Chekhov's Mistress
Don’t Forget Your Shorts
The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander
around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular;
but the comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point.
- Mark Twain
It’s Strep Throat week here at the Parr household, but slightly more fun is Short Story Week over at The Millions blog, aimed at reviving the prominence of the short story form. Good idea. If you’re like me, you love short stories, but never quite comfortable without a novel in hand, so time dictates that short stories get pushed aside. Poor poor short stories.
But if you’ve ever read Guy Davenport, Ralph Ellison, William Trevor, Frank O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor, V.S. Pritchett, or duh, Chekhov, Poe, Joyce, Kafka, Borges, or Gogol, then you know that in the hands of a master the short story strikes a balance of detail and meaning that is more complete than most novels manage to achieve.
Over the past year I’ve read some amazing short stories by David Albahari, Etgar Keret, Aimee Bender, Witold Gombrowicz and Daniil Kharms (In fact, writing this I’m wondering why I don’t spend more time with the stacks of story collections sitting on my shelves or the lit-journals that I now have a separate bookshelf for)
All of the stories I’ve read recently share one thing (a bit less so with Albahari): they use wit to get their point across. Tomes have been written about the use of the comic in literature, but I think comedy is useful because, as any good story teller knows, with comedy timing is everything. That’s where short stories shine since the form dictates the timing and timing, meaning. What Etgar Keret manages to do, particularly reading through many of his stories at once, is to disarm you with humor so that the melancholy often present in his stories doesn’t overwhelm.
I’m going to try to and whip up a few posts on favorite short stories now that the Millions have gotten me thinking about it, and maybe we can just call this Short Story Year. In the meantime, go and read all the great posts at The Millions. or read my post on Gombrowicz that I don’t think anyone has read, or better yet, go read a story
comments
Hi, You are an inspiration to read Chekhov. I read quite a few of his stories and enjoyed. I’ll continue with others you just mentioned.
– hotmail (02/22 at 11:30 PM)
I have been using the reading of novels and novel-length material as an excuse to take little sidetrails and go through the backlog of literary journals to get caught up. But I could not resist the BASS 2007 and am pleasantly surprised to find some excellent material in this particular annual issue.
– susan (02/23 at 12:01 PM)
Susan, I used to punctuate my novel reading with a few short stories to clean my palate, so to speak, and by doing so - because I was usually looking to read something quite different than the novel I just read - I discovered a lot of new authors. Reading time has become so scarce for me though, it feels like I’m never in between anything!
– Bud Parr (02/25 at 03:26 PM)
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: February 22, 2008
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:3
- Links to this Post: Technorati
