineux and The Maypole of Merry Mount, Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Fall of the House of Usher and The Cask of Amontillado, Edgar Allan Poe. The Short Prose Narrative, Poe. The Overcoat, Nikolai Gogol. Bartleby, the Scrivener, Herman Melville. A Simple Heart, Gustave Flaubert. The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy. The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, Mark Twain. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Ambrose Bierce. Daisy Miller, Henry James. A Letter about Daisy Miller, James. The House of Fiction, James. A White Heron and Miss Tempy's Watchers, Sharah Orne Jewett. Hautot and His Son, Guy de Maupassant. The Awakening and The Storm, Kate Chopin. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad. The Lady with the Pet Dog, Anton Chekhov. Letters on Fiction, Chekhov. The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Open Boat and The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, Stephen Crane. Paul's Case, Willa Cather. The Egg and I Want To Know Why, Sherwood Anderson. To Build a Fire, Jack London. Old Man and Old Woman, Chewing Blackbones. Medicine, Lu Xun. Araby, Clay and The Dead, James Joyce. Solid Objects, A Haunted House and Lappin and Lapinova, Virginia Woolf. Modern Fiction, Woolf. Han's Crime, Shiga Naoya. The Metamorphosis and A Hunger Artist, Franz Kafka. The Horse Dealer's Daughter and The Blind Man, D. H. Lawrence. A Dill Pickle and Miss Brill, Katherine Mansfield. He, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall and Flowering Judas, Katherine Anne Porter. Porter: On Stories, Especially “Flowering Judas,” Porter. You Were Perfectly Fine, Dorothy Parker. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, James Thurber. I Used to Live Here Once, Jean Rhys. A Rose for Emily and Spotted Horses, William Faulkner. Comments on “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner. Hills Like White Elephants, Ernest Hemingway. The Demon Lover, Elizabeth Bowen. The Lottery in Babylon, The Intruder and The Gospel According to Mark, Jorge Luis Borges. Sweat, Zora Neal Hurston. The Chrysanthemums, John Steinbeck. Guests of the Nation, Frank O'Connor. The Importance of Theme, O'Connor. Gimpel the Fool, Isaac Bashevis Singer. On Saying Versus Showing, Singer. The Man Who Was Almost a Man, Richard Wright. Livvie and A Worn Path, Eudora Welty. Is Phoenix Jackson's Grandson Really Dead? Eudora Welty. The Enormous Radio and The Fourth Alarm, John Cheever. I Stand Here Ironing, Tillie Olsen. King of the Bingo Game and Battle Royal, Ralph Ellison. My Life with the Wave, Octavio Paz. A Woman on a Roof, Doris Lessing. The Lottery, Shirley Jackson. August 2004: There Will Come Soft Rains, Ray Bradbury. Yoneko's Earthquake, Hisaye Yamamoto. Samuel and A Man Told Me the Story of His Life, Grace Paley. The Aquatic Uncle, Italo Calvino. About Cosmicomics, Calvino. The Train from Rhodesia, Nadine Gordimer. The Brother, Robert Cooves. The Man, The Snake, and the Stone: An Islamic Fable, Idries Shah. A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Revelation, Flannery O'Connor. A Reasonable Use of the Unreasonable, O'Connor. Gift of Grass, Alice Adams. A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings and Death Constant Beyond Love, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The Shawl, Cynthia Ozick. What Literature Means, Ozick. The Fifty-Dollar Bill, Donald Hall. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula Le Guin. A Note on “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” Le Guin. Sunday in the Park, Bel Kaufman. Civil Peace, Chinua Achebe. Lost in the Funhouse, John Barth. The Spirit of Place, Barth. The Balloon, Donald Barthelme. In the Great War, Fay Weldon. Boys and Girls and How I Met My Husband, Alice Munro. A & P, John Updike. Traveler, Ellen Gilchrist. Dream Children, Gail Goodwin. Popular Mechanics, Cathedral and Errand, Raymond Carver. Talking about Stories, Carver. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Joyce Carol Oates. My Man Bovanne, Toni Cade Bambara. Rape Fantasies and The Man from Mars, Margaret Atwood. Style and Sexuality, Atwood. Shiloh, Bobbie Ann Mason. Heroes and Ordinary People, Mason. The Tip-Top Club, Garrison Keillor. The Stolen Party, Liliana Heker. El Tonto del Barrio, José Armas. To Hell with Dying and Everyday Use, Alice Walker. Remembering Mr. Sweet, Walker. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien. The Burning House, Anne Bettie. Storyteller, Leslie Marmon Silko. Girl, Jamaica Kincaid. Coach, Mary Robinson. Today Will be a Quiet Day, Amy Hempel. Two Kinds, Amy Tan. Territory, David Leavitt. Fleur, Louise Erdrich. The Moths, Helena Maria Viramontes. Appendix A: A Very Short History of Short Fiction. Appendix B: Writing About Fiction. Appendix C: A Glossary of Critical Terms.