Stories We Love: “The Expelled,” by Samuel Beckett
by Amber Wheeler Bacon
Amber Wheeler Bacon on learning to read Beckett’s “The Expelled.”
Amber Wheeler Bacon on learning to read Beckett’s “The Expelled.”
“‘The Bees’ is one hundred percent, additive-free parental nightmare fuel, from the inexplicable screams to the accidental and intentional harms to the final body bags.”
Barrett Bowlin on Deesha Philyaw’s “Eula” as a sales pitch to students for “why it’s so good and important and essential to read short stories overall.”
“Re-reading this story now, after the terrible years of Covid, in the shadow of the ghastly war in Ukraine, as famine stalks Africa and the Middle East, one understands the dream of escape.” Lee Thomas on Tamas Dobozy’s story “The Restoration of the Villa Where Tibor Kálmán Once Lived.”
Kent Kosack on the complexities of motivation and action in Aimee Bender’s “Off.”
“In Schwartz’s fiction, as in life, it is often the unspoken or withheld that holds power”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell on the story “Stranger,” by Steven Schwartz, from his collection Madagascar.
“Maybe how we choose to tell the stories of our pain can allow us to turn that pain into something greater, something necessary, something that might ease the pain of others.” Karin Killian on narrative technique in Lauren Groff’s “The Wind.”
Kent Kosack on retrospective narration in J.D. Salinger’s “De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period.”
J.T. Bushnell on how Michael Deagler’s “New Poets” makes us rethink an old trope: the antagonist.
“His narrator’s point of view evolves with the story, revealing this evolution through how he sees his setting”: Kent Kosack on Tobias Wolff’s subtle gem “Powder.”
