Sabina Murray: Why the Short Story Should Stand Tall

In the 42nd in a series of posts on 2011 short story collections entered for The Story Prize, Sabina Murray, author of Tales of the New World (Black Cat), compares short stories and chapters of novels.

The short story is a maligned form. Readers distrust it. Editors fear it. Reviewers ignore it. And writers, well, there is nowhere to hide in a short story, nowhere that a writer’s weakness is as exposed, so when the short story comes together and executes its promise, writers adore it. Otherwise, the short story can seem like the quippy, less ambitious relation of the novel. Of course, there are people who have built their reputation on the short story, people like Grace Paley and Alice Munro, so why is the short story seen to come up, so, well, short? One explanation is that the short story is held to the same standards as the novel—and how could a short story equal the breadth and depth of a novel? The truth of the matter is that most writers conceive of their short stories as part of a book, although the story has the added capacity to stand on its own. Novels in short stories come out of this—thematic linkage seems to imply a novel to some people, as if a novel is the only way that collected short stories can achieve the prestige of books. And of course there are short stories that explore the same characters, which is the most typical scenario of a “novel in short stories.” But it’s still not a novel. It’s a collection of short stories with a limited cast, and why would it aspire to anything else?

The issue with short stories is that, as a narrative, a short story really can’t compete with an equally well-executed novel. But that’s not the point. My argument, that the short story is really a unit of a book, would lead us to pit the short story against a more reasonable unit of narrative, I suggest a chapter. Sitting ringside at that event, I would put my money on the short story: having written both, I feel certain that the short story would knock out the chapter in the first round.

Story doctor: Anton Chekhov

I am a writer who admires the power and articulateness of the short story, and I write books. Tales of The New World is a book all about explorers. There is no eponymous story in Tales. I think of the book as a map of cultural-encounter history, much as I think of my last collection of short stories, The Caprices, as a map of the Pacific Campaign of WWII. These stories are brought together in an obvious thematic way, but I believe that all collections of short stories create a wholeness, even when bundled long after their original publication. The Penguin classic of some of Chekhov’s later work, The Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904, is a fine and deep exercise in human psychology and, like a sparrow trapped in a tent, manages to frantically touch every limit of what it is to be human. I imagine my uncollected stories in the various files, drawers, and boxes of my house yearning to each other like metal filings to a magnet: if they could, they would say, “Put us in a book.”

Also, fiction in general stands on the shoulders of people who—as is often the case—were most inventive and wild in their short fiction, people like Hawthorne, Conrad, Paul Bowles, and Flannery O’Connor. Their stories caused tremendous spikes in the evolution of fiction. And there are the greats who paid attention to the short form and left some lasting impressions there, people like Joyce and Beckett, James, and Melville. So why isn’t short fiction given the critical attention of the novel? We can blame publishers because that’s where we see art and money come together: a bad marriage, no doubt. But money puts some power in the hands of the consumer, so if short stories were the hot ticket items, the tables at major bookstores would be lousy with them. Clearly, there is no good reason.

If there were reason, or simply justice, the short story would be the apex of fictional derring-do. If there were justice, effort would be recognized. For if labor expended equals accomplishment, my short-story books would win over all my novels. To close, if work is something that daunts you, steer clear of short fiction: The novel is a much kinder taskmaster.

Rebecca Rosenblum on Finding the Right Point of View

In the 41st in a series of posts on 2011 short story collections entered for The Story Prize, Rebecca Rosenblum, author of The Big Dream (Biblioasis), describes how a shift in perspective energized a story that wasn't working.

The story in my book, The Big Dream, that posed the most technical problems was probably “Cheese-Eaters.” The earliest draft was from the point of view of a young graphic designer named Andy, and it described her terrible first day of work. That first draft was a lame lame story; Andy’s narration was alternately pathetic and embittered, and the arc of the story was confusing and ultimately aimless. Nothing wound up actually happening in the story the way I wanted it to—actually, I couldn’t manage to pursue the story far enough to make anything happen at all. It was that boring.

I think the problem was that I identified too closely with Andy. I’d been in some bad work situations similar to this one, and I guess I was using the story to work out a bit of rage I had felt—it was really closer to a rant than a story. No matter how firmly I told myself to focus on creating fully realized characters and a complex situation, I seemed stuck in my own simplistic point of view—basically, “I was so hard done by.”

It was tempting to decide this was an emotional problem and set the story aside until I’d worked through it. But it wasn’t an emotional problem; I was no longer in a poor work situation and it would’ve been a stretch to say I was emotionally scarred. The truth was, the problem wasn’t my emotions, it was the construction of the story—it was cast in the wrong point of view. As soon as I switched the perspective from Andy to her seemingly brusque and unlikeable colleague Raeanne, I began to see the potential for something interesting to actually happen. Strangely—but not really—this was because Rae was someone I knew less well, and I had had fewer experiences that were like hers. This meant I had to work harder, invest more deeply in imagining her world, rather than simply tossing in some recycled experiences or opinions of my own.

Of course, this was not the only way the story could have gone. There’s definitely an interesting piece of fiction to be written about a shy, self-absorbed young woman who never really connects with any of her colleagues and takes it as a personal rejection—that’s just not the story I wanted to write. My collection is about characters in interaction with their worlds and the people in them; I was determined to write about that.

I think a big part of writing is knowing when the work is unproductive, and what solutions are available from a technical point of view. Yeah, it does take a strong interest—a passion, a rage, love or hate—to write about something, but there also has to be a workable structure to contain all that feeling. It was really exciting to change something so fundamental to the story and have it finally come alive. Of course, it meant admitting I had the piece all wrong the first time around, but I think admitting when you’re wrong is a big part of writing too.

Lynne Barrett: My Writing Process, a Tango

In the 40th in a series of posts on 2011 short story collections entered for The Story Prize, Lynne Barrett, author of Magpies (Carnegie Mellon University Press), describes the "delicate negotiations between character, form, and tone" that occur when she writes a story.

A story, I’ve discovered, is an imp in disguise. At first, some happy morning at my writing desk, it promises to be easygoing. But soon it drags me from the table during dinner and drives me right past the turn for work. I fill scraps of paper with its slightest hints. While a friend is telling me about a sad situation, the imp suggests a character’s next move, and I have to muffle a laugh. 

I work at the story till there’s at least a full draft and preferably several overstuffed ones. I have learned it’s best not to question or criticize it too much till I have a lot amassed, because the story will, as I revise it, soon enough bring despair. Often, it has beckoned me to try some form I thought would be fun that turns out to be hellishly hard. To orchestrate a narrative that uses the links and “pages” of a website or to construct an abecedarian about a hurricane season is obviously a challenge. But what isn’t? To show two lovers awake during a thunderstorm, one telling the other a story from his past, seems simple, but the telling, the listening, the questions asked and answered, have to change the relationship forever, which isn’t simple at all. Nor is a tale that spirals through thirty years. And what’s to be done when a malicious gossip columnist spits out lizards? As I revise, I find that every invention and deletion involves delicate negotiations between the characters, form, and tone, and when I get impatient and yank, the imp tells me I’m going to ruin the whole thing if I keep that up.

At this point, I put the story aside, saying it must rest. I don’t think of this, you’ll notice, as me resting. No, the story has become alive enough that I worry it’s getting tired and confused, it’s stressed out and likely to succumb to some infection from drastic cutting or forced emotion, it’s in danger—from me. I’ll start something else that promises to be easy—a fast little riff that will just take 8 pages, won’t it? 

An undisguised imp

My old imp broods among its be-scribbled drafts in the crate called, optimistically, “new stories,” and shivers and simmers in the hard drive, waiting. Until (and this might take a week or a year), I hear it croon, “Hey, come take a look. Give me another chance.” And since that 8-page story has stretched to 33 and looks to have some very serious, possibly fatal, malady, I put it aside and return to the other, which, after all, may not have been so doomed as I thought. 

I take one fresh printed copy out of the house—this is my rule—ideally finding somewhere pleasant to sit among strangers. With no pen or pencil in my hand, I read it as coolly as I can. I may rediscover its old charms—there’s that sense of humor, and it’s got some muscle as it swings from one scene to another. But its balance has shifted. The story tells me, after our time apart, that it’s got some concerns I hadn’t been aware of. Let’s say it’s that abecedarian one, which I thought was about the mischief some men get up to at the warehouse they’re converting to a private hurricane shelter. It’s now about the exposures and mercies of a marriage, and it raises questions about anxiety and courage. The characters weren’t just goofing around; did I underestimate them? 

All this seems worth my renewed devotion. But I hesitate because I notice that something— a turn of the action, or a character’s voice, or simply one line—sticks out. It’s bolder than the rest, or stranger. Perhaps this was the problem all along. Should it go? Can I sand it down or lop it? No. Reluctantly, queasily, I see that what obtrudes is what I most need. It simply demands that everything else must match it. Sometimes, I’ve learned, this thing—this imp’s particular oddity, let’s call it—will be, when the story is published, what readers say they most like, though they don’t (unless they are writers) realize how much had to be done to deserve it. 

Again smitten, I follow the story home, ready to try to give it what it wants. 

And this, which I call my “writing process,” this tango of infatuation, fervor, frustration, abandonment, rediscovery, tenderness, antipathy, and surrender, I hope to keep dancing with the imps.

Alethea Black's Nocturnal Habit

In the 39th in a series of posts on 2011 short story collections entered for The Story Prize, intern Phedra Deonarine interviews Alethea Black, author of I Knew You'd Be Lovely  (Broadway Books).

Phedra Deonarine: Is there a story collection you consider your ideal of what a collection
should be?

Alethea Black: An ideal collection would be one that surprises me and enlists my heart. I suppose I'm drawn to the same things in stories that attract me in people: charm, inventiveness, humor, compassion, intelligence. When I was first learning to write, collections by Lorrie Moore and Ralph Lombreglia moved me deeply. This year, I'm loving the new books by Jim Shepard and Steve Almond. My all-time greatest hits include Jesus' Son and The Things They Carried.

PD: Which story in your collection required the most drafts or posed the most technical problems?

AB: "Mollusk Makes a Comeback" It was one of the first stories I ever wrote, and it went through many, many drafts (and many bad titles, including "Doughnut Holes" and "Please Continue to Hold"). I don't save all the iterations of a story as I work—if I did, my desktop would be even more cluttered than it is—but the collected drafts of that story would almost be an archaeological record of someone learning how to write.

A story in the making: (L to R) dog, bone, dog

Conflict is the engine that keeps a story rolling—I sometimes tell aspiring writers that every story is about two dogs and one bone—yet "Mollusk" was a story about a woman in conflict with herself. Inner conflict is difficult to portray without committing any number of literary sins, and I struggled with a way to dramatize her paralysis and boredom without making the story itself boring and inert.

PD: What are you working on now?

AB: I'm still tweaking a short novel called The Key, even though it's officially finished and with my agent. (I think I've entered the editing phase Oscar Wilde described: "I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.") I also have notes for the next book, called The Lucky Brother, but I'm circling in the grass and have yet to lie down with it.

PD: Which writers were mentors to you as you worked on early versions of these
stories?

AB: I've had the most wonderful teachers, to whom I'll always be grateful: Lee K. Abbott, Alice Elliott Dark, David Gates, Joshua Henkin, Jeff Jackson, Thom Jones, and Meir Ribalow.

PD: What is your writing process like?

AB: I often write at night, in bed. I felt bad about writing in bed until I learned that Sid Mukherjee is also a bed-writer. I wish I could wean myself from the nocturnal schedule, but I suppose I should simply be grateful the work gets done. (I wrote about this habit recently) I have little method or ritual, and I confess I'm not a big self-disciplinarian. If I'm in the thick of a project, I might write all day for weeks, but there are also fallow weeks when I don't write at all.

PD: Were there any stories you wrote and wanted to include, but that didn’t make the cut for this volume?

AB: I have a triptych of short shorts that my editor and I briefly considered including, but we already had an Author's Notes appendix, telling the stories behind the stories; to have some sort of dim sum surprise as well felt too complicated. I'm now glad we didn't. I don't think flash fiction—my own, at least—provides as satisfying a narrative experience as longer stories. And I like to satisfy.

David Galef Thinks Thematically

In the 38th in a series of posts on 2011 short story collections entered for The Story Prize, David Galef, author of My Date with Neanderthal Woman (Dzanc Books), tells of a story that took him three years to write, one that got reworked for a magazine, and one he practically wrote in a single sitting.

Which story in your collection required the most drafts or posed the most technical problems? 

In My Date with Neanderthal Woman, the story that caused me the biggest headache was “The Adjuster,” a long, over-eloquent narrative about an academic type, Berger Bergson, whose mission is to question the easy wisdom of aphorisms (see what I mean?). Unable to go beyond the premise and a few establishing scenes, I put down the story for three years and finally finished it when I realized where Bergson’s career would take him. I felt as if I had to invent everything for him, not just co-opt details from lives I knew.

If you’ve substantially reworked any of the stories that originally appeared in magazines, can you explain what you changed and why? 

The one most worked over was “All You Can Eat,” originally titled “Buffet.” The editor at Bull: Fiction for Men liked the piece, which was all of three pages, but made a number of improving suggestions. I followed them up, only to receive more comments, and because I valued the editorial feedback I was getting, I gamely addressed them all. This process occurred about five times. In the end, the whole storyline altered, including “in the end,” where the main character has a sort of nagging non-epiphany.

What is your writing process like? 

What with teaching, administering a creative writing program, and trying to be a good family member, I see my writing process these days as “Prepare some notes ahead of time, then grab whatever time you can at the keyboard. Repeat as necessary.”

How did you decide to arrange the stories in your collection? 

Because this collection is a mixture of conventional-length stories and a lot of short-shorts, the trick was to avoid both the short-long-short pattern, like unsuccessful Morse code; and also sequences of shorts, like beads on a string. Finally, I had to think thematically: what would best riff off what.

At what stage do you start seeking feedback on your work and from whom? 

I show my work to a few friends and try not to abuse the privilege. My wife, who’s a journalist and magazine editor, is excellent at telling me when something feels dated or just lacks a hook.

What do you think a good short story collection should deliver? 

Seventeen different stories: seventeen different worlds. Otherwise, might as well read a novel.

What book or books made you want to become a writer? 

I read all over the place when I was growing up, and still do, but the books I most admired then were those with really fine “what if?” premises, anything from Roald Dahl to P. G. Wodehouse, or fantasy and science fiction by authors like Robert Heinlein or Ray Bradbury.

What kind of research, if any, do you do? 

I check facts as necessary, especially if I position a character in an air conditioning plant or have her working as a bartender, since I’ve never held down either of those jobs. And though I don’t love research the way some authors seem to, I try to go onsite, because you never know what’s going to turn up: the unsuccessfully disinfected odor from the soup kitchen, or the stack of business folders shoring up a flower pot in someone’s office.

If you dabble in any other non-literary forms of expression, what do you do and how does it inform your work? 

Well, I publish all over the map and call myself a shameless eclectic, but I’d be hard put to distinguish between my literary and non-literary endeavors. I do translation, poetry, literary criticism, and humor columns alongside my fiction and don’t think about whether they’re literary. It all just cross-pollinates my work.

Have you ever written a short story in one sitting and not revised it later? 

Yes, though that happens less and less as I grow older. Still, the title story of this collection, “My Date with Neanderthal Woman,” was written in one go and left virtually intact. The usual irony: it’s the one that’s had the most success, from publication in a Norton anthology to Spanish translation and being performed by a professional actor in Los Angeles.

Have you had a mentor, and who was it? 

Alas, no. Teachers, yes, including Joyce Carol Oates, Ivan Gold, and Stephen Koch. Maybe I’m just not the mentee type.

What’s the longest narrative time period you’ve ever contained in a short story? 

A lifetime, cradle to grave, though my character died young, at the age of 43. At the time, I thought that was fairly old.

"Boo is Under the Blanket" by Lou Beach

In the 37th in a series of posts on 2011 short story collections entered for The Story Prize, Lou Beach, author of 420 Characters (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), goes undercover with his dog.

© Issa Sharp

Boo is under the blanket. Boo is our brindle Chihuahua, bristly near the tail; the blanket is a faux leopard skin synthetic throw, unnaturally soft. Their patterns clash, a variegated mash-up. She hates the cold more than she hates the mailman and burrows under blankets and pillows and piles of laundry left on the bed to get warm. We cover her with an assortment of pooch blankets and towels and sweatshirts, or place her near the space heater, the wall vent.

Today the blanket has been patted into a mound around her, as one would pat a ball of dough for bread, and it resembles a small spotted igloo. Only Boo’s nose sticks out, shiny and moist, and I can see the side of her mouth, the gums pulled back to reveal a row of teeth as sharp and uniform as the cutting edge on a box of tin foil. Her cozy campsite is on the bed near the corner and I get down on my knees and stick my head into the opening, forcing her head back inside.

My head now blocks the light but for a few strands that stray in with me. Boo and I are in her dark little cave together, the side of my face touching her flank. I AM my face in here. She makes a funny little sound that I read as either annoyance or resignation or a cocktail of the two, but no warning growl comes from her so I relax for our visit. I read somewhere that a dog’s nose is one thousand times more sensitive than a human’s and I wonder if I have bad breath or if she smells the tuna melt I had an hour ago, or if what a human considers bad breath might in fact be like an air freshener or perfume to a canine.

I can smell her body and it’s not an unpleasant odor. She is a clean little dog, not prone to rubbing in dead stuff like our big dogs had done and there is a slightly warm and nutlike quality to her fur. I press my nose to her neck and inhale and push my face against her. She issues a low growl and I stop. Etiquette has been established, protocol defined, and we begin. 

I tell her how much I like her place, how comfortable it is and thank her for allowing me to visit (not mentioning that I had in fact barged in) and she exhales a little breath and I realize that she too had had some tuna melt a while ago. A bit of light reflects off her eye and I can tell she is looking at me. Dogs are always looking at their humans, reading moods and intentions and expressions, hoping for that lift of the brows that means “Walk” or the shifting in the chair that precedes going to the kitchen, that great temple of treasures.

I’m a little dizzy from lack of air but I keep talking to her, complimenting her on the décor, asking what she’s been reading and if her Pilates classes have strengthened her core, does the cat ever visit. I’m getting silly, but I’m easily amused and continue probing her about her financial situation, squirrels or rats (which is harder to catch?) and why she doesn’t like beagles. My glasses are fogging and I close my eyes. I hear the slight whistling breath that indicates Boo has fallen asleep and soon I nod off as well.

Someone kicks the bottom of my feet and I wake suddenly and jump up, the leopard skin throw on my head, a wacky kufiya. Boo leaps off the bed and runs down the hall. My wife stands before me, hands on hips, a look on her face that a dog can’t make. “You know,” she says “if you keep this up, you’re going to deprive your brain of oxygen to the point where your already tattered thinking will finally disintegrate. AND you’ll freak that poor little animal to where she’ll bite your nose off one of these days. You’re a grown man, stop fooling around.” She pulls the blanket from my head, drops it on the bed and follows Boo down the hall, into the kitchen.

I sit on the edge of the bed and rub my eyes, then stand and rub my stomach. Maybe I should eat something, I think, but they are in the kitchen and I’m feeling a bit chagrined. I lie down and put the leopard skin blanket over my face, close my eyes and continue my story writing exercise, this time with an invisible dog.

Brian Doyle: Seeking the "Right Mix of Fury, Reasonable Nonsense, Rant, and Fantasy"

In the 36th in a series of posts on 2011 short story collections entered for The Story Prize, Brian Doyle, author of Bin Laden's Bald Spot & Other Stories (Red Hen Press), discusses influences as diverse as Robert Louis Stevenson, The King James Bible, and his children.

Which story in your collection required the most drafts?
Probably “Pinching Bernie,” a story about some Boston guys who know some guys going to Rome to kidnap His Eminence Bernard Cardinal Law, late of the Archdiocese of Boston, from where he is hiding out in a Vatican City church, to bring him back to Boston for their own quiet justice, which is not what you think. I really wanted the right tone for this – just enough possibility, rage, humor, punch in the heart – and I tinkered with it until I thought I had the right mix of fury, reasonable nonsense, rant, and fantasy. Rantasy.

At what stage do you start seeking feedback on your work and from whom?
When I think I am finished with a piece I show it to the woman who married me, who is the most glorious perfect First Reader of all time because she couldn’t care less about literary stuff and style and lyrical passages and shimmering tone and subtle craft and other muck like that; all she cares about is if there’s a good story there, fiction or not. The kiss of death from her is that’s nice, and the greatest compliment is o my god. I shoot for o my god. (Sentence of the day, so far.)

What do you think a good short story collection should deliver?
Worlds. Moments. A look through a crack in a door you never even imagined in the whole possible universe of doors. A suggestion of worlds way beyond not only this world but the world of the story – a great story gives you the impression that the world of the story is so real that the characters keep going past the end of the story and you only visited a moment. A punch in the heart. A glimmer of what if. A shiver of What It Is beneath the words we use for What It Is.

Is there a story collection you consider your ideal of what a collection should be?
Collections are uneven by nature; no one can write a great story every time out, not even a Mary Lavin or Flannery O’Connor; but there are some collections I read again and again for their quality, their joy and power even when they are sad, their unforgettability – Flannery, of course (maybe the finest female writer in American history, period, eh?), Julia Whitty’s A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga, Frank O’Connor’s Guests of the Nation, Stevenson’s The Merry Men, Tim Winton’s The Turning, Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, the Great Frog Hunt chapter of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. And the Old Testament, the greatest collection of lewd and bloody short stories ever, which is best to read in the King James Bible translation, all thorny and prickly and shouldery language o god I love it, although the Newer Book is better, the greatest quest novel ever. On the Dusty Road, by four guys who were better poets than Kerouac.

What book or books made you want to become a writer?

Kon-Tiki afloat

E.B. White’s essays, especially One Man’s Meat – you mean Literature can be like talking? Cool! Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday by Steinbeck, and Flannery’s stories – you mean Literature can be funny and real, not snuffy and confusing and top heavy with symbols of sex and death? Yessss. Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl – you mean you can write beautifully and entertainingly about fun stuff? It doesn’t have to be all neurosis and adultery like Updike? Robert Gibbings’ books – what, you can write like an angel about boats? and illustrate your own books? Cool! Jim Kjelgaard. Twain. A.J. Liebling. More than anyone else, Robert Louis Stevenson, who I think was the first writer who made me realize you could be funny, and interesting, and poignant, and angry, and delighted, and hilarious, and real, and you could imagine anything, and write with dash and verve and brio, it didn’t have to be Heavy Literature, it could be Wild Stories! Huge epiphany. I don’t think I ever really recovered from that.

If you dabble in any other non-literary forms of expression, what do you do and how does it inform your work?
I am a dad, a dad, and a dad, and being a dad has done more than anything else on this bruised and blessed earth to make me a better writer – having kids underfoot and loving them and roaring at them and listening to them made me pay attention a thousand times more, made me a thousand times more absorbed in the wrestle and stutter and song of language, shredded any ego and arrogance I might have been building up, made me attend to the power and immediacy of story, and lose all the snuffy sniffy artsy aspects of writing, and I was really looking forward to being fatuous and self-absorbed, too. What a bummer. I was even going to smoke a pipe.