Why Short Stories Matter More than Ever, by Randy Kraft
Feeling bombarded by maddening 24/7 news and social media feeds? Little time for the sheer pleasure of reading? Read a short story – there are a zillion of them bound and online, because a work of fiction gets to the heart of humanity, rather than a restating of the news of the day [although some short stories start there.]
Stories are our compass, they’ve always been. Cave drawings. Bible stories. Homerian journeys. We grew up with Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. And today, stories fit our shorter attention spans – you might think of them as the antidote to required reading.
No wonder more publishers are producing collections and anthologies, writing programs focus on the form, and literary magazines are emerging online even as revered print publications shut down. [There was a great sigh of sadness last year when Glimmer Train folded.]
When you read a story, you are in and out in short order, but the essence remains. The brevity itself packs a punch. I remember still the thrill of discovering Edgar Allan Poe’s Gold Bug collection and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series, before I moved on to the modernists – Katherine Mansfield, Grace Paley and Ann Beattie. Thanks to The New Yorker [one of the only commercial magazines still publishing short stories] I fell in love with E. L. Doctorow and Philip Roth, and discovered Irish masters like William Trevor and Edna O’Brien. These days I’m enthralled with a new generation, notably Lauren Groff and Ottessa Moshfegh.
Short stories are my go to reading when time is tight or when I need an infusion of inspiration. When my children were young and I had to earn an income, I had no time to read much less write a novel, but stories fit the clock. Stories kept me sane.
Writing the short story, however, is hard for me. The many I’ve written over the years always seemed fragments of larger stories. On the other hand, I love the form too much to dismiss it from my own canon, so I took a sabbatical between novels to write better short stories. I imagined a year or so would do the trick. That was 2016.
I also pledged to read four to five stories a week, a sort of master class. No two the same, but what they all have in common is an open door for the reader to enter the story in its midst. In a good short story, something is unfolding, and what came before, or what follows, is less significant than where we are. Fantastic to read, hard to write.
Despite this one similarity, there are as many ways to tell a story as snowflakes. I’m still a fan of the traditional, with its once-upon-a-time narrative, but I love the quirky and the abstract as well. Nobel winner Alice Munro’s stories are like capsule novels. Ray Carver and George Saunders make the reader a voyeur. Mary Gordon and Tessa Hadley layer stories like cake and writers like Elizabeth Strout, Jennifer Egan and Bernadine Evaristo have built award-winning novels out of linked stories.
Although stories may be short, they can take a very long time to write. A short story Diva, Debra Eisenberg, says she takes a year to write one story and she publishes collections by the decade. The perfection is in the precision.
Four years later, I’ve read countless stories and completed writing fifteen. Five were published in literary magazines and eleven are now compiled in a collection publishing in March entitled “Rational Women.” These revolve around contemporary females, all ages and stages, who make supposedly reasonable decisions about relationships and lifestyles, but which, too often, deny the passions of the heart. Or, the reverse. Something I think we can all relate to.
Some days, when time permits, I read a short story first thing in the morning, rather than let the news or the social media feed set my mood. Even better is to take a short story to bed. The most troubling or heart wrenching tales makes for sweeter dreams than the manic madness of reality.
I also recommend short story podcasts, like The New Yorker Fiction or The Writer’s Voice – like sitting by the fire listening to a good tale. Soothes the soul. Happy reading.
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Randy Kraft is the author of the novels “Colors of the Wheel” and “Signs of Life” and a forthcoming collection of stories, “Rational Women.” She is a retired journalist who continues to pen book reviews for a culture and entertainment website in southern California, where she resides. Her first blog for us, “Age: A Writer’s Ally” was published in 2013.
RATIONAL WOMEN
At the heart of these eleven stories is one question: are women the rational beings we mean to be?
Some are ruled by reason, while others allow passion to suppress good sense. In the search for balance, they find their best selves. Or not.
MEET THE RATIONAL WOMEN
On a business trip to Lucerne, a widow follows a stranger into the old town… A chemistry professor’s marriage implodes when his wife compounds her discontent… A white novelist writing about racism confronts the disdain of a black critic… A teacher takes her elementary students’ futures into her own hands … An empty-nester confronts an unexpected obstacle to fulfilling her dream… A late-life PhD candidate discovers her ex-husband still has a hold on her heart… A businesswoman questions her values when she learns her dead mother was never buried… A newspaper editor comes face-to-face with her biases when she misses the heart of a story… A once aspiring sculptor struggles to mold her newborn… At court to argue a minor trespass, a model citizen considers her crimes… In Paris to satisfy her mother’s last wish, a docile office manager’s future takes an unexpected turn.
In a voice reminiscent of Meg Wolitzer, Barbara Kingsolver or Margaret Drabble, stories swing between time and place and personal season, reflecting on what it means to make better choices in the new millennium.
BUY THE BOOK HERE
Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips
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