Multiple Enthusiasms

Infinite jest. Excellent fancy. Flashes of merriment.

Short stories will never die, but they could be awesome again

For a long enough while that I can no longer recall when it began, I’ve been reading lamentations about the current health of the short story, or, more accurately, the complete lack thereof. Seems a lot of people think it’s dying or already has done, that it’s gasping its final breaths and all that’s left is the death rattle. For example, this post on After the MFA (which further links back to a post on Galley Cat), about anonymous e-mailers who wrote to the latter site “asserting that the short story is, in fact, six feet under in their literary world. “Valid career” go the anonymous cries, as in you can’t have one writing short stories.”

I yet wonder about ‘valid careers’. Since when has writing ever been a valid career choice? It’s difficult, long, time-consuming, and quite possibly the least valued of the various media; people seem to think very little of dropping a hundred bucks on a single evening at the cinema (parking, ticket, popcorn, soda, etc.), but few of them seem interested in dropping $30 on a hardcover novel. Heck, even I rarely do (I buy from Amazon marketplace. You’re awesome, Amazon marketplace). Books very rarely sell more than a few thousand copies (with obvious notable exceptions, so put your hands down Messrs. Brown and King. You too, Jo Rowling); most sell substantially less. 15,000 or so is usually considered pretty successful. Meanwhile, the albums that top the Billboard charts often move more than 200 times that in a week.

And then AMFA offers a terrific suggestion for the reason: “Maybe it’s because all of our stories suck?”

Boyhow.

He asks readers when was the last time they read a story that blew their mind. I’m sure some people, like my colleague, the illustrious Mr. John Fox over at BookFox, could probably cite one off the top of his head, but I’m also certain most people wouldn’t be able to. Heck, I know I couldn’t. If I had to think of really recently, I’d probably re-peruse Gaiman’s Fragile Things. Beyond that? Besides Ray Chandler or Stephen King, I draw a blank.

This isn’t to say I haven’t skimmed issues of The New Yorker recently. In fact, one of the assignments in one of my classes with Shelly Lowenkopf required us to edit one of the stories contained therein; I chose one by a woman named Tessa Hadley, “Married Love”, and covered it with marks. I see on searching her name that she’s had three stories published in the magazine since Feb. 2007, and I say, “Really, New Yorker? Really?”

But this is the current way of the short story. This is the sort of fiction/voice students in MFA programs (and their faculties, too, for that matter) strive for. It’s tedious and homogenous at best, and just plain crap at worst.

It’s sad, because short stories are fun. Short stories can provide a venue for the kind of experiment one can’t sustain for the length of a novel. Two of the stories in my collection concern C. Auguste Dupin investigating the death of Edgar Allan Poe; I don’t think such a conceit could sustain a novel’s length (it’s arguably too ‘gimmicky’. Two novels whose titles I can’t recall tried it, in fact, albeit, from the reviews I read, unsuccessfully). Some of the stories were inspired from songs; certainly not a conceit for a novel.

(one reason I chose USC’s Master’s program was that its teachers were known for their novels, and not their short stories)

One other thing I think works against short stories is the way they’re published, i.e., pretty rarely and in obscure places. Because, seriously, who reads literary magazines except writers who are hoping to publish in them, and what sort of market is that? It’s not so much that the form is dead, perhaps more that its medium has changed; when most magazines’ content can be found online anyway, what’s the point of the newsstand? Why buy the newspaper when The New York Times is online, for free. And this isn’t an argument for buying the cow; this is a real question in terms of market and audience. As the aforementioned Mr. Lowenkopf noted in this blog post, “many individuals who like to think of themselves as writers have the singular goal of publication,” which is a bit backwards because publication is one of the slightest aspects of writing, and in the age of the Internet and POD, what’s ‘publication,’ anyway? Who’s the arbitrary arbiter of quality that decided Miranda July’s collection was worth so much attention last year (and whose mind did it blow, really)?

Last month’s issue of Wired featured a story on free (it’s free, here, in fact, which is fun). Short stories are, traditionally, a basically free medium; they have historically been published in magazines, so it’s almost bonus content. $5 pays for the whole magazine, of which the story is merely one feature.

Short stories won’t die, because writers will always write them, but I think the trend will be toward freedom.

When that comes to fruition, however, one thing to keep in mind: we as readers should demand awesome and never again settle for any damned less.

4 Comments

  1. I remember the first time I was handed an anthology of short stories. I was in college and I was awe struck. Many of them were more thought provoking and finely crafted than the novels I’d been consuming since high school. I didn’t understand why they were tucked away in the ten pound book on the bottom shelf of the co-op’s dusty shelves but I loved them. They’re some of the only books I never sold back.

  2. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for shorts. It’s the first fiction I ever tried. They fit the writer I am better than novels. Even as a reader, I am more apt to pick up a collection than anything else. Short attention span…less patience. I don’t think people give shorts the respect they deserve because they are bite-size. So much of publishing is about superficiality…false respect for things that don’t deserve them. So much of it is about the appearance of this or that rather than actual realization of it.

  3. @Paula: you never forget your first, do you? Mine was Night Shift.

    @Alma: I think it’s the first fiction most people ever try. I mean, few people sit down at age 12 or 13 and plan to pound out a novel (okay, I did, but I’m like that). And your note on publishing/superficiality? Yeah.

  4. I thought you were gonna fix this though? Weren’t you going to go to Hollywood to market a cerial called “Will-Y-O’s” that would help by brain washing the public to read more? I mean here I am on the east coast selling “Honey Bunches of Helen” and Richard is in the mid-west selling “CAP’N COX.” How are we to brain wash all of America to read like their suppose to if your dilly daddleing?

    the short story will never die. Buying short stories might die though. Everyone who desires to read a short story can find them on the internet. Now, obviously the quality isn’t always there (I have read some X-men fanfics that would make you cry blood) but I beleive one day we will have a system better the five star or two kudo system. A web site desighner will figure out a inexpencise way to cut the crap out from the quallity and every one will flock to the site to read for free.

    Speaking of Amazon go here http://www.amazon.com/Entrekin-Name-History-Ancestry-com/dp/B000W14BAM/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205731683&sr=1-5

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