The Signet Classic Book of American Short Stories Book

I found this a perplexing collection. What it does best is introduce some great works by writers from the 1800s and early 1900s you may not know, especially a good number (if not equitable number) of women writers which for a collection focusing on this time period is huge. (Wow there were MULTIPLE American women writers in the 1800s?? Yes there were and taken as a whole, their stories in this collection far outshine their male colleagues'.) What it then does is mix these gems in with mostly lesser-known, and in most cases just lesser, stories from some of the literary giants of the time. The most boring Poe and Twain stories I've ever read are here, and as a bonus, that Poe story is liberally seasoned with the N-word to kick off what I think is an unintentional theme of casual racism that runs through many of the stories here. One will be fully involved in an otherwise brilliant story like Dos Passos's "Great Lady on a White Horse" only to run up suddenly against a racial slur used as any word about a person might be. Between those not infrequent moments and an unsettling date rape story by Hemingway, the book as a whole probably deserves a few general content warnings. At least that Poe story comes right at the beginning, so if you're reading sequentially, you can get your guard up right from the beginning. Sure, this was the time period (though that Dos Passos story is from the 20s when that particular word was already anything but casual), but I'm not ok saying, "Everyone said things like that!" and moving on. (And again, this particular Poe story is just death, and not in the good way like it usually would be with Poe.) I've found some new favorite stories here, revisited actually only a few "real" classics like "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "Bartleby the Scrivener," and I do think the book achieved its goal of examining the evolution of the short story in the century between Washington Irving and William Saroyan (yes, we leave off with his "Ever Fall In Love With A M*dget?" because of course we do). And as a probably unintended side quest, really makes one think about the casual racism of that time and the fact that the worst stories in the book come from famous men and the best from women I've never heard of (for the most part. okay I'd heard of most of them, but still).

The Best: "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Seriously, read it again, it's better than most contemporary psych horror.
Close to the top for me: Melville's "Bartleby" (again, it's just good), Cather's "Neighbor Rosicky," Zona Gale's "Nobody Sick, Nobody Poor" which is sentimental and predictable but dammit why am I crying??, and Wharton's weird "A Journey." Also Bayard Taylor's surprisingly progressive "Who Was She?", Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's calming and lovely "A New England Nun," and Dos Passos's refreshingly modern "Great Lady on a-" oh come on, again?, never mind.
The Worst: Edgar Allen Poe's "The Gold Bug." There are reasons you've never read this one.