Best short story

Taki, writing in The Spectator this week, says he would have given his soul to have written "Catcher in the Rye". He goes on to mention some other works of literature he thinks great: "Moby Dick", great but not as great as "Tender is the Night" by Scott Fitzgerald (I prefer his "The Great Gatsby"); but his "two bibles" are "The Sun Also Rises" and "A Moveable Feast", both by Ernest Hemingway.
I can't say I have a favourite great novel though I am tempted to say Thomas Mann's "Joseph and his Brothers" but the trouble is I haven't finished it yet - and it's going to take some time before I do. It is not what they call "a page turner". Page turners are not necessarilly great works simply because they are so exciting you cannot put them down. Great works of literature have a more lasting value, they stay with you for longer than the thrill of the story.
I do, however, have a favourite short story which may qualify as being "great", and that is "The Country Husband" by John Cheever. It's quite a long short story so I did not read it at one sitting. The truth is that I could have but didn't want to. Because whenever I picked it up again (and this I did many times) I started at the beginning again. I savoured every line of it. When, eventually, I did finish it, I put it on a shelf and take it down occasionally to re-read, then completing it in one sitting.
I don't know if it qualifies as "great". It's intriguing. It is beautifully written. It is sad. It is highly enjoyable.
If only I could write a story as good as that.
There is another short story I found as compelling as that but not for anything like the same reason - and it is his only story I find I can read right through - and that is Richard Brautigan's "1/3, 1/3, 1/3", which I think is the funniest story I have ever read.
It begins:

"It was all to begin in thirds. I was to get 1/3 for doing the typing, and she was to get 1/3 for doing the editing, and he was to get 1/3 for writing the novel.
We were going to divide the royalties three ways. We all shook hands on the deal, each knowing what we were supposed to do, the path before us, the gate at the end.
I was made a 1/3 partner because I had the typewriter."