Vheissu

When it was first published (by The New Yorker back in 1948 ), Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” received a lot of attention. The full text is available online, here , where it tops off the site’s list of “Twenty Great American Short Stories.” I read it in an anthology ( Norton Anthology of Short Fiction ). All of this speaks highly of the story’s enduring acclaim. However, I don’t think it’s aged well. (Please read the story before going on, because I’ll spoil the ending, on whose mystery the entire tale is propped up.) “The Lottery” creeps up on you: it starts as a seemingly bucolic celebration in a small town. You see people walking up to a wooden box and drawing slips of paper to see who’ll win the lottery. The person who wins gets stoned to death. It turns out to be a fertility rite. Both the way to pick people and the way to kill them sound very biblical. They are. There’s a strong sense hovering about that adulterers get stoned in the Bible. Well, yes and no. In Chris...

Self-proclaimed short story month , post number 19. A couple of months ago, I highly recommended Donald Barthelme’s story “The School.” Back then, I left at it that, with brief and eager praise, and no discussion of what the story was about. Today seemed like a good time to come back to it and post a closer look. Barthelme’s story is available here . It’s really short, and it’ll be worth your time. I’ll ruin it for someone who hasn’t read it, so go for it you haven’t already. Barthelme died in 1989, but he left good stories behind, “The School” among them. ( Sixty Stories would make a good present for people with a sweet literary tooth; and the introduction by David Gates is quite interesting.) Barthelme also cofounded Fiction magazine , which first published John Barth’s “Toga Party,” a story I discussed last week . Let’s start with general impressions about “The School.” The story is very well handled, and it’s creepy, too. I ran around sharing it with people when I fi...