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Richard Bausch, who edited the most recent edition of The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, is the award-winning author of 10 short-story collections and 13 novels, including Hello to the Cannibals and Peace. His new story collection, out May 20, is The Fate of Others.
'War and Peace by' Leo Tolstoy (1869)
I first read Tolstoy's towering novel at 18 because I heard that John F. Kennedy admired it. I had no idea that I'd end up a writer, too. I'm currently reading it again, for the sixth time. I love Mark Twain's remark about it—and it is so like Twain: "Tolstoy carelessly neglects to include a boat race." Buy it here.
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'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
I've read The Great Gatsby nearly every year since 1971. It just never ages. There's always something I see that I hadn't, every time. This last time I noticed the economy of the physical characterizations: "She was shrill, languid, handsome, and horrible." Buy it here.
'Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life' by Ann Beattie (2011)
I said when this book was published, "You know you're in the presence of great writing when you cannot think of anything at all like it anywhere else in your experience as a reader." Here is Richard Nixon's wife, in her dignity, without the glib matters that plagued her. It's a stunning achievement. Buy it here.
'Have Mercy on Us' by Lisa Cupolo (2023)
Winner of the W.S. Porter Prize for short fiction, this story collection ranges widely. The settings include Africa, Greece, Canada, and the U.S. And the subject is love: filial love, married love, friendship love—the human connections that have always mattered most. Buy it here.
'The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway' (1938)
I picked up this collection at a library when I was in the Air Force, 21 years old, writing songs and singing but also curious about story writing. The best stories here will stand with the best stories of all time. They are that good. They still shimmer. The prose is still miraculously rich with nuance. So much is being expressed with such economy. Buy it here.
'Blonde' by Joyce Carol Oates (2000)
A masterwork, about how the essential sickness of our times ruined the life of a talented woman: Norma Jean Baker, or Marilyn Monroe. Page by page, Blonde is propulsive, brimming with Oates' powerful eye and ear for the textures of things, how they feel and sound and smell. Buy it here.
