The short story allows us in a short space of time to understand huge things, huge dilemmas. Short stories pull us into their world and shake us up.
A short story is a small moment of belief. Hard, uncompromising, often bleak, the story does not make things easy for the reader. It is a tough form for tough times. If the novel sometimes spoon feeds the reader, the short story asks her to feed herself. A story asks the reader to continue it after it has finished or to begin it before it began. There is space for the reader to come in and imagine and create. There is space for the reader to think for ages, to mull the impact of a story over, to try and recover from it! The short story is such a perfect form, you should really be able to lift it up and carry it into a huge cornfield, and it should still glow.
A reader can contain an entire story in her head and read a story in a single sitting. The story often makes a reader aware of what she is not being told. What doesn't happen in a short story is as important as what does. Like pauses in music; it is impossible to think about the short story without also thinking of its mysterious silences.
Perhaps the thing I love about stories most is that they give the appearance of space of length, so that when you return to them you are amazed at how the writer has created that effect. A whole life in a few pages.
Some of the ones that make excellent reading....
· Guy de Maupassant - 'The Necklace'
· Jack London - 'To Build A Fire'
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Flannery O'Connor - 'A Good Man is Hard to Find'
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Joyce - 'The Dead'
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Roald Dahl - 'Twist in the Tale'
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Ray Bradbury - 'The Veld' and 'The Playground'
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William Sansom - ‘The Vertical Ladder’
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Doris Lessing - 'Through the Tunnel'
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Arthur Porges - ‘The Ruum’
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Graham Greene - ‘The Destructors’
· Any story in Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Speaking with the Angel, featuring a story by Nick Hornby called ‘Nipple Jesus’
· Pigs is Pigs by Ellis Parker Butler
Roald Dahl, James Thurber and James Herriot have always been favourites!I completely agree with you in how short stories create the illusion of a lengthy read, which is in fact but a few pages! Moreover, the beauty lies in how the author tactfully and subtly gives us a further insight to the dimensions of the characters or the story itself!
ReplyDeletethere's a lovely collection called THURBER CARNIVAL...check it out sometime( british council...dont know...he is an american writer)...otherwise borrow it from me....
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