In my MFA workshop, one semester we read the stories from Best American Short Stories, and I remember thinking that even the worst stories had a certain density of language that I admired and felt was beyond me.
I read through a couple of Granta 'best short story' collections recently and was so disappointed, I can't remember a single story from those collections because of the general lack of focus on plot. The short story when done well is so good BECAUSE of how impeccable the plotting has to be for the story to work, so it's sad to see plot deprioritized in favour of this constructed so-called 'experience' without narrative!
I know right. I used to think the problem was with me--maybe I'm just not a good reader. But I like Chekhov! I like Jhumpa Lahiri! I recently read through Turgenev's Sportsman's Sketches (which are pretty slow-paced). I dunno, I feel like the problem isn't really me, it's the work that gets published and applauded. I mean if someone is genuinely willing to defend the contemporary short story as a healthy institution, let them do it, but is anyone actually willing to say it is?
I'm a big Turgenev fan! Obviously Fathers and Sons is the thing, but Sportsman's Sketches were so readable! I kept having to be like "When was this published?" 1852! That's five years before Madame Bovary! He was a realist before realism. Turgenev is also the only Westernizer amongst the great Russian prose-writers. Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoevsky--they were all Slavophiles, so full of the mysticism of the Russian Orient. Turgenev is a lot more clear-sighted, more European in his manners and mores and outlook. I understand why that makes him a bit less popular nowadays, because we want our Russian writers to be, well...Russian. But I still think he's a great writer: I also reread Fathers and Sons recently bc there's a new NYRB classics translation, and it too was excellent. At the time I wrote this about it:
"I found myself very moved. Turgenev has a subtle hand with characterization and scene. The book is a fairly quiet one–when it begins you think Bazarov, the nihilist, is going to up-end life in the district, but slowly you see the status quo settle upon everyone’s shoulders, and ultimately you’re not sure whether that’s good or bad. Has a beautiful final line: “Whatever passionate, sinful, rebellious heart may lie hidden within that grace, the flowers that grow above it gaze serenely at us with their innocent eyes, and speak to us not only of eternal peace, that great peace of ‘unfeeling’ nature; they speak, too, of eternal reconciliation and life everlasting.”"
Do you mean Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists and Best of Young British Novelists issues? I don’t think… that Granta has “best short story” collections. I only butt in here because I was in the former last time it came around, and I found it a bit galling that they were asking us to provide short stories to show Granta readers our writing because we were picked because of our novels, and short stories are a completely different animal. (I feel like I have to disclose that my Granta story was ultimately put in a BASS, but personally, I am not sure I’m any good at short stories.)
i meant best of young british novelists, sorry! i didn’t have it on me at the time and didn’t remember exactly what it was called. what you’re saying about novelists having to show their craft through short stories makes a lot of sense. it’s also possible that i was being a little bit unfair, as it’s been a while since i read the collection and, while there were certain stories that i very much didn’t like, i’m sure my opinion was more mixed at the time.
I read plenty of short stories and much of them are like a tryout for a novel. but there are some short stories which are indeed short stories, just not the majority of them. the other type of short story is the " I would write a novel about this but I'm too old." Yes, English was one of my majors in undergraduate.
This was great. I read a lot of contemporary short stories and am often confused by the choices BASS editors make. There are better stories out there than the ones they choose.
I’m not sure I fully understood your point about the problem with narrating intense experiences. Your reference to the Dear Prudence column (which I have to believe is made up) made me think that your distinction is another form of mine: a good short story is one that you could imagine someone actually telling you, at a party or camping out or what have you. And you might actually re-tell that story to someone else.
As a short story writer and a student of the form, I must congratulate you on this piece. You articulately described a trend I noticed in my late teens when I was attending a cenacle of some renown in Bucharest. All those writers (mostly poets) seemed to have the same style, resorted to the same field of metaphors, and there was a feeling of sameness between their works that I decided that if I wanted to be a writer, I could not go to study letters for my undergraduate, opting instead for law school which brought a lot of heartache but surely made a better writer (at least a more original one). Now, as I return to literary circles I am treated with contempt, seen as some sort of philistine who dares to enter the holy of holies with unclean hands. Reading your article has further cemented the sentiment that writers are not made into MFA programs or on an university campus, at least not an original voice. In the first paragraphs you mentioned that your sentences were information sparse and thus lacking, but I believe you ought to have seen this as a strength, not a weakness. In a world where we are bombarded with information, maybe we need a confident, intelligent voice that takes it easy upon our rotten brains.
I read that particular story you quoted. I thought it lacked any cohesion and was pretentious. At best the protagonist was having a weird dream. Thanks for this! Cheers.
Yeah you've really hit on something here, I think. Like I go back and forth about whether the short story is DEAD dead -- an artistic form can lose a lot of its material base and still be alive (there are good operas still being written even though opera isn't what it was in 1880) -- but when I think about short fiction as a still-living form, it's almost always in terms of one of these things:
--extremely weird experimental works that play with style, language, and voice, and the brevity is part of the point (Joy Williams, Diane Williams, Lydia Davis, and so on)
--(more relevant to your point) the large, LARGE percentage of reddit Am I The Asshole posts, letters to the Slate advice columnists, etc. that we all believe to be fake, and that go viral because they're so entertaining
and also, your footnote about MFAs is some much-needed common sense in THAT discussion. I spent MFA school reading Saintsbury on the history of prose rhythm, Stephen Jay Gould on the history of life, and Samuel Delany on everything, plus continuing to obsess about everything Marilynne Robinson did. I got *weirder*
Yeah, I have heard recently some people say that their MFA workshops were bullying and call-out oriented, which is sad. People should feel safe bringing difficult material to workshop. But that was not my experience AT ALL. Workshop was very constructive--it was not at all overly-supportive (I kind of liked the cold, austere affect of our professors, though I was in a minority in that), but it was always about the work itself. The MFA is, I think, a good institution that allows writers to develop at their own pace--I'm just sorry we have to launch them out into a publishing world that is SO different (I have a post on this too which I might post someday, but probably not quite yet).
I remember slogging through BASS when I first starting writing. Trying to figure out why each story made it into the book. There might be one interesting story in the whole collection. Lori Moore or someone like that, someone who was "allowed" to stray from the dense overly-literary prose style you described. The rotating editor thing: it was all the same people picking each other's stories every year.
The best short stories, IMO, have an implied plot, an implied context, and still manage to bring it all home. They may require more work on the part of the reader, but they're worth it. I once took a class in which we read Alice Munro's, "How I Met My Husband," and when I pointed out how rich the implied context was in building character, the instructor doubted me. A novel will spell everything out, but a short story takes every piece of information and builds a complete world built by both you and the writer. As someone who has worked a bit in flash fiction and heard a lot about trying to squeeze a plot into 500 words or less, my response is, "Are you so lazy you can't build a plot out of this richness?"
90 seconds after reading this, I scrolled down on my Notes feed, and someone posted a quote from a craft writing essay that said: “Personally, I think short fiction isn’t so much about telling a story as it is getting the reader to feel something”, and I did a double take and laughed.
I've never been much of a short story writer, but that's because my models for contemporary short stories were all very boring -- so I'm turning back time towards the masters. I bought a book of Nancy Hale's stories, and the first one was an immediate shot of adrenaline, because it was in second person. And a very surreal second person at that. I'm interested in stories that leave an impact from character and narrative alone, not in the juxtaposition of images. A symbol or image means nothing if the character is not interacting with it in a way that makes a compelling argument for its existence!
Such a refreshing read! For what it’s worth, the short stories I have read in The Southern Review were quite zany and plot focused. They recently published a hilarious story by Mark Haber (“How to read Kafka”) which I really enjoyed, partly because it didn’t feel like the kind of story that would be published today.
That’s an interesting question, but I’m not sure my answer would prove particularly satisfactory. If I’m being completely honest, I try not to think about style all that much — I try and let the story write itself
I resonated with your take on surreal writing. There's only so much you can evoke through language and perception of the narrator. Our stories cannot exist without the internal and external world - if one of them is missing, the reader is missing something critical to the experience. Hence why we need actions, moments, things that prompt the characters and the reader to perceive, feel, and have opinions.
Honestly, completely agree. The writing in whats considered excellent short stories feels really stark. I miss flow and a description of emotion not being taboo. after reading the book Wintering a few years ago, that has been one of my ideal writing styles. Masterful flow along with gorgeous prose. and to be completely forthcoming: I played with this version of storytelling in an Instagram post. It was loved by everyone more than usual and people wrote “I can’t wait to read more of your writing” and all I could think was, well, I can wait to write if it means writing like that.
I read through a couple of Granta 'best short story' collections recently and was so disappointed, I can't remember a single story from those collections because of the general lack of focus on plot. The short story when done well is so good BECAUSE of how impeccable the plotting has to be for the story to work, so it's sad to see plot deprioritized in favour of this constructed so-called 'experience' without narrative!
I know right. I used to think the problem was with me--maybe I'm just not a good reader. But I like Chekhov! I like Jhumpa Lahiri! I recently read through Turgenev's Sportsman's Sketches (which are pretty slow-paced). I dunno, I feel like the problem isn't really me, it's the work that gets published and applauded. I mean if someone is genuinely willing to defend the contemporary short story as a healthy institution, let them do it, but is anyone actually willing to say it is?
Any thoughts on Turgenev? You’re the third person who’s mentioned him in the last couple weeks…feels like the universe is telling me to read him.
I'm a big Turgenev fan! Obviously Fathers and Sons is the thing, but Sportsman's Sketches were so readable! I kept having to be like "When was this published?" 1852! That's five years before Madame Bovary! He was a realist before realism. Turgenev is also the only Westernizer amongst the great Russian prose-writers. Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoevsky--they were all Slavophiles, so full of the mysticism of the Russian Orient. Turgenev is a lot more clear-sighted, more European in his manners and mores and outlook. I understand why that makes him a bit less popular nowadays, because we want our Russian writers to be, well...Russian. But I still think he's a great writer: I also reread Fathers and Sons recently bc there's a new NYRB classics translation, and it too was excellent. At the time I wrote this about it:
"I found myself very moved. Turgenev has a subtle hand with characterization and scene. The book is a fairly quiet one–when it begins you think Bazarov, the nihilist, is going to up-end life in the district, but slowly you see the status quo settle upon everyone’s shoulders, and ultimately you’re not sure whether that’s good or bad. Has a beautiful final line: “Whatever passionate, sinful, rebellious heart may lie hidden within that grace, the flowers that grow above it gaze serenely at us with their innocent eyes, and speak to us not only of eternal peace, that great peace of ‘unfeeling’ nature; they speak, too, of eternal reconciliation and life everlasting.”"
Thanks for all the info! I know nothing about Turgenev. I’m intrigued by Sportsman’s Sketches. Knausgaard also wrote some really interesting stuff on it here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/26/karl-ove-knausgaard-the-shame-of-writing-about-myself
Do you mean Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists and Best of Young British Novelists issues? I don’t think… that Granta has “best short story” collections. I only butt in here because I was in the former last time it came around, and I found it a bit galling that they were asking us to provide short stories to show Granta readers our writing because we were picked because of our novels, and short stories are a completely different animal. (I feel like I have to disclose that my Granta story was ultimately put in a BASS, but personally, I am not sure I’m any good at short stories.)
i meant best of young british novelists, sorry! i didn’t have it on me at the time and didn’t remember exactly what it was called. what you’re saying about novelists having to show their craft through short stories makes a lot of sense. it’s also possible that i was being a little bit unfair, as it’s been a while since i read the collection and, while there were certain stories that i very much didn’t like, i’m sure my opinion was more mixed at the time.
“…it confuses a technique for an actual story” Is a great line, and I suspect it could be re-used in many discussions…
I read plenty of short stories and much of them are like a tryout for a novel. but there are some short stories which are indeed short stories, just not the majority of them. the other type of short story is the " I would write a novel about this but I'm too old." Yes, English was one of my majors in undergraduate.
“the other type of short story is the ‘I would write a novel about this but I'm too old.’” As an oldish type, I understand and love this.
Not having done MFA-level story analysis myself, this critique explained a lot of what is going on with litfic shorts and why I don't vibe with them.
This was great. I read a lot of contemporary short stories and am often confused by the choices BASS editors make. There are better stories out there than the ones they choose.
I’m not sure I fully understood your point about the problem with narrating intense experiences. Your reference to the Dear Prudence column (which I have to believe is made up) made me think that your distinction is another form of mine: a good short story is one that you could imagine someone actually telling you, at a party or camping out or what have you. And you might actually re-tell that story to someone else.
As a short story writer and a student of the form, I must congratulate you on this piece. You articulately described a trend I noticed in my late teens when I was attending a cenacle of some renown in Bucharest. All those writers (mostly poets) seemed to have the same style, resorted to the same field of metaphors, and there was a feeling of sameness between their works that I decided that if I wanted to be a writer, I could not go to study letters for my undergraduate, opting instead for law school which brought a lot of heartache but surely made a better writer (at least a more original one). Now, as I return to literary circles I am treated with contempt, seen as some sort of philistine who dares to enter the holy of holies with unclean hands. Reading your article has further cemented the sentiment that writers are not made into MFA programs or on an university campus, at least not an original voice. In the first paragraphs you mentioned that your sentences were information sparse and thus lacking, but I believe you ought to have seen this as a strength, not a weakness. In a world where we are bombarded with information, maybe we need a confident, intelligent voice that takes it easy upon our rotten brains.
I read that particular story you quoted. I thought it lacked any cohesion and was pretentious. At best the protagonist was having a weird dream. Thanks for this! Cheers.
Yeah you've really hit on something here, I think. Like I go back and forth about whether the short story is DEAD dead -- an artistic form can lose a lot of its material base and still be alive (there are good operas still being written even though opera isn't what it was in 1880) -- but when I think about short fiction as a still-living form, it's almost always in terms of one of these things:
--extremely weird experimental works that play with style, language, and voice, and the brevity is part of the point (Joy Williams, Diane Williams, Lydia Davis, and so on)
--(more relevant to your point) the large, LARGE percentage of reddit Am I The Asshole posts, letters to the Slate advice columnists, etc. that we all believe to be fake, and that go viral because they're so entertaining
and also, your footnote about MFAs is some much-needed common sense in THAT discussion. I spent MFA school reading Saintsbury on the history of prose rhythm, Stephen Jay Gould on the history of life, and Samuel Delany on everything, plus continuing to obsess about everything Marilynne Robinson did. I got *weirder*
Yeah, I have heard recently some people say that their MFA workshops were bullying and call-out oriented, which is sad. People should feel safe bringing difficult material to workshop. But that was not my experience AT ALL. Workshop was very constructive--it was not at all overly-supportive (I kind of liked the cold, austere affect of our professors, though I was in a minority in that), but it was always about the work itself. The MFA is, I think, a good institution that allows writers to develop at their own pace--I'm just sorry we have to launch them out into a publishing world that is SO different (I have a post on this too which I might post someday, but probably not quite yet).
I remember slogging through BASS when I first starting writing. Trying to figure out why each story made it into the book. There might be one interesting story in the whole collection. Lori Moore or someone like that, someone who was "allowed" to stray from the dense overly-literary prose style you described. The rotating editor thing: it was all the same people picking each other's stories every year.
Yeah it's so strange that there's always one or two people who get to be an exception and get attention for writing stories that're actually readable.
The best short stories, IMO, have an implied plot, an implied context, and still manage to bring it all home. They may require more work on the part of the reader, but they're worth it. I once took a class in which we read Alice Munro's, "How I Met My Husband," and when I pointed out how rich the implied context was in building character, the instructor doubted me. A novel will spell everything out, but a short story takes every piece of information and builds a complete world built by both you and the writer. As someone who has worked a bit in flash fiction and heard a lot about trying to squeeze a plot into 500 words or less, my response is, "Are you so lazy you can't build a plot out of this richness?"
90 seconds after reading this, I scrolled down on my Notes feed, and someone posted a quote from a craft writing essay that said: “Personally, I think short fiction isn’t so much about telling a story as it is getting the reader to feel something”, and I did a double take and laughed.
I've never been much of a short story writer, but that's because my models for contemporary short stories were all very boring -- so I'm turning back time towards the masters. I bought a book of Nancy Hale's stories, and the first one was an immediate shot of adrenaline, because it was in second person. And a very surreal second person at that. I'm interested in stories that leave an impact from character and narrative alone, not in the juxtaposition of images. A symbol or image means nothing if the character is not interacting with it in a way that makes a compelling argument for its existence!
Such a refreshing read! For what it’s worth, the short stories I have read in The Southern Review were quite zany and plot focused. They recently published a hilarious story by Mark Haber (“How to read Kafka”) which I really enjoyed, partly because it didn’t feel like the kind of story that would be published today.
I agree on all counts!
I’m curious how this affects the curation of your short story series. Are there other common short-story styles you avoid?
That’s an interesting question, but I’m not sure my answer would prove particularly satisfactory. If I’m being completely honest, I try not to think about style all that much — I try and let the story write itself
I resonated with your take on surreal writing. There's only so much you can evoke through language and perception of the narrator. Our stories cannot exist without the internal and external world - if one of them is missing, the reader is missing something critical to the experience. Hence why we need actions, moments, things that prompt the characters and the reader to perceive, feel, and have opinions.
Honestly, completely agree. The writing in whats considered excellent short stories feels really stark. I miss flow and a description of emotion not being taboo. after reading the book Wintering a few years ago, that has been one of my ideal writing styles. Masterful flow along with gorgeous prose. and to be completely forthcoming: I played with this version of storytelling in an Instagram post. It was loved by everyone more than usual and people wrote “I can’t wait to read more of your writing” and all I could think was, well, I can wait to write if it means writing like that.