I went back and found your post on the story. You're right, there's more to it than listening in on a conversation.
96. "An Alcoholic Case," by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A home care nurse taking care of a an alcoholic patient, despite specifying "no alcoholics" in her file, decides she's finally done and tells her supervisor so. Only, upon reflection, he wasn't so bad after all, he is a talented cartoonist, and maybe she can go back and care for him just one final time. . .
I've read a number of recovery memoirs and stories, and what strikes me about this one is that it was written before the advent of talk therapy, group therapy, the development of the 12 Steps, and the introspection so central to the modern approach to addiction recovery. All these things have had such a huge effect on how we tell such stories, it's enlightening to read one from before all these became the practice. The difference is striking.
97. "Blood-Burning Moon," by Jean Toomer
Tom Burwell, a black man, and Bob Stone, a white man, are both pursuing Louisa in the small factory town they live in. The feud ends in a knife fight in which Bob is injured. Toomer is much more of a poet than a storyteller, and for that reason I find him very hard to read; not much to sink my teeth into. In fact, I didn't know it until I was nearly finished, but I read this story only about a year ago when I read Toomer's book Cane, and had forgotten every word of it.
98. "The Rats in the Walls," by H.P. Lovecraft
A descendant of a long-departed and poorly regarded English family returns to the ancestral Exham Priory, long neglected and avoided by the locals. In typical haunted house fashion, strange doings commence shortly after the renovations are completed. In typical "don't go down there!" fashion, the narrator learns the ancient stories are true. Not being familiar with the genre, it's hard for me to determine how much of this is Lovecraft satirizing the genre and how much he's defining it. It called to mind Poe, but more stimulated my imagination about what it would be like to make an ancient and super cool discovery.
99. "The Girl with the Pimply Face," by William Carlos Williams
A doctor makes a house call on an immigrant family with a sick baby, and is captivated by the fifteen-year-old daughter with a case of acne. The writing of the story is top rate, however it reflects attitudes that modern readers might find distasteful, such as the "all foreigners are lazy scammers" tone, and the doctor's/narrator's description of how the teen's breasts would feel cast a creeper tone over the whole story. However, there is something real about the doctor's thoughts that makes the story; a faulted narrator, perhaps?
100. "In a Far Country," by Jack London
Two city men join a rough-and-tumble group on an expedition to the gold fields of the Klondike, only to complain the whole time and are eventually left behind at a way camp as winter descends. The two try to cooperate initially, but as winter madness descends all does not end well.
101. "The Strength of God," by Sherwood Anderson
Presbyterian minister Curtis Hartman does all he can to be an upright man of God, to the point that his life and preaching are so vanilla he openly doubts that he's doing any good whatsoever. Then one night, while inspecting a broken stained glass window in the church's belfry, he catches a glimpse of the fetching Kate Swift, a local schoolteacher, reading and (shock!) smoking in her nightgown through her bedroom window. Not only do the Reverend's sermons suddenly become much more heartfelt and interesting, he begins to question his devotion to his profession and his marriage, until God intervenes in an interesting way. . . From an academic standpoint, I am struck by the difference between the Protestant method of writing about conversion versus the Catholic approach taken by Flannery O'Connor we discussed some months ago. Different traditions have different ways of describing similar events.
This story brings me to my revised goal of 100 stories. I'm going to continue reading and commenting throughout the year (I've got some yearly anthologies coming out this fall!) but I'm not going to set a revised goal. I'll get as far as I get