Man's Folly and Despair

What are the causes of Quentin's suicide? It can't only be Caddy's promiscuity and subsequent marriage, but it certainly is connected, because he commits suicide less than a year after the wedding. Father seems to be a great influence on Quentin, as seen by the numerous conversations between the two. Did Mr. Jason unwittingly drive Quentin to suicide?

Who would win in a fight, William Faulkner or James Joyce?

The journey to a good short story is often a harsh one. Mine began in the wastelands of despair when I learned that David Foster Wallace published a short story collection six mere months before the cutoff year of 2005; I would be unable to analyze any of his work for this assignment. Extracting myself from this depth, I began to look at a short story collection by Jim Shepard, Like You'd Understand Anyway; published in 2007, it includes narrative settings in the Chernobyl Disaster and the Space Race. At this point this collection contains the most promising works; I will most likely choose from this selection. Another collection that seems interesting is written by a petroleum geologist, Rick Bass's The Lives of Rocks, full of works focused on environmental issues. Jonathan Safran Foer, who wrote Everything is Illuminated (a very good book, by the way), has published a couple of short stories since 2005; these definitely merit closer inspection. I have not yet browsed the library's collection of the New Yorker for suitable short stories, but I will be sure to do so this week.

While I have browsed a good number of short stories for this assignment, I have yet to narrow it down to a reasonable number to choose from; this I will be sure to do sometime before the due date next Friday. While I don't expect to discover any of these possibilities to be as well-written or profound as The Dead or Metamorphosis, I do hope to be surprised.