Foreword -- Introduction: Reading fiction -- Short forms 1: Form and its relationship to meaning -- The witness / K. A. Porter -- After the storm / E. Hemingway -- The unicorn in the garden / J. Thurber -- Wakefield / N. Hawthorne -- A country doctor / F. Kafka -- Baker's bluejay yarn / M. Twain -- Death in the woods / S. Anderson -- Spotted horses / W. Faulkner -- Ligeia / E. A. Poe -- Sorrow-acre / I. Dinesen -- The gentleman from San Francisco / I. Bunin -- Short forms 2: Short fiction for study -- The peasant Marey / F. Dostoevski -- Three deaths / L. Tolstoy -- The piece of string / G. de Maupassant -- A trifling occurrence / A. Chekhov -- The sisters / J. Joyce -- The fly / K. Mansfield -- War / L. Pirandello -- The story of my dovecot / I. Babel -- The chrysanthemums / J. Steinbeck -- Two lovely beasts / L. O'Flaherty -- The fancy woman / P. Taylor -- A good man is hard to find / F. O'Connor -- Longer forms: The blue hotel / S. Crane -- The secret sharer / J. Conrad -- Of this time, of that place / L. Trilling -- The jolly corner / H. James -- The fox / D. H. Lawrence -- Benito Cereno / H. Melville -- Death in Venice / T. Mann.