The man likes short stories. What can you say? American creations? We have to put air conditioning in the top five, and wireless internet probably cracks the Top 10. Does Sarah Shahi count?

These past few weeks of Olympics coverage have made me more patriotic than I’ve been in years, so I feel like celebrating the great things that the US has churned out in its (somewhat) brief history. America is a great country that has contributed many wonderful things to the world and I’m a big fan of a lot of them. So since everyone is a big fan of lists, here are my top four favorite American creations (in no particular order):

1. Baseball: The greatest game ever invented. With the exception of tweaking the height of the pitcher’s mound every now and again, very few rules have changed since its inception. Often a catalyst of change in both the social (see Robinson, Jackie) and business (see Flood, Curt and Miller, Marvin) worlds.

2. The Constitution: “In order to from a more perfect Union…” Failure’s written into the first paragraph. I love it. The framers weren’t building a perfect Union because they were smart enough to know that such a thing is a myth. No, this country is an experiment in creating a government for the people and by the people. Not run by Aristocrats who rule because of birthright or theocrats who rule because God appoints them. No, it’s much more complex than that. The Constitution creates a government of ordinary men appointed by other ordinary men. There is no higher power to fall back on or blame when or if the system fails. Two hundred and thirty-two years later, it still hasn’t crumbled. Not quite Rome, but it’s a hell of a start.

3. Jazz: I imagine that the first jazz musicians were sitting around, high out of their minds, talking about music and one of them said to the other, “hey man, you ever think about what the sound between the notes sounds like?” Boom, syncopation.

4. The Short Story: Unlike Russian novels that last for more than 1000 pages and are written over the course of a long Russian Winter when the author could not leave his house and attempts to explain the entire universe over the course of its tale, the Short Story attempts to explain one small facet of the human existence in the space of a single sitting. Whether or not the Short Story originated in the US (in its current form) is debated. But I don’t care. We popularized it, perfected it, and then shipped it off for the rest of the world to admire and modify, just like Jazz, he Constitution and baseball.

Now, I already write a lot about baseball; this site does tons of music posts; and there’s no way in hell I’m starting a political debate, so today I’m going to talk about my favorite short story writers of the past half century.

I’m not kidding.

I imagine that most everybody is still looking for summer reading so here’s some that is rich in complexity, humor, and filled with commentary on the human condition. Enjoy (or call me gay in the comments section, whichever you prefer):

Flannery O’Connor: Southern, religious, dark, funny. If you like dark humor and political commentary, you would be hard pressed to find a better writer than Ms. O’Connor. She was proud of her Southern upbringing and her Catholic faith (though she lived right on the buckle of the Protestant Bible Belt). She was often accused of focusing on the grotesque (much like Edgar Allen Poe) because a great many of her characters had physical deformities. In response to this, she once remarked, “anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.€ I’m a big fan of all of her stories but my personal favorites are “Everything That Rises Must Converge” (race relations!) and “A Good Man is Hard to Find.€

Raymond Carver: More or less perfected the idea of minimalist writing. [Ed. One of our goals in 2009: Become more of a minimalist.] He was heavy on the dialogue and very light on providing the reader with any details on what the words meant. Each story feels like a puzzle that needs to be solved and this is best achieved when the story is acted out. Probably missed his true calling as a playwright, but his stories are fascinating at the very least. I recommend What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, especially the story “Tell the Women We’re Going.€ Fuck, it’s creepy. It must be said though that the best piece of minimalist writing (and probably the best example of it as well) belongs to Ernest Hemingway who once wrote a six-word story. The text of the story is: “For Sale: Baby Shoes, never worn.€

James Joyce: His stories almost always include a moment of epiphany: a sudden realization or understanding or insight into a situation that was absent mere moments before. If you like reading about poor Irish kids written by a man who has a better understanding of the English language than you could ever dream of, you should check out Dubliners.

Italo Calvino: Author of one of the most innovative and fascinating collections of short stories in the last century, Calvino wrote my favorite book of all-time, Cosmicomics. To explain the short stories wouldn’t really do them justice, but I will try nonetheless because it’s absolutely brilliant. Each story takes a scientific phenomenon and tries to humanize it, be it the Big Bang Theory, the decline of the dinosaurs, or the development of helium atoms in space. To that end, the characters in the stories are sometimes atoms, sometimes dinosaurs, sometimes that first fish that crawled out of the ocean. My favorite is called “The Aquatic Uncle” and it’s about a fish that has evolved legs and is embarrassed of his family that still swims around all day. It’s written like a kid from the sticks who goes off to college and is ashamed to introduce his new girlfriend to his white trash family. Brilliant.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: He doesn’t live in the same world as you or I. His stories are perhaps best described as magical realism. In his world, it is perfectly plausible for an old man with wings like an angel to wash up on the shores of your village and everyone accepts this as fact. Read “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.€

Jorge Luis Borges: I’m not sure how to describe Borges. He’s not a traditional fiction writer. His collection Ficciones could probably best be described as a series of essays written about books that Borges made up. That is, he’s more of an academic who knows how to write critical analysis but the books he wants to analyze don’t exists so he invents stories in order to have his characters either read or write essays about them. My favorite is entitled “Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote.€

Ron Carlson: This author falls into the “which of these names is not like the other ones” category simply because he isn’t as well known. He’s the king of the happy ending and most of his stories are coming of age/nostalgia stories that still tug at my heartstrings. I recommend The Hotel Eden if only for the story called “Oxygen.€

So there it is. This list is by no means complete. These are just a few of my all time favorites. I’d love some recommendations as well since I love the genre.