Short Stories - a neglected genre?

Originally Posted by PinaFreud

Well, at the moment I'm reading a book of short stories....Jhumpa Lahiri (Unaccustomed Earth). It's a genre I really love, and I can't see a good reason to justify the publishers' attitude.
My best favourites: Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, Savyon Liebrecht....

Jhumpa Lahiri, with that new collection, is my bid for the greatest living writer of short fiction.

[fausto]

Barthelme! Barthelme! Barthelme! And Cortázar.

[nnyhav]

My favorite short story is Poe's "The Purloined Letter". One of three tales that launched a genre (and this one mentions both of the others in its opening) (and to which Borges paid tribute) (and upon which much has been written).

[Sybarite]

The Guardian published short stories by William Boyd, Alice Sebald, Julian Barnes, Tessa Hadley and Chris Ware in the magazine with today's paper today. They're all available to read online here.

[Eric]

Thanks Sybarite. I didn't buy the Guardian today, so I didn't see the stories. But it's a good initiative. Now all the Grauniad needs is a regular translations corner in the Review. Maybe a few stories in translation in the same way.

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by fausto

Barthelme! Barthelme! Barthelme!

tru dat.

[ions]

Alistair MacLeod is on par with Alice Munro, The Island is the title you would look for if you wanted to look for it. Can't really think of anyone else that hasn't already been mentioned. Except: One of my favourites is Catechism by Wayne Johnston

[nnyhav]

Heads up! That Shakespeherian Rag is devoting August to 31 days of short stories.

[Eric]

I've got the Keret, as mentioned in the 31 days article, in Dutch translation. I think I'll fish it out. Just right for late at night.

[ions]

Good People by David Foster Wallace

Oblivion by David Foster Wallace sits on my bookshelf. I read the shortest story in it called Incarnations of Burned Children about a poor boy who got his weewee boiled. Brutal, but good. Any of you get into the longer stories in it?

[Jan Mbali]

My view is completely subjective, but I suspect it is there is another dynamic beside the brevity of modern communciations. Short stories are often contrived and always lack the depth of a novel. They simply do not have the space to create rounded characters that inhabit complete worlds. Readers sometimes snack on short stories, but want to dine out on a novel. The brevity/ short attention span argument connects to my point of view indirectly, however. Short stories demand we fill in their outlines actively by putting our imaginations and subconscious to work. That facility is waning, I suspect. I have written stories that are deliberately cryptic, expecting that readers would fill in the blanks. A number of readers have demanded more detail, which perhaps would not have been the case in a pre-TV age. My childhood was TV free, and filled with books, a happenstance for which I am duly grateful.

Jan Mbali

[nnyhav]

NYTBR: Steven Millhauser, The Ambition of the Short Story

[Jayaprakash]

I love short stories and believe they're a harder format to pull off than the novel, which can be messy and bloated and still, in the balance, work as a novel. There's less room for error in a short story.

Somerset Maugham's short stories are excellent models of how much characterisation and depth can be achieved in this brief span. Thomas Mann achieved a great deal of depth of character in some of his short stories as well, such as Tonio Kroger or Tristan.

Amongst Indian writers, I'm drawn to the short stories of Naiyer Masud and Vilas Sarang, who turn the matter of everday life and mundane insanity into strange, phantasmagorical and often deeply moving tales that are perfect at their length. Both writers have been published by Penguin India in translation - it's worth seeking them out (although in the case of Sarang I'd strongly suggest the earlier short story collection, Fair Tree Of The Void and not Women In Cages, which contains much of the same material reworked, and not entirely for the better). RK Narayan's short stories are of a different type - gentle, whimsical and benevolently shrewd about human nature and altogether delightful.

[Jan Mbali]

I thank NNYHAV and Jayaprakash for their reference and thoughts. Am going away to read the essay "The Ambition of .." and ponder a few things before replying.

[Jan Mbali]

Discovered Panos Karnezis, a very talented short story writer. Greek that has settled in the UK. Read "Little Infamies". He packs a lot into a story, using a deceptively naturalistic style. But his longer stories do it better. Perhaps he ought to write a novel? Or perhaps not. What is unsaid the reader fills with imaginings drawn from scraps of knowledge about Greece and then from the little worlds that he creates. Perhaps a strength comes from the stories being set in one place - our master of the wry short story, Herman Bosman, builds a series like that.

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by Jan Mbali

Perhaps [Panos Karnezis] ought to write a novel?

He did. It's called The Maze. I've not read it him though, so can't offer any thoughts on him. In fact, all I know is that he writes in English.

[Eric]

Jayaprakash says:

I love short stories and believe they're a harder format to pull off than the novel, which can be messy and bloated and still, in the balance, work as a novel. There's less room for error in a short story.

I quite agree. They must have a beginning, middle and end, and the author can't afford digressions. If there are too many lumpy bits, or sections, the whole may go sad, like a cake when you open the oven door.

But I still think that short-stories have often been given a bad press, and that they deserve a kind of revival, as an art form requiring precision. Despite what I should be reading (novels), I am in the mood for shorter things: i.e. poetry, short-stories, these last few days. Perhaps life feels more transient, given the instability of the money markets. Not that I have money, but such a crisis affects everyone, by the trickle down effect.

Hadn't heard of Karnezis.

I'm going to try a story called Nimble Kaarel and His Young Woman, first published in 1902, and written by Anton Hansen Tammsaare.

[nnyhav]

Nabokov on best short stories

Mr Waggish comments "Still, the choices seem almost archaic today, or all reminiscent of a time in American short fiction that only has devolved remnants remaining." (included here as he seems to be having a spot of bother with his website)

On Nabokov's best short stories

Not up to the standard of his best novels, though I find the later ones come closest.

[titania7]

Nnyhav,
My confounded computer wouldn't let me pull up either of these links. She (my computer, that is) is such a vixen! I went to Waggish
and found out the names of a few of Nabokov's favorite short stories.
But I suspect the link you gave offered more. I don't suppose you
have another link I could try?

I'm a big fan of Nabokov's short stories. In fact, I first got the complete
volume of his stories from the library. Yet I knew almost at once I simply
must have my own copy! And the rest is history, as they say.

Aside from Pale Fire, which of Nabokov's novels are your favorites?
And, are they any specific stories of Nabokov's that you particularly like?

Your views always intrigue me .

~Titania

[nnyhav]

On the novels: My answer's in the Vlad thread (so's yours, hope you don't mind)