Raymond carver

has there been a better american short story author?

JD Salinger

Flannery O'Connor

this is a genuinely good pick. 50/50 toss up between the two for me

Ray Bradbury

Melville

bartleby is a 10/10, but carver has multiple 10/10

Dunno, but Carver sucks dick. Complete hack, absolutely worthless.

Ambrose Bierce

O. Henry

Thom Jones briefly, in “The Pugilist at Rest” other than him though, not many

Hemmingway

>carver has multiple 10/10
Some titles, please?

Who else writes like him? Is a good choice?

John Cheever

Second

oh look, another thread that's just a list of names with no explanation or analysis or anything. can you all post again but actually explain why these authors are so great?

Just answering OP's rhetorical question as if it were an unqualified one, dude. Carver's great and arguably the best American short story writer of the latter half of the 20th century, but Cheever's more intimate in his depictions of general vacuousness, more evocative of the times in which he wrote- the 50's, 60's, and 70's. Both are marvelously sharp observers so I freely own that my selection of Cheever over Carver is based entirely on personal preference.

Cathedral
Where I'm Calling From
Why Don't You Dance?

Donald Ray Pollock

David Foster Wallace unironically

Munro