Subject: Re: What distinguishes short fiction from very short fiction, besides length?
From: J. Thomas Hummer (jthummer@jps.net)
Date: Wed May 10 2000 - 23:04:34 GMT
on 5/10/2000 18:47, Tim O'Connor at tim@roughdraft.org wrote:
> It is intriguing to consider what happens in masterpieces of the
> novel form, such as Ulysses, in which the writer takes what would
> ordinarily be the stuff of short fiction -- the events of a single
> day, a perception of Dublin much through the eyes of a wandering
> character -- and dares to encyclopedically examine that day, so that
> by the book's end, its readers (its "kindred art[ists]") have
> traversed a "short" distance but done so in breathtakingly extensive
> detail.
It would be interesting, too, to know what novels Poe had in mind when he
wrote that novels lack totality because they cannot be read in a single
sitting. As Poe was praising Hawthorne, a "publicly-unappreciated man of
genius," for his _Twice-Told Tales_, Hawthorne was writing _The Scarlet
Letter_, published after Poe's death. What would Poe have thought of that?
I've read _The Scarlet Letter_ in one sitting, and, as with your experience
of reading _Crime and Punishment_ in one sitting, it rocked my soul. And
then there's _Franny and Zooey_, eminently readable (and impressionable) in
one sitting. Perhaps Poe would have something different to say today about
the "objectionability" of the novel.
> My
> experience with really short fiction is that too often it's about a
> technique and not about engaging the reader. An exception, I think,
> is Hemingway's "A Very Short Story," which manages to compress an
> awful lot of character and malice in a tiny space.
This is true. The assumption underlying Poe's "single effect" theory of the
short (readable-at-one-sitting) story is, of course, the touch of a "skilful
artist."
> Poe makes an appearance this week in The New Yorker, where a
> policeman (who writes about police adventures, under a pseudonym)
> uses the writer as a kind of foil and as a nickname for himself. The
> author nicely plays off Poe's attraction to gloom and decay against
> the real gloom and decay of the Bronx. It's a nice touch, and a view
> we don't get to see often.
Coincidentally (or synchronicitly, as Jung might put it), I picked it up
today at the newsstand and missed that while browsing the table of contents.
Thanks for the tip.
Tom Hummer
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