Subject: Re: What distinguishes short fiction from very short fiction, besides length?
From: Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Date: Wed May 10 2000 - 21:47:36 GMT
At 6:12 PM -0700 on 5/10/2000, Tom Hummer wrote:
> On why this is unattainable in the novel, Poe writes: "The ordinary novel is
> objectionable, from its length, for reasons analogous to those which render
> length objectionable in the poem. As the novel cannot be read at one
> sitting, it cannot avail itself of the immense benefit of *totality*....."
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.
But then, nobody I know reads Ulysses in a single sitting! (Though I
read Crime and Punishment in close to a single sitting, scuttled in a
corner of the Dartmouth library while visiting Hanover one weekend
[and, yes, a copy of Franny and Zooey in my bag for good karma in the
vicinity of the author]. The experience of reading so dense a book
so intensely makes for an incredibly indelible impression. I did the
same in high school with Great Expectations, but I confess that the
Dickens reading -- unlike Dostoevsky -- was for a class and was read
under a tight deadline.)
> In that light, I would think there really is very little, besides length, to
> distinguish short fiction from very short fiction, as the key to its
> character is whether it can be read at one sitting.
I have an anthology called "Sudden Fiction," which contains extremely
short stories -- one to perhaps three or four small pages -- and that
tried to showcase the minimalist movement of the 1980s, but while it
was intellectually engaging, there was not much emotional engagement.
Most of the stories were like local stations whizzed by when you are
on an express train. You know you passed SOMETHING, but you don't
quite know what, and you don't, in the end, really care. 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.
> But then, again, I could be all washed up. :) In any event, I long for
> another Poe to make an appearance.
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.
--tim
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