Course Introduction
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Dr. Bordelon's The Short Story: On Campus |
Course Introduction Since people began using language there have probably been stories. It's easy to imagine cave men sitting around a fire whiling away a long ice age night with tales of the mastodon that got away -- or the one that squashed Urg. I wonder how long it was before an enterprising homo sapiens noticed that reshaping the flow of the action would produce more satisfied grunts. And from there, it was only a short (though important) leap to adding details or events (which didn't necessarily occur) to elicit not only grunts, but an extra bone to gnaw on. Thus was born the oral tradition, the idea of poet -- or maker in Greek -- who wove tales of fancy, heroes, epic wars, and the gods. Once language was codified and tamed into a semiotic system (Proto-Semitic language developed between 20th and 15th centuries BCE), the traditions of epic poetry and drama, both in the Eastern World (the epic poem Mahabharata , circa. 400 BCE) and the Western World (the epics the Iliad and the Odyssey circa 10th century BC and the drama of Aeschylus circa 5th century BCE) rose, and for centuries these forms, and shorter lyrical poetry, dominated what was considered literature. Of course, stories in prose existed (Petronius' Satyricon [circa 60] is often cited as a proto-novel), but were disparagingly classified entertainment or satire: only poetry and drama earned the exalted title of Literature. Of course, the "Urg" factor cannot be discounted. Along with these written and more formal literary forms there remained the oral tradition of story-telling. These tales, used to transmit the culture and religion of oral cultures -- and more prosaically, to pass time and instill a proper fear in children -- were grounded in the world of the folk, and thus considered separate from the rarified world of Literature. In fact, one of the first story cycles, the tales in The Decameron (written in the 14th century by the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio) with their bawdiness and rambling, episodic nature, owe more to the conventions of folk tales than to the canonical writings of the period. Of course, short, anecdotal stories were printed throughout the centuries, but it was not until the19th century, when a sudden interest in the short story genre helped establish short stories as a specific type of fiction, separate from what might be termed a simple tale. Oddly, the major factors contributing to this sudden burst of activity in short stories weren't merely aesthetic, but social, economic, and mechanic: a critical mass of people had settled into urban areas and had developed enough discretionary income and leisure time to support a large reading audience. Additionally, with the invention of wood pulp paper and the rotary steam press, publishers were able to transform the laborious and expensive process of printing into a more mechanized and cost-efficient procedure. These factors, in turn, led to an explosion of print sources. For instance, in America the number of daily newspapers went from 138 in 1840 to 2,971 in 1860 and magazines and books experienced similar gains (Bode 154). This sudden increase in print sources meant that publishers needed words to fill the pages; thus was born the hack -- oops -- paid journalist/writer. These newspapers and magazines were filled, not only with news, but with short stories, chapters of novels, and poetry. Indeed, most of the stories we're reading were first published in magazines. The market demand meant that writers could now make a living (though for most a rather meager one) writing stories. By the mid-nineteenth-century, the short story was practiced in all countries (Charles Dickens in England and Alexander Pushkin in Russia are among some foreign examples). Yet most of the early to mid-nineteenth-century writers we now consider masters of the genre -- Washington Irving, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne -- are American. Poe was one of the first to formulate an aesthetic of the short story. In a review of Hawthorne's short story collection Twice Told Tales , he argued that a short story derives its strength from its length; it should be capable of being read at "one sitting" (47). This brevity fosters what he called "the unity of effect" (46), a single dominant impression or feeling evoked by the story which he believed should decide the selection of every single word. Like all literary definitions, this is an overly narrow view of the genre, yet it is an initial working out of what some practitioners see as the aim of short stories, different in kind from the more varied texture of the novel, or more reflective nature of lyric poetry. By the late nineteenth-century, the genre was firmly established. The turn of the century saw the rise of writers as diverse in approach as Anton Chekov, a Russian writer who mastered the art of turning small, seemingly inconsequential events or details in a person's life into high art, and Stephen Crane, an American naturalist writer interested in capturing the rough and often violent struggle of existence. By the twentieth-century, the genre became especially popular in America. As our reading list shows, much of the durable fiction of this century has originated in America. While we'll study South American and European writers, the majority of the authors are American. Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg Ohio (1919) and Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time (1925) along with the stories of Chekov (who wasn't widely available in English until the 1920s) are bellwether collections that shaped the genre for the rest of the century (our textbooks contains selections from each of these writers -- though not my favorites). Together, their emphasis on characters and de-emphasis on plot set out one of the predominant aesthetics of modern short fiction. Two later developments of note include the rise of post-modern fiction (works which acknowledge that they are fiction) and the renaissance in the American story fostered by Raymond Carver. From our reading list, Jorge Luis Borges (1940s-1960s) and Tim O'Brien (1990s) both play with the idea of story-telling, simultaneously exposing its artifice while engaging in complex and riveting narratives. Carver, in story collections such as What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981) exhibits a distinctly different approach to fiction. He believed that writing about "commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language" (15) could invest them with emotional significance; exploring the drama in working-class life, his work led to a renewed interest in the genre that continues today. This, in a nutshell, is how short stories developed from Org's "Big Hairy Beast Almost Kill Me" (circa. ? BCE) to Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" (circa. Now). For a more detailed survey of the genre, Charles E. May's The Short Story: The Reality of the Artifice (which is in our library's holdings) is a good place to start. Check, especially, its detailed annotated bibliography. By this time, you're probably saying, "Okay, enough with the history, how about a definition?" Good question. Ranging in length from a single page to around one hundred, short stories somehow capture the range of experience that is human life. Unlike a novel, their compressed length allows you to hold the complete story in your head, mulling and chewing over the details without forgetting what happened in chapter fourteen. In a sense, you can hold a story in your hand, like a toy globe peopled with words instead of bodies. This idea of creating a miniature world is often cited as a rationale for writers interested in the form. In response to the question "Do you see an inner cohesiveness, a miniature world, in your works?" Bernard Malamud replied "I like to be told that I've created a world" (qtd. in Solotaroff 151). Malamud's response captures the magic of short stories. They aren't little moral bromides or critical thinking exercises meant to be consumed and/or regurgitated in a classroom: they are a particular person's response to the world around them, a kind of transmutation of life into words. My method of teaching (hopefully) and reading reflects this view of fiction. First, I read and enjoy the story. If good, I willingly suspend disbelief and enter its world. Later, and on a more analytical basis, I work at a basic understanding of the mechanics of the story -- plot, character, point of view, symbolism -- but what I always come back to is the vision of life offered by the writer. Just what are the prominent features of the world created by the author, and how does this world reflect on the human condition? Thus, you'll find me continually turning to examples from everyday life -- and from history, psychology, anthropology, art, sociology, etc. -- to explain the beauty, relevance, or meaning of a particular story. After all, literature in general, and in our case, short stories, is about love lost or gained, the curious relationship between language and reality, a father shooting his son's murderer, a man learning to "see" with the help of a blind man; in short, it is about the flotsam and jetsam, vagaries and varieties of daily life. It seems only fair to hold reality up to fiction and see how it compares. Works Cited Bode, Carl. The Anatomy of American Popular Culture 1840-1861 . Berkeley: U of California P, 1959. Print. Carver, Raymond. "On Writing." Fires . New York: Vintage, 1984. 13-18. Print. Poe, Edgar Allen. "Review of Twice Told Tales." Short Story Theories. Ed. Charles E. May. Ohio UP, 1978. 45-51. Print. Solotaroff, Robert. Bernard Malamud: A Study of the Short Fiction . Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989. Print. © David Bordelon 2000 Reading Tips Read the stories at least twice: if you're like me, the first time you read to see what happens; then the second go round' you read to see why it happened. Read with a pen or pencil in hand and mark up your book copiously. Jot down questions to yourself, note where odd lines of dialogue or description occur, argue with the author, "nod" your head in agreement. While highlighting may work with a biology textbook, when interpreting literature, what you say back to the text is just as important as what the text says to you.
© 2008 David Bordelon
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