Stories Like White Elephants

I recently finished reading Starlings, a collection of short stories and poetry from award-winning author Jo Walton, along with the classic short story "The Hills Like White Elephants" and an award-nominated story "Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand." All this has me thinking about the two different types of short stories: those that make their subject obvious and those that "talk around it" or force the reader to infer the true subject of the story. My short stories tend to follow the formula "put a man in a tree, throw rocks at him, and get him out of the tree." They're plot-driven, and I want to make sure the reader understands what's happening.

However, many of the works I mentioned above obscure their meaning, with the quintessential example being "The Hills Like White Elephants." The couple in the story discuss the operation the woman is supposed to have, but no one mentions that it's supposed to be an abortion. Only by analyzing the symbols in the story does it start to make sense. I knew beforehand what the underlying theme of "Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand," and while I could see how some parts of the story fit the theme, many other parts didn't make sense to me. If you look at the reviews of these stories on Goodreads, many other readers didn't understand them either. Maybe it's the fact that these stories require so much analysis that makes them literary and award-winning.

What type of story do you prefer? If you read any of the works I mentioned, what did you think of them? Feel free to share in the comments.