Short Stories–Yea or Nay?

Has their time come again?

At lunch today with a group of girlfriends (including Kim), I mentioned the brilliant writer Maile Meloy whose recently published collection of short stories was reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review not long ago.   And in a recent post, Kim expressed surprise that four out of the six books nominated for the National Book Awards’ top honors were short story collections.  Are short stories having  some kind of a renaissance?

That question led to a discussion of how we all felt about short stories.  One friend said she loves reading them: they make the perfect bedtime reading, she explained (and I’ve heard others express this same feeling), because you can read one, finish it, and go to bed feeling like you’ve accomplished something.   For those of us who spend our days hurtling from jobs to children to housekeeping to email to lord knows what, getting through an entire novel is a task somewhat akin to climbing Mt. Everest only without any Sherpas to help drag us up.

The opposing point of view (which I put forth, more because I enjoy playing devil’s advocate than because of any actual negative feelings about short stories) is that short stories are inherently frustrating and off-putting because the moment you feel like you’ve “nailed” the characters–really gotten who they are and what motivates them–the story’s over and you have to get used to a whole new set of characters and a whole new situation.  Of course, if you stick to only reading one a night, that’s not as big a problem. 

But that doesn’t help you with the lack of emotional involvement: it’s fundamentally easier to put down a book of short stories and not pick it up again, because you just don’t get invested in the characters the way you do with a novel.

In fact, as an author I’ve been told that there’s very little point in publishing a collection of short stories once you’ve proven yourself as a novelist: you’re just not going to sell as many copies, because the majority of readers want to escape into another world for a period of time, to lose themselves in a character’s odyssey.  A novel gives you that.  Short stories, in general, don’t.   And short stories are more work for the reader who has to reorient herself each time she starts a new one, and since most people read for entertainment,  that’s just not always appealing.

But then there are the writers who are geniuses of the form.  I think Meloy is one of them (she had an earlier collection of short stories published several years ago, then two novels, then this one.  Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and many other literary publications).  Her controlled, dispassionate style works beautifully with the short story structure.   And no one would argue that John Cheever made a “marketing error” in focusing on short stories. 

The most eloquent argument for the short story for me is simply the collection Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger.  I can’t think of any book I’d want to read over and over again as much as that one.   His short stories stand alone but they also often do connect to one another–characters reappear or are referenced in multiple stories–so you could argue that he has found a way to get people more emotionally invested than they might otherwise be.  (My understanding is that Elizabeth Stout’s Pulitzer Prize winning Olive Kitteridge does a similar trick but I haven’t actually read it.)

As someone who always overwrites and finds it painful to edit a manuscript down to a mere 100,000 words, I never seriously considered writing short stories for a living, but a number of years ago I was asked to contribute to a collection called American Girls about Town.   The proceeds went to charity and contributing was a way to reach readers who would never hear of me otherwise.  I said yes.  My sister gave me the germ of an idea.  Within a few days I had written the story  and edited it (bliss for someone who spends most of her time writing and rewriting 400 page novels).  I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written.  The constraints forced me to move quickly, to write sparingly, to be less self-indulgent–and all of that improved my writing. 

I haven’t written a short story since then.  No one is waiting for Claire LaZebnik to publish a collection of short stories.  But if someone asks me to contribute to another collection, I will.  And as long as Meloy keeps writing short stories, I’ll keep reading them.  I’m also going to keep my fingers crossed that my kids’ high school English teachers assign Salinger over and over again so I have an excuse to reread “For Esme with Love and Squalor” another ten times and discuss it with someone who’s reading it for the first time. 

Given that I argued against reading short stories at lunch, I think I’ve come a long way in the last six hours.   I’d love to hear if you’re a short story lover or loather and why.