Exploring the Liminality: What ails the Short Story?

Short story genre has always been in the limelight for centuries either for its peak popularity or for generating sympathy as a dying art form. While some defend the form with less is more strategy, another group wonders about the future of short stories. Just recently when we thought it was fading into oblivion, it made a sudden comeback and that too with a bang when short story writers like Lydia Davis won the Man Booker International Prize, Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize and George Saunders won the Folio Prize.  It has always been a genre that constantly tried to defy the characteristics attributed to it. May be due to this rebellious trait, it has found its lovers and haters among the reading public too.

       Short story usually narrates an enclosed event carrying a constant emotion or mood. Writers of short story or novel make the same effort to generate the ideas for a plot though lengthwise the end result is different. It's usually the submission guidelines in various countries that determine the quality and content of a short story. Edgar Allan Poe tried to define short story as something that can be read in one sitting. Some others tried to contain it within a specific number of words. Times have changed and so has the genre. The time Poe took to read a single story is quite different from that of ours. In this busy life we contrivedly call one sentence or one paragraph stories as short stories too like Terribly Tiny Tales and two sentence horror stories .

        It was with the arrival of print technology in 19th C the golden age of short story begun. It was either used as a medium of entertainment or a medium to propagate serious content like pamphlets against the existing social evils. It was majorly literary magazines and periodicals like The Strand Magazine and Story-Teller of UK and The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, Scribner's, The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and The Bookman of USA that gave a major boost to the genre. Now with the introduction of eshorts readers can revisit their old tales from a new perspective anytime.

       Death of story-telling as an art has been prophesised by many authors like Walter Benjamin in his essay The Story Teller, Oscar Wilde in his essay The Decay of Lying and Henry James in Art of Fiction. This inconsistency that places short story genre in the liminality between life and death sheds light into the various issues it faces. Stephen King in his essay What Ails the Short Story (2007) describes how he would love to say "The American short story is alive and well" (King) but that he can't. As the editor of “The Best American Short Stories 2007", he read many submissions that were sent in or recommended but disappointment loomed over the entire selection process. He recounts about the disturbing trend in American bookstores where so-called Best Sellers were placed in a separate pedestal to grab attention and behind the shelf laid the less popular works. While magazines that adored californication and fad fashion trends enthroned themselves in the top shelf, Mr King found it physically and mentally painful to crawl on the floor to hunt for literary magazines that published short stories.

"We could argue all day about the reasons for fiction’s outmigration from the eye level shelves — people have. We could marvel over the fact that Britney Spears is available at every checkout, while an American talent like William Gay or Randy DeVita or Eileen Pollack or Aryn Kyle (all of whom were among my final picks) labours in relative obscurity. ..let us consider what the bottom shelf does to writers who still care, sometimes passionately, about the short story. What happens when he or she realizes that his or her audience is shrinking almost daily? Well, if the writer is worth his or her salt, he or she continues on nevertheless... What’s not so good is that writers write for whatever audience is left. In too many cases, that audience happens to consist of other writers and would be writers who are reading the various literary magazines, not to be entertained but to get an idea of what sells there. And this kind of reading isn’t real reading, the kind where you just can’t wait to find out what happens next (think Youth by Joseph Conrad, or Big Blonde by Dorothy Parker). It’s more like copping a feel reading. There’s something yucky about it." (King)

Though the genre appears to be less complex than the plot of a novel, some argue that it can have the same or more effect on its readers by its concise, quick reading format and having an open, abrupt or a surprising  ending like the works of Saki and O. Henry. Some short stories like Flowers for Algernon (1958) by Daniel Keyes was turned into a novel after its huge success in 1966. It had won the Hugo prize for Best Short Story award in 1960 and Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1966. The eagerness to meddle with a short story plot by the publishers to look like a clichéd novel's end happened in the case of Flowers of Algernon too.  In 1958, Keyes was initially approached by Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine to submit a story. When he submitted Flowers of Algernon, the editor of that time Horace Gold suggested him to write a happy ending for the male protagonist Charlie, where he marries his lady love and live happily ever after. Keyes refusal resulted in its publication on The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The same stubbornness of publishers for a 'happy ending' continued when he tried to get the subsequent novel get published. It was rejected by five publishers until Harcourt came up; which brings our attention to the impact of publishers on short stories.

It's interesting how short stories are introduced to us in school level. The English syllabus mostly consists of poems and short stories that are easy to cover. Novels are a burden for the academic sessions and are mostly excluded. When transition to the adult life occurs, the kids who used to read, grab novels as a form of liberation. They engorge all types of novels and distance themselves from short stories. Stephen King realises the true value and power of short stories by quoting the examples like Karen Russell’s St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves John Barth’s Toga Party and Wake by Beverly Jensen, where he marvelled how blessed he was to be paid to read such marvellous works.

In the essay The Irresistible Rise of the Short Story Sam Baker writes how short story is the perfect literary form for 21st century. He suggests that the growing popularity of short story prizes like the Costa Short Story Award, the BBC National Short Story Award, and the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Competition points to the bright future of the literary form. Even the well established novel writers migrate often to the 'other' platform to be in trend and have resulted in the rise of short story sales by 35 percent in 2013. Many scholars attribute this success to the rise in technology. Short stories cater to our short attention spans and fits well into mobile devices for easy read. Amazon Kindle and other platforms offer special discounts for short reads and provide free supplies as well.  Online platforms collect and select best read online stories and later even organise story reading sessions on a live stage. Elizabeth Day, the novelist and co-creator of the short story salon Pindrop says

 "Many people struggle to find the time to engage with a full length novel when they’re dealing with emails every second of every day or having to meet deadlines or rush home to put the kids to bed; a short story offers the perfect antidote – it’s the equivalent of listening to a single track of music instead of the whole album.” (Baker)

       By explaining how USA pampers the genre more than UK with its sheer number of literary magazines to promote the form, Baker quotes Alexandra Pringle, the editor in chief of Bloomsbury says how established magazines promote established writers and anti-establishment magazines promote the lesser known writers. The reading culture is evolving where readers pick what they want to read than preferring whatever the magazine editors choose for them.

"Interest has been gathering momentum. When we published our first collection there was little interest. Since then, a host of short story competitions, festivals, events, courses, readings, magazines and websites have sprung up, and more bookshops have dedicated sections. Almost unheard of 10 years ago. The best (short stories) leave you with something unforgettable in a few pages. They punch you in the guts, rather than take up lots of head space. It's this “brevity, cleanliness, specificity, taut writing” that attracts the attention of the new generation. " (Baker)

While some praise the form for its comeback, others despise the form for its liminal existence. For them novels are more fun. It enables them to come and go into the plot as they please. Interruptions and short story don't go hand in hand in most situations. While good novels are easier to find, one struggles to find one god short story in a heap of other 'unworthy' works. The very short form of the story tempts our mind to procrastinate its reading whereas novels demand attention and commitment. The time taken to process a novel pushes us into deep thoughts whereas short story looks for short escapes and time efficiency. It's this very favourable position the novel enjoys that prompts publishers to reject short story submissions from a new writer. Novels always sell better and they know it. Thus market and profit control the passion of readers and writers.

An article that appeared in the website LitReactor called Prose & Conversation: Death of the Short Story, two of their columnists Brian McGackin and Cath Murphy engage in a very relevant conversation. Brian hates to read short stories whereas Cathy loves to. Brian puts forward many arguments that show how the genre has its flaws.  He says literary short stories are never subtle. The plot looks like ideas that the author failed to condense into a poem or expand to a novel.  It's easier to write and helps them to payback financial debts like in the case of F. Scott Fitzgerald. If the short story is well received there is always a chance for the authors to "cannibalize" it to make a longer work.  When Cathy retaliates how Alice Munro and Chekov preferred the form because that's how they choose to express themselves, Brian admits it was a more practical form at the time of Chekov but jokes on how Alice Munro is Canadian and he can never understand their rationale in a typical American way.

"There's always this Thing they're trying to do, and they beat you over the head with whatever this Thing is because it's all one big exercise in ideas. . . A big problem many people have with poetry is that it's often vague and difficult to understand. It's usually very short, though, and its condensed nature means that poets need to get as much in as possible in the little room they have with which to work. But this means that some people love poetry, and some people hate it, not wanting to sift through meaning all the time. Novels provide more room to unpack symbols, obviously, but also to add countless layers of depth and meaning. Short stories exist in this weird limbo where, instead of adding more depth and meaning but staying poetically difficult, they often unpack one Thing to an obnoxious degree, making it dull and obvious. " (Murphy)

       For Brian, most short stories (which he thinks should be called stories and be liberated from a lexical burden) appear in the form of anthologies that carry one or two good works and other weaker additions. Most writers struggle to publish short stories so that it will be a good addition to their resume but it's meaningless since agents always look for good novels within new authors with or without a built up resume.

        Cathy takes the stand that the novel genre always dilutes the message what author intended to give to the audience. She aligns herself to the viewpoint of short story lovers that say a good story has a more sudden impact upon readers. It doesn't allow you to lose yourself in the plot and the induced day dreams. Instead it conveys the message in the perfect way and lets you focus on your other important daily matters. Many a times she has felt a bad novel or a story not worth telling could have been condensed into a short story, which could have saved the time of many.

Conclusion

       While short story can be a method of diversion to some or to focus on an issue, its death is nowhere near as long as it is backed by technology. It evolves through time and attains a flexibility that ensures it survival. Short story appears to be more intimate than novels. While many aspiring writers turn to short fiction to learn how to write, many realise how difficult it is to compact your idea into a short form; and in that way writing a novel is much easier.  It's the very discussion that surrounds the death of the short story genre that will unveil the true power of the genre to surpass its death sentence into the path of glory. 

   

Bibliography

·        Allison, Andrea. "Death of the Short Story." 18 November 2010. Write Anything Wordpress Blog. 2 April 2016 <https://writeanything.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/deathofashortstory/>.

·        Baker, Sam. "The Irresistible Rise of the Short Story." 18 May 2014. The Telegraph. 11 April 2016 <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10831961/Theirresistibleriseoftheshortstory.>.

·        Hansen, Arlen,J. Short Story: Encyclopedia Britannica. 14 August 2015. 30 March 2016 <http://www.britannica.com/art/shortstory>.

·        King, Stephen. "What Ails the Short Story." 30 September 2007. The New York Times. 2 April 2016 <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/books/review/King2t.>.

·        Murphy, Cath. "Prose & Conversations." 15 August 2014. LitReactor. 26 March 2016 <https://litreactor.com/columns/proseconversationdeathoftheshortstory>.