Ruby Magosvongwe and Steven Millhauser on the Short Story
There is much talk about the short story these days. The latest authoritative views about the genre are by University of Zimbabwe professor Ruby Magosvongwe and award-winning short story writer Steven Millhauser who presented the short story as more important than the novel.
Speaking at a high school short story contest award ceremony recently, Magosvonge labelled Zimbabwe "a short story country." To make such a claim, one has to have a strong reason; here is hers:
"Nearly every, I emphasise EVERY, Zimbabwean who has become prominent today started with short stories or has a short story collection somewhere along the way. Here we go: Dambudzo Marechera’s House of Hunger, Charles Mungoshi’s Coming of the Dry Season, David Mungoshi’s Broken Dream and Other stories, Yvonne Vera’s Why Don’t You Carve Other Animals, Stanley Nyamfukudza’s Aftermaths, Chenjerai Hove’s Matende Mashava." (Her full speech is on the Unofungei Fungai Blog).
But why is the short story such an important genre in the literature of Zimbabwe and any country for that matter? Perhaps Steven Millhauser's New York Times essay provides a possible answer: "The short story apologizes for nothing. It exults in its shortness...its greatness is its shortness." Millhauser also points out that the difference between a short story and a novel is that the former concentrates on some small portion of the world, "but you will find, deep within it, nothing less than the world itself." Basically, the short story, in its modesty, albeit pretentious, is an addictive little outlet, enabling much to be said in a few words. A novel may thrash out with overconfidence and limitless indulgence, but the short story, says Millhauser, believes in hidden power, its brevity: "It wants to be a single word."
But to say Zimbabwe is a short story country is akin to saying the country owns the genre, or that the genre owns the country; it is to warn the novel to either stay away, or to approach the territory cautiously. Millhauser points out that the novel beats its chest, seeks territory and desires to occupy the whole world, while the short story seeks perfection as "the consolation of those who have nothing else" to claim. But see, the novel in Zimbabwe has sat back and let the short story take on the big world of the space called Zimbabwe, and it has lifted that Zimbabwean space to other places. Just search for fiction books published in Zimbabwe and Weaver or amaBooks will greet you with numerous volumes of short stories.
Novels, yes, Zimbabwe has produced novels like Uncertainty of Hope, Nervous Conditions, Book of Not, Bones, Under the Tongue. But,Magosvongwe argues, most of the novels that have come out of Zimbabwe are short, as if they desire the smaller territory of the short story; some, like House of Hunger, chose to be longer than a short story but refused to move beyond the length of the novella.
If Zimbabwe is indeed a country of short stories (assuming that other countries are not countries of short stories, or if that does not matter), we might then safely say, as Millhauser does, that "large things tend to be unwieldly, clumsy, crude;" so Zimbabwe prefers the short story because "smallness is the realm of elegance and grace." But remember, much of the writing coming out of Zimbabwe is not being produced in a context of luxury. We might also then move beyond Millhauser and argue that Zimbabwe, especially now, has no choice but to excel in the short story. But perhaps Magosvonge would remind us that Zimbabwe was already excelling in the short story as far back as the 1970s with Mungoshi's Coming of the Dry Season.
Yet we can also recall Memory Chirere's argument, in an essay about the short story and Southern Africa, that Zimbabwean writing (or much of Southern African writing) has always been done in an environment where there has always been a need to be secretive, hiding the intended meaning through ambiguity and sometimes even self-censorship. Remember the sixties and seventies were under a repressive colonial government that monitored what was written and published by black writers in Zimbabwe; then when independence came, the short story got in the Millhauser "habit of secrecy bred by [new forms of] oppression".
Magosvongwe and Millhauser offer different, but complementary views on the short story. Perhaps, we might point out that ours is a world of the short story since we now know that the novel envies the short story's ability to offer the experience of the whole world through the particularity and brevity of its focus.
Read more about Ruby Magosvongwe on Unofungei Fungai blog
Read Steven Millhauser's essay on the New York Times website.
Update:
This is now 2019, and I look back at this post and add that one thing I may not have realized at the time was the fact that some publishers will accept a novel manuscript but ask the writer to submit a short story collection, which will then be published before the novel comes out. So then to the world, it will look like the writer came up with the short story first, whereas they already had written a novel, which would be published later than the short story collection...something to that effect.
As for Zimbabwean publishers publishing short story anthologies, that's the most practical thing to do at the time, for it allows the sampling of more interesting voices. But the widespread search for publishing opportunities outside of Zimbabwe has seen some of our writers--Sue Nyathi, NoViolet Bulawayo, Brian Chikwava, Tendai Huchu, Petina Gappah, Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, and others --- publishing novels and in fact helping affirm a narrative that could equally say, "Zimbabwe is a novel country too".
I have since published a short story collection, one the reasons being that I keep holding on to novel manuscripts I have been working on since the mid-nineties!
Speaking at a high school short story contest award ceremony recently, Magosvonge labelled Zimbabwe "a short story country." To make such a claim, one has to have a strong reason; here is hers:
"Nearly every, I emphasise EVERY, Zimbabwean who has become prominent today started with short stories or has a short story collection somewhere along the way. Here we go: Dambudzo Marechera’s House of Hunger, Charles Mungoshi’s Coming of the Dry Season, David Mungoshi’s Broken Dream and Other stories, Yvonne Vera’s Why Don’t You Carve Other Animals, Stanley Nyamfukudza’s Aftermaths, Chenjerai Hove’s Matende Mashava." (Her full speech is on the Unofungei Fungai Blog).
But why is the short story such an important genre in the literature of Zimbabwe and any country for that matter? Perhaps Steven Millhauser's New York Times essay provides a possible answer: "The short story apologizes for nothing. It exults in its shortness...its greatness is its shortness." Millhauser also points out that the difference between a short story and a novel is that the former concentrates on some small portion of the world, "but you will find, deep within it, nothing less than the world itself." Basically, the short story, in its modesty, albeit pretentious, is an addictive little outlet, enabling much to be said in a few words. A novel may thrash out with overconfidence and limitless indulgence, but the short story, says Millhauser, believes in hidden power, its brevity: "It wants to be a single word."
But to say Zimbabwe is a short story country is akin to saying the country owns the genre, or that the genre owns the country; it is to warn the novel to either stay away, or to approach the territory cautiously. Millhauser points out that the novel beats its chest, seeks territory and desires to occupy the whole world, while the short story seeks perfection as "the consolation of those who have nothing else" to claim. But see, the novel in Zimbabwe has sat back and let the short story take on the big world of the space called Zimbabwe, and it has lifted that Zimbabwean space to other places. Just search for fiction books published in Zimbabwe and Weaver or amaBooks will greet you with numerous volumes of short stories.
Novels, yes, Zimbabwe has produced novels like Uncertainty of Hope, Nervous Conditions, Book of Not, Bones, Under the Tongue. But,Magosvongwe argues, most of the novels that have come out of Zimbabwe are short, as if they desire the smaller territory of the short story; some, like House of Hunger, chose to be longer than a short story but refused to move beyond the length of the novella.
If Zimbabwe is indeed a country of short stories (assuming that other countries are not countries of short stories, or if that does not matter), we might then safely say, as Millhauser does, that "large things tend to be unwieldly, clumsy, crude;" so Zimbabwe prefers the short story because "smallness is the realm of elegance and grace." But remember, much of the writing coming out of Zimbabwe is not being produced in a context of luxury. We might also then move beyond Millhauser and argue that Zimbabwe, especially now, has no choice but to excel in the short story. But perhaps Magosvonge would remind us that Zimbabwe was already excelling in the short story as far back as the 1970s with Mungoshi's Coming of the Dry Season.
Yet we can also recall Memory Chirere's argument, in an essay about the short story and Southern Africa, that Zimbabwean writing (or much of Southern African writing) has always been done in an environment where there has always been a need to be secretive, hiding the intended meaning through ambiguity and sometimes even self-censorship. Remember the sixties and seventies were under a repressive colonial government that monitored what was written and published by black writers in Zimbabwe; then when independence came, the short story got in the Millhauser "habit of secrecy bred by [new forms of] oppression".
Magosvongwe and Millhauser offer different, but complementary views on the short story. Perhaps, we might point out that ours is a world of the short story since we now know that the novel envies the short story's ability to offer the experience of the whole world through the particularity and brevity of its focus.
Read more about Ruby Magosvongwe on Unofungei Fungai blog
Read Steven Millhauser's essay on the New York Times website.
Update:
This is now 2019, and I look back at this post and add that one thing I may not have realized at the time was the fact that some publishers will accept a novel manuscript but ask the writer to submit a short story collection, which will then be published before the novel comes out. So then to the world, it will look like the writer came up with the short story first, whereas they already had written a novel, which would be published later than the short story collection...something to that effect.
As for Zimbabwean publishers publishing short story anthologies, that's the most practical thing to do at the time, for it allows the sampling of more interesting voices. But the widespread search for publishing opportunities outside of Zimbabwe has seen some of our writers--Sue Nyathi, NoViolet Bulawayo, Brian Chikwava, Tendai Huchu, Petina Gappah, Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, and others --- publishing novels and in fact helping affirm a narrative that could equally say, "Zimbabwe is a novel country too".
I have since published a short story collection, one the reasons being that I keep holding on to novel manuscripts I have been working on since the mid-nineties!
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