'Out on the River', 'Simon's Dad', 'A Farm Girl's Story', 'A Day in the Country', 'Country Living', 'A Railway Story', 'Our Chum Patience', 'Coco,' 'The Necklace', 'Strolling,' 'Bed 29', 'The Gamekeeper', 'The Little Roque Girl', 'Mademoiselle Pearl'. Maupassant is a dejected, comatose writer. The pages are sterile. Sentences are common and nicely scattered. The narrative style though is extraordinary. His endings are really beautiful art. But it's the segmentation, the structure, and the focus of psychoanalysis which pushes the works into strange, behind the curtain of life realizations and feelings. Spaces where invisible ideas live earnestly. Two stories, for example — Our Chum Patience and The Little Roque Girl — three actually with Mademoiselle Pearl — are set up so uniquely plot-wise that James Joyce would likely rely on it at least in part for Dubliners — or maybe not I'm no expert. Besides Dubliners and these stories I've never felt the additive process of storytelling so strongly. Those three stories twist and turn so often, they are almost written with a ouija board shifting the eye and hand around on its own to find that liminal space behind the curtain. It sounds fancy, or religious, or stupid, made-up, but I think to neglect science at least in part is to accept humanity. And I'm much happier accepting reality than otherwise. He's a good writer but nowhere near Chekhov. Chekhov had more art to him. Maupassant isn't subtle enough to be a clairvoyant consistently. Often he is barely subtle enough to write his sentences competently haha. I like him a lot. Just not the same way I like my top five which I hope doesn't change even though in all honesty it probably should.