A while back, Tania Hershman, editor of The Short Review, published a review of Dangerous Space that I appreciated for two reasons. First, because she liked the stories (I am not immune to this, says the writer with a smile). And second, because she did not come to them as a fan of speculative fiction: her perspective was that of an avid reader and writer of (what I would call mainstream) short stories. She crossed genre lines to read my work, and discovered that, like the mainstream, speculative fiction is a big space with room for many different kinds of story, many different kinds of reader.
Tania talks about this over at Vulpes Libris in a guest article that I recommend to anyone interested in the writing, publishing, reading and general vitality of short fiction. There’s also a good discussion in the comments, including remarks by a reader whose resistance to short stories is grounded in the common experience of (rant alert! rant alert!) the kind of short stories that pass for “real literature” these days. You know the ones I mean. You can read them every week in The New Yorker. They are precious and self-conscious and all about the writer’s voice. They are often dreary beyond belief. They revolve around characters whose purpose is to be small in some way — trapped and fearful, or hapless, or so quirky that it makes my teeth ache — and to stay small, because that’s how we know that the story is “meaningful.” I choose the word revolve carefully, because these stories are designed as collections of beautiful phrases that turn in stately (or in carnival) fashion around the “idea” of the character, around the “theme” of the story…. oh, please shoot me now. No wonder readers complain: even those whom the literati would characterize as “unsophisticated” (a word that just makes me want to howl in rage when applied to readers — hello, Ms. LitSnob, these people are reading!) can tell when they are being fed 5,000 words of self-indulgent bullshit whose deepest message is look how well I write!.
I want more than that. I want stories of people who feel so real to me that I hurt and hope and laugh with them, so real that they carry me out into a wider world, or deep into myself. I want writing that is so good it isn’t even there, writing that is not a performance but a bridge, a transporter beam, a mainline to the heart of the story.
Okay, rant off. For now.
I’m grateful to Tania for her passionate support of short work of all kinds. One of the grandest things about the InterWeb is that there is room for so much more than there used to be — more opinion, more art, more stupidity, more curiosity, more silliness, more difference. More connection, if we want it.
And certainly for more story, which is nothing but good.
I’m especially pleased today to point you to a couple of those stories. Sarah Kanning is a writer who generously gave a lot of time and words-in-email to a stranger (me) to help with background for my Kansas book. Sarah’s first fiction sale “Sex With Ghosts” is up at Strange Horizons.
And Karina Meléndez, who frequently comments on this blog and is currently translating Dangerous Space (the writer bows in the direction of Canada), has “The Sound of Morning Glory” up at Joyland.
Congratulations, Sarah and Karina, and my best wishes for many more stories out in the world.
I’ve been writing stories since the days when there were only a few print publications that would publish “that sci-fi stuff.” These days are better.
Kelley, thank you so much for the mentions, I am glad you like the piece I wrote for Vulpes libris, I was – and am – so fed up with the whining about the short story being dead, oh poor short story. Urgh. Makes me sick. So I thought I would try a different tack. All these people proclaiming its death obviously have no idea of the enormous number of Internet publications, more springing up all the time, who are publishing, as you say, such a wide variety of work, that most short stories are nothing like the New Yorker mini-novel stuff (I won’t use foul language here!). We know…. and if they don’t, it’s their loss, eh?
Thanks, Kelley, for many things. And for having me over at your blog again. And for reading my story. *doing the dance of glee* 🙂
I read Sarah’s “Sex With Ghosts” a couple of weeks ago (I keep an eye on Strange Horizons) and remember enjoying her humor quite a bit. I even had to stop every so many lines and just stare at the screen with a big smile and thinking, “She keeps doing that, wow.” Which is, she kept constructing those great moments with just a few words. I loved her narrator.
I’m going to translate Tania Hershman’s review into Spanish and include it in the promo-kit when there is one. I haven’t read her article on the short story yet, but will do so shortly.
Kelley, I can only imagine how hard it must have been in the past to get stories like yours published. Stories that don’t lend themselves to be categorized strictly this or clearly that. I’m taking a Science Fiction and Fantasy class right now and many people aren’t comfortable with stories that fall outside their expected sub-sub-genres (not even outside the main sub-genre!). Terry Brooks came up a lot as an evil doer for starting to include technology in his fantasy series. Does it really matter that much? I had no clue that readers could be so boxed in on their expectations. I want literature to help me step out of the box (even if it’s a fantastical box), not remain safely confined within. And that’s what you do with issues light years far more transcendent than flashlights vs. torches.
Oh, look! Tania is here. Hi 🙂 Great review. I’m going to read the article right away and come back.
Wow. I’m going to visit The Short Review obsessively from now on.
If readers (and sometimes even authors) knew how to approach the short story, we’d be onto something. I’ll have to use an analogy from elsewhere because I grew up reading short stories, so I can’t say I ever expected them to be anything other than themselves. Here it goes…
Stories are as related to novels as theater is to film. They may seem like they are interchangeable, and a lot of people will try to do just that. I once dated an actress and watched play after play with her. I was working in film then, so you can imagine how much we argued about the differences and similarities of these media, their merits and shortcomings.
Like those short stories that read like mini-novels, most of the plays we attended felt like ultra-low budget movies. Most of them bet their souls on pyrotechnics to keep the audience from jumping ship. I was often cocky and annoying enough to say, “Show me something theater can do that film can’t.” Well, I got my wish. The moment happened during Virtual Solitaire by Dawson Nichols. It was a monologue about, of all things, a virtual reality tester. My jaw dropped and I wanted to jump up and down with excitement. I couldn’t imagine any film achieving what Dawson (yes, the author was also the sole actor) could on that stage. It didn’t matter if the movie got a $200-million budget, it couldn’t get any better than Dawson’s performance. What a revelation.
That’s what I look for in short stories, the moments that can’t be obtained elsewhere. I just can’t get enough. I even physically sleep on short stories now that my bookshelves have ran out of space and I must keep stacking them under the bed.
Tania, by making readers aware of the options and giving them pointers on how to approach the chimeras of short fiction, you are basically taking that skeptic theater-trashing audience from play to play until they find their very own Virtual Solitaire.
Tania — Thanks for visiting! And thanks again for a great piece.
Karina — As an actor who trained for stage work, I’m pretty clear on the differences between theatre and film (grin). Being good at one doesn’t make one good at the other. And knowing how to “look sad” or scream loud doesn’t make one a real actor….
I get so tired of performance writing I could scream loud myself sometimes.