You've got to read this : contemporary American writers introduce stories that held them in awe

Thirty-four of America's most distinguished fiction writers--including Oscar Hijuelos, John Irving, and Joyce Carol Oates--introduce the short stories that inspired them most. A mother's tale / James Agee -- Guy de Maupassant / Isaac Babel -- Sonny's blues / James Baldwin -- The school / Donald Barthelme -- The Aleph / Jorge Luis Borges -- A day in the open / Jane Bowles -- A distant episode / Paul Bowles -- The Star Cafe / Mary Caponegro -- Reflections / Angela Carter -- Cathedral / Raymond Carver -- Goodbye, my brother / John Cleever -- Gooseberries / Anton Chekhov -- A Christmas carol / Charles Dickens -- Pie dance / Molly Giles -- Greatness strikes where it pleases / Lars Gustafsson -- The interview / Ruth Prawer Jlabvala -- The dead / James Joyce. In the penal colony / Franz Kafka -- Girl / Jamaica Kincaid -- The smallest woman in the world / Clarice Lispector -- The daughters of the late colonel / Katherine Mansfield -- Labor day dinner / Alice Munro -- Spring in Fialta / Vladimir Nabokov -- The things they carried / Tim O'Brien -- A good man is hard to find / Flannery O'Connor -- I stand here ironing / Tillie Olsen -- Wants / Grace Paley -- In dreams begin responsibilities / Delmore Schwartz -- The man to send rain clouds / Leslie Marmon Silko -- Helping / Robert Stone -- Master and man / Leo Tolstoy. Packed dirt, churchgoing, a dying cat, a traded car / John Updike -- The flowers / Alice Walker -- No place for you, my love / Eudora Welty -- Paper garden / Jerome Wilson Gathers stories by James Baldwin, Jorge Luis Borges, Paul Bowles, Angela Carter, John Cheever, Franz Kafka, Alice Munro, Grace Paley, Leo Tolstoy, Eudora Welty, and Vladimir Nabokov Thirty-five authors choose their favorite stories and they explain why. From Chekhov's Gooseberries to Mary Caponegro's The Star Café AGEE TELLS MOST OF THIS QUEER STORY IN THE SPOKEN VOICE OF A cow.