Anything Special About Short Stories?

Since this is a short story blog, I thought I’d write a bit about literary theories of the short story. I should confess that I am not the BookFox, and probably not even worthy of the title BookWeasel. Right there I was going for an animal slightly less smart (and slightly more smarmy) than a fox, and I just wanted to clearly express that intention. My name is Brent, and last year around this time I wrote a review of Miranda July’s No One Belongs Here More Than You.

BookFox already reviewed the story collection that caught my eye on my last visit to Border’s (Nam Le’s The Boat), so I decided that a brief foray into literary theory might be appropriate, since I’m starting an MA in literature in August. I realize that even the words “literary theory” might put off the writers and aesthetes that read this blog, but I promise I won’t use any long German or French words, and I’ll probably end up with more questions than answers.

My interest in short story theory is mostly selfish. As a writer of short fiction, and no long fiction, I have found myself asking, “is something wrong with me? Why can’t I just write a novel like any normal self-obsessing introvert?” At the root of this insecurity is the idea that short stories are really just poorly developed novels. While I think this is a highly inaccurate picture of short fiction, I also wonder if it is a pervasive (if perhaps subconscious) view held by many readers. But then I think about writers that were clearly more interested in short fiction, like John Cheever, Flannery O’Connor, and Raymond Carver, and my suspicions of the uniqueness of the short story as a form are again aroused.

The essential question that comes up in short story theory is one of definition: “is there a quality of short stories that distinguishes them from novels and other pieces of literature?” At first, especially given the broad swath of short stories available, I’m inclined to agree with a critic like Norman Friedman, who rejects anything other than length as a determining characteristic. What makes a short story is that it is shorter than other forms of fiction. It’s simple, practical, and nearly airtight. And, it seems to fit Poe’s definition of a short story as “something that can be read in one sitting.” Still, it’s not sexy enough to explain why so many brilliant writers devoted their lives to the form.

Charles May, on the other hand, has suggested that the short story is primarily concerned with “fleeting moments of mythical perception” that transcend everyday experience—or, as Friedman has labeled them—epiphanies. This definition seems to resonate with something I have experienced in reading, writing, and teaching short stories. Many of my favorite short stories center on characters who reach a moment of enlightenment, maturation, or restoration. Many times these moments feel mythical because of their epic importance and their attempt to explain the unexplainable. It’s the moment when you, as a reader, know something big just happened, but you don’t really know what it means. Or maybe you do later, after some serious space from the story. I’m thinking of stories like Carver’s “Cathedral,” or O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Stories where the character says or does something significant yet strange.

I also entertain a burgeoning opinion that short stories are branching from a tree of fairy tales, myths, fables, and other forms of brief, traditionally oral storytelling. In America, the popularizers of the short story were Poe and Hawthorne, both of whom called their stories “tales,” and explored the line between the natural and the supernatural. In short, their writing allowed room for mythical experiences. Consider Goodman Brown’s vision in “Young Goodman Brown,” or the beating of the heart in “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Are these supernaturally real events or naturally explainable phenomena? Because of these origins, I wonder if short stories are more open to supernatural events or “mythical moments.” I’ve always thought, for example, that magical realism is vastly easier to pull off (and usually more successful) in short story form than it is in novel form. The reader of short stories might accept these sorts of magical leaps, almost in the same way that a hearer of an oral story expects exaggeration for effect. But what do you think? Is there anything that distinguishes short stories other than length, or does the word short pretty much cover everything?