[R. S. Gwynn]

Can anyone think of short stories in which a writer (in any genre) is a prominent character? So far I have "Builders" by Richard Yates, but I'm drawing a blank otherwise.

[W.F. Lantry]

Sam,

I'm drawing a blank too. But if I were searching, I think I'd look at Borges, Barthelme, Anderson, Mary Robison...

Do you have a specific timeframe? Region? Subgenre?

Thanks,

Bill

[Kevin Greene]

Wow, that's a difficult question. There are a number of novels, but short stories? (There's always the Murder She Wrote series, but I don't think that's what you're looking for!) If you'd accept a novella, there's A Death in Venice. And the Brad Pitt character in A River Runs Through it was a reporter. That was Norman Maclain's (sp?) book and could probably be called a novella. I think there were two other stories published with it (and they were rather good!)

Kevin

[Kevin Greene]

Borges used librarians more than writers I think. (It's been some time.)

Kevin

[RCL]

Nick in Papa's "Big Two Hearted River": "He felt he had left everything behind, the need for thinking, the need to write, other needs. It was all back of him."

Ralph

Hem's Fisher King is also the hero of The Sun Also Rises.

[RCL]

And, oddly enough, "Bartleby the Scrivener."

[Jim Burrows]

John Updike wrote three or so collections worth of stories about the writer Henry Bech, including a sometimes anthologized story, The Bulgarian Poetess. Bech was Jewish, not at all prolific, and won the Nobel prize.

Alice Munro's short stories contain some writers and many would-be writers. One of my favorites is The Office, from her first collection, The Dance of the Happy Shades.

[R. S. Gwynn]

The Borges story is "The Secret Miracle." "Bartleby" would be a stretch, I think. Thanks for the reminder about "The Bulgarian Poetess." Others?

[Michael Cantor]

The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

[John Whitworth]

Raymond Carver wrote a terrific short story about the death of Chekhov.
Kipling wrote one about Shakespeare (talking to Jonson I think). It's a cracker too, unless I totally misremember.