Monday, May 17, 2004

On Short Stories

On DetecToday, we've been discussing the differences between the novel and the short story. Sarah mentioned some of my onlist comments on her blog. I'm getting to it late myself, but this space allows me to share my personal account.

I was first drawn to short stories by their length, thinking they were more managable (in the annoying Michael Kay sense of the word) than novels. Though I probably wasn't aware at the time, short stories also spoke to my reading tastes. I enjoy the ideal of "no wasted words": dialogue that conveys imagery and subtext; exposition that draws the reader in; everything with a purpose.

Three eye-opening stories for me were "Fat" by Raymond Carver, "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl, and "Wants" by Grace Paley. I also enjoyed the short suspense work of Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

And for those of you with stream-of-pop-culture consciousnesses like mine, I regard the short story as Obi-Wan regarded the light saber: "An elegant weapon from a more civilized age."

1 comment:

Ray Banks said...

I completely agree, especially with the ideal of "no wasted words", something that plenty of the current crop of short story writers should bear in mind. What's the point in giving us a loving description of a room, if it takes up half the story?

Also nice to see you're a Carver fan - I love so many of his stories, it's difficult to pick just one (though "Vitamins" springs to mind). Personally, the story that opened my eyes to how they could knock you in the face was Andrew Vachss' "Homeless". While I'm not a huge fan of his novels (they come across as a little too faux naif at times), his shorts are damn good. Of course, me being me, I'd also shove in Charles Bukowski and John Fante as masters of the form.