Book News: about Short Stories, and Mentioning J.G. Ballard, Raymond Carver, Orhan Pamuk and others
There is general agreement, in my book circles, that 2009 is the year of the short story. Of course, this is not to say that we are not prepared to accept 2010 as a short story year if it becomes one. I asked the question somewhere, perhaps in one of my classes, about why it would make sense for 2009 to be a short story year, and the answers were practical: "Global warming", "shortening reading spans", and "a rediscovery of the short story".
So perhaps the Melvillean big American novel may go out of fashion on the basis of green thinking. I like that reason. There is nothng wrong with being concise out of necessity. Then once in a while you hear that a 1200 page collection of J.G. Ballard's short stories has been published, then you say, "short stories!"
"That's not all," you are told, "they just came out with another collection: Raymond Carver's stories in one volume."
You start doubting whether the size of the book does or does not matter.
But whatever the reason, surely, 2009 is the year of the short story. In my circles (readers, bloggers, etc) that may simply mean that the people we know have been successful in their short story writing and we ended up just focusing on reading short stories, and maybe elsewhere, in the world of speculative fiction, sci-fi, horror, it might actually be the year of the novel, but that doesn't matter now because I have been seeing a lot of evidence that points to the success of the short story. For one, major novelists have made it a point to publish a volume of short stories. I have mentioned names like Kazuo Ishiguro, Chimamanda Adichie, etc in previous posts.
We have to consider publishing decisions too: at first, it's the decisions publishers are making that can, in the first place, lead to the popularity of a genre, and remember, no sound publishing decision is made without putting the reader in the mix. Someone saw the reader interest and said, "Bingo! Let's do short stories!" Or the short stories themselves are so good that no one can ignore them.
People are reading short stories this year, which explains why they have won awards and have gotten on national and international bestseller lists. I have heard it said that an award does not necessarily mean that a work is being read or will be read. Now, how does that work? We may not consider judges readers, in the sense of the readers who walk into a book store to purchase a copy, but when I see a book on BBC or CNN, the NYT, or San Francisco Chronicle because it's been shortlisted for something, believe me, I will be in Barnes & Noble asking for it. Then as I look for these books, I usually end up finding another work, perhaps by a small press, which grips me with its first sentence.
I have read more short stories this year than I read in my literature courses, and believe me, I have come to understand my own writing in a different way.
As the year ends though, I am slowly returning to the novel. The return has turned out not be that slow--there is something about reading Orhan Pamuk that speeds up things a bit; you know you are reading The Museum of Innocence, but you find yourself trying to read Snow and My Name is Red. It becomes very clear again that while there has been much activity in the short story, things seem not to have slowed down in the novel genre.
Still....
So perhaps the Melvillean big American novel may go out of fashion on the basis of green thinking. I like that reason. There is nothng wrong with being concise out of necessity. Then once in a while you hear that a 1200 page collection of J.G. Ballard's short stories has been published, then you say, "short stories!"
"That's not all," you are told, "they just came out with another collection: Raymond Carver's stories in one volume."
You start doubting whether the size of the book does or does not matter.
But whatever the reason, surely, 2009 is the year of the short story. In my circles (readers, bloggers, etc) that may simply mean that the people we know have been successful in their short story writing and we ended up just focusing on reading short stories, and maybe elsewhere, in the world of speculative fiction, sci-fi, horror, it might actually be the year of the novel, but that doesn't matter now because I have been seeing a lot of evidence that points to the success of the short story. For one, major novelists have made it a point to publish a volume of short stories. I have mentioned names like Kazuo Ishiguro, Chimamanda Adichie, etc in previous posts.
We have to consider publishing decisions too: at first, it's the decisions publishers are making that can, in the first place, lead to the popularity of a genre, and remember, no sound publishing decision is made without putting the reader in the mix. Someone saw the reader interest and said, "Bingo! Let's do short stories!" Or the short stories themselves are so good that no one can ignore them.
People are reading short stories this year, which explains why they have won awards and have gotten on national and international bestseller lists. I have heard it said that an award does not necessarily mean that a work is being read or will be read. Now, how does that work? We may not consider judges readers, in the sense of the readers who walk into a book store to purchase a copy, but when I see a book on BBC or CNN, the NYT, or San Francisco Chronicle because it's been shortlisted for something, believe me, I will be in Barnes & Noble asking for it. Then as I look for these books, I usually end up finding another work, perhaps by a small press, which grips me with its first sentence.
I have read more short stories this year than I read in my literature courses, and believe me, I have come to understand my own writing in a different way.
As the year ends though, I am slowly returning to the novel. The return has turned out not be that slow--there is something about reading Orhan Pamuk that speeds up things a bit; you know you are reading The Museum of Innocence, but you find yourself trying to read Snow and My Name is Red. It becomes very clear again that while there has been much activity in the short story, things seem not to have slowed down in the novel genre.
Still....
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