photo: Dylan Cembalski via Flickr
When Atticus Books first invited me to submit thoughts on the short story, I immediately formed grand plans. I was going to write such an impassioned and persuasive essay that the masses were going to remember. For a brief moment, I was going to personally lead the renaissance of the short story. However, I then thought a little deeper.
After all, who could have read Hemmingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and still need an explanation? No essay of mine could illustrate the story any better than Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Anyone who hasn’t read these stories, or others like them, simply needs to. No explanation could do any better. Besides, somebody who refused to read short stories probably also wouldn’t read my essay.
No essay of mine could illustrate the story any better than Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Anyone who hasn’t read [this story], or others like [it], simply needs to. No explanation could do any better.
What I love about short stories is Etgar Keret’s “Fatso” and Haruki Murakami’s “The Second Bakery Attack.” What I mean is that I love the stories themselves. Though I think that short stories (due to the amount of information that the human brain can hold at one time) have the ability to present a perfect divine singularity for us to contemplate, I think the magic is in what people have done rather than the form itself.
That being said, what some people have done is truly sacred. No matter what else she does in her life, I will always remember Joyce Carol Oates as the writer of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Anyone who has experienced the magic already knows. Anyone who hasn’t just won’t understand.