Short Story Wednesday: The Literary Ghost, ed. Larry Dark

 

Last week for Short Story Wednesday, I wrote about the first three stories in one of my husband's  ghost story anthologies, The Literary Ghost: Great Contemporary Ghost Stories, edited by Larry Dark. 

This is the description of this book at Goodreads:

"It takes a certain amount of daring for a literary writer to employ a device as powerful and obvious as a ghost, and a great deal of talent and self-assurance to pull it off. The fact that these stories are so different from one another and that no two ghosts in them are alike is a testament to the power of the individual imagination to appropriate established myths without assuming the associated clichés."

So writes Larry Dark in the introduction to this anthology of expertly crafted ghost stories by such luminaries as Donald Barthelme, Paul Bowles, A. S. Byatt, Robertson Davies, M. F. K. Fisher, John Gardner, Nadine Gordimer, Graham Greene, Patrick McGrath, R. K. Narayan, Tim O'Brien, V. S. Pritchett, Anne Sexton, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Fay Weldon.

Today I read a few more stories in that book. Several of these were very short so I don't want to say too much about them.

"The Others" by Joyce Carol Oates

A man begins to see people on the street that he recognizes from his past. He knows that some of them are dead. His wife makes light of it. He begins to see more and more people like that. 

This story was five or six pages long, and I thought it was pretty good, although what was going on was not explicit and not very scary. It was atmospheric.

"A Story of Don Juan" by V.S. Pritchett

First sentence: "One night of his life Don Juan slept alone."

Don Juan must stay at the house of a man whose wife died one year earlier, on their wedding night. He is still mourning her. He allows Don Juan to sleep in the room that he shared with his wife when she was alive.

I am not sure how this story fits into the description "contemporary ghost stories" since it was first published in 1941. However I enjoyed it anyway. It definitely had a ghost, although maybe an unusual one.

"Up North" by Mavis Gallant

This one was also 6 pages and I really liked it. I now want to find out more about Gallant and her writing. 

The story is set on a train. A woman and her young son are traveling from Montreal to a more northern part of Canada. She is from England and has come to join her Canadian husband, whom she met during World War II. Ghosts are discussed and the boy thinks he sees ghosts outside of the train. 

"The Warden" by John Gardner

This was a longer story, about 30 pages long, with chapters. I found it very confusing and did not understand what was going on at all. 

A man is running a prison, but he has no real authority. The warden is useless and will give him no instructions so he is left to make his own decisions. At the point the story begins, he never sees the warden, he just hears him pacing in his office and never comes out at all. 

I tried to find more information about the story, but was not successful. If anyone reading this post knows more about this story, I would love to know more about it. 

Below is a list of all stories in the book. The book is about 360 pages long and has 28 short stories.

• "The Lost, Strayed, Stolen," M.F.K. Fisher
• "The Portobello Road," Muriel Spark
• "The Ghost Who Vanished by Degrees," Robertson Davies
• "The Others," Joyce Carol Oates
• "A Story of Don Juan," V.S. Pritchett
• "Up North," Mavis Gallant
• "The Warden," John Gardner
• "The Death of Edward Lear," Donald Barthelme
• "The Circular Valley," Paul Bowles
• "The Third Voice," William Ferguson
• "Marmilion," Patrick McGrath
• "Spirit Seizures," Melissa Pritchard
• "Revenant as Typewriter," Penelope Lively
• "Ghostly Populations," Jack Matthews
• "The Ghost Soldiers," Tim O'Brien
• "Family," Lance Olsen
• "Letter from a Dogfighter's Aunt, Deceased," Padgett Powell
• "The Ghost," Anne Sexton
• "Angel, All Innocence," Fay Weldon
• "Jack's Girl," Cynthia Kadohata
• "The Next Room," A.S. Byatt
• "Grass," Barry Yourgrau
• "Eisenheim the Illusionist," Steven Millhauser
• "Ghost and Flesh, Water and Dirt," William Goyen
• "Letter from His Father," Nadine Gordimer
• "Old Man of the Temple," R.K. Narayan
• "A Little Place Off the Edgware Road," Graham Greene
• "A Crown of Feathers," Isaac Bashevis Singer