How can anyone stop at 12?

 If I were putting together an anthology of a dozen short stories, I think I’d pick these:

• Stephen Crane, “The Open Boat,” a story that convinced me that I wanted to be a writer.

• Leo Tolstoy, “What Men Live By,” a retelling of — and an perhaps an improvement on — the gospel through the eyes of a poor shoemaker.

• Ernest Hemingway, “Big Two-Hearted River,” about healing after trauma.

• J.D. Salinger, “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters,” a story that occurs entirely in a cab in New York City. 

• Gabriel García Márquez, “María dos Prezares,” a story about a 76-year-old prostitute who dreams she is going to die but finds she was mistaken in interpreting the dream. Her dog is one of the great dogs in fiction.

• Roberto Bolaño, “Last Evenings on Earth,” which is unforgivably bawdy and astonishing.

• Jorge Luis Borges, “Borges and I,” which is so short it’s hard to believe it’s so good.

• William Carlos Williams, “The Use of Force,” about a doctor who tests wills with a little girl who’s a terrible patient.

• D.H. Lawrence, “The Blind Man,” a story that contrasts the temperaments of two men.

• Alice Munro, either “Dear Life,” about misperceptions and family lore, “Amundsen,” about the unfortunate ways we seek love, or “Mrs. Cross and Mrs. Kidd,” about an improbable friendship. I can’t decide which.

• Christopher Cook, “Heresies,” one of his many stories about how religious beliefs influence life in Texas.

• Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Speckled Band,” because a literature that excludes Sherlock Holmes is of not for me.

I’ve enjoyed stories by William Trevor, Truman Capote, James Joyce, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bernard Malamud, Somerset Maugham, Tennessee Williams and Willa Cather, and this list would probably be different tomorrow. It’ll have to do for today.

Thanks, Michael, for the suggestions, and thanks, Christopher, for the note on Singer’s “Gimpel the Fool” and the prompt.