I'd say that short stories can be more experimental than novels. It's a more flexible format for the writer and the audience. And the publisher. So you can do stuff like The Lady or The Tiger, The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, To Build A Fire... I wouldn't say that short stories are better if they have mysterious/shocking/etc. endings. But those kinds of endings are better in short stories. Not that there aren't exceptions in both directions, but I suspect that any kind of experimental writing is going to be more common in short stories. Particuarly SF stories, since they're on the fringes of the fringes.

Ooo, Borges! A favorite, and a good point about how his endings tend to clarify the surreality. Sort of.

I should pick up Norton. Pretty much all of my short story collections are genre.

(The joke of "To Build a Fire" is that it was originally written as a children's story, and was considerably less dark than its current format. I twas actually rewritten for publication twice, and the version we read today is the darkest version.)

I can occasionally find mainstream short story collections a slog, especially if there is no unifying theme or principle -- it's like sitting at table with no idea what the next course will be. Also, for some reason the dominant paradigm of mainstream story stories right now seems to be kind of -- dull, to me. I can't really describe how, just, it's rare that a short story outside the genre really turns my thumbscrews, whereas recent mainstream novels have worked well. Maybe I'm crappy at picking short stories?

Shirley Jackson is a great short story writer, beyond "The Lottery." I would tell you why, but I am full of snot and cold medicine.

But I love her! And her novels are so short -- she really gets the most out atmosphere and characters in a compact form.

Yeah, she's an excellent economical writer. A more recent novel in her style is Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory, which is a great piece of mundane horror from the viewpoint of an unreliable narrator. The other two Banks novels I've read were terrible, though.

The other two Banks novels I've read were terrible, though.

Which ones were they?

Song of Stone was one, but I can't recall the name of the other one offhand.

I'm completely wrong. A quick glance at his novels tells me that it was The Business, and I remember enjoying that one quite a bit.

The other one is probably The Algebraist.

I picked it up at the library based on the jacket blurbs. I got ten pages into it and gave up in disgust.

I'm completely wrong. A quick glance at his novels tells me that it was The Business, and I remember enjoying that one quite a bit.

I quite enjoyed The Business myself, though I think Whit is my favourite (after The Wasp Factory). A Song of Stone hit me pretty hard, but I couldn't say I enjoyed it. I'm still not sure what I think of it. The other Banks I've read was The Crow Road, which never really grabbed me. It felt rather bland compared to his other work.