Being able to read literary works in the target foreign language with good understanding of the content should be a goal for students in a basic language program. This paper explores the issue as to when students should begin to read literature that has not been simplified for the language learner and looks specifically at the use of unadapted short stories. It is suggested that carefully selected short stories presented in their original state could teach students to read for general understanding or to "read for meaning," to tolerate some vagueness and to guess at the meaning of new words in context. A set of criteria for evaluating and selecting fiction would examine each of seven factors in a text: general format, new-word desity, sentence length and complexity, style of expression, plot organization, interest, and idea density. A method of examining each factor is presented. (CLK)