One of the most common critiques I hear for short story collections is that they’re “uneven.” I don’t hear it very often for novels, and only occasionally as a critique of an author’s oeuvre.
A few brief samples:
- Publisher’s Weekly called David Foster Wallace’s “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” uneven.
- Seattle Times called Evan S. Connell’s “Lost In Uttar Pradesh” uneven.
- Martin Amis’s “Heavy Water and Other Stories” called uneven.
- In the LA Times, John Freeman called John Updike’s “My Father’s Tears” an uneven collection.
It’s not exaggerating to call it the most frequent criticism leveled at short story collections. But I wonder whether this critique is effective or informative.
I think the “uneven” critique is particularly prejudiced against short story collections that embrace a wide variety of forms, such as pairing postmodern meta-fiction along with Carver-type realism and throwing in some genre-inspired work.
Almost inevitably, the reviewers tastes will lean towards one style or another, and they’ll laud half the collection and slam the other half. So the critical matrix of short story reviewers (where “uneven” or “even” is used to judge collections) encourages a form-based, limited type of “unity” to collections, and discourage a thematic or innovative type of unity.
“Uneven” also says more about a reviewer’s taste than about the content itself. I know this is tricky waters — how would one separate the reviewer’s taste from their evaluation of content? — but I feel as if the word uneven is shorthand for “I liked some stories and I didn’t like others,” which doesn’t tell me much about whether I would like the same stories or dislike the ones disliked.
Also, saying that some stories are liked and others disliked is a bit of a cop-out, review-wise. You could direct this criticism at virtually all collections — aren’t collections, by their nature, created so some stories stand out of the pack, and seem better than others?
Uneven also means the reviewers are judging the collection as a mosaic of pieces, rather than as a unified whole. For some collections, this is the appropriate approach, but for others, it might be better to judge it as a cohesive beast, the same way one might read and review a novel. A good collection accomplishes a certain goal, and the reviewer should pay attention to the degree to which that goal is attained, talking about the collection as a single entity.
6 comments
I like the post, but think there is value in calling a collection “uneven,” especially formally. It seems to me a short-story collection should embody a writer’s sensibility. After all, as readers, we want to be fully immersed in a writer’s consciousness–we want to see the world as he sees it, however briefly. And a short-story collection can too often be a collage of sensibilities: an author trying on various hats, before later choosing one. This is all mixed in one, uneven book. It’s true that sensibility can cross formal boundaries, but often it doesn’t, and when a critic calls a writer out on that, he’s doing important work.
This is exactly the type of criticism that has been bugging me lately. So, thank you BookFox for making the statement plain.
I think the ‘uneven’ critique has invaded other literary venues as well, beyond the critic. For example, there are publishers out there who will only review short story collections that fulfill some grander thematic scheme, or worse, only accept a novel-in-stories, claiming that short story collections without a cohesive theme come off as, well, purposeless, I guess. I think this added stipulation is a result of that cheap criticism, which is not very conducive to creating great, individual works of short fiction.
Granted, there are a number of excellent short story collections that revolve around a very tight, cohesive center. Other Rooms, Other Wonders comes to mind, right off. That work is stunning because it does take on the short story collection and expand it to a novel-like breadth, all the while maintaining some individuality to the pieces. I would also say that there is a consistency of tone, that fable-like detached quality, that heightens many of the works, but this tone also makes any deviation from it come off as a distraction. I believe there is one 1st person story in the whole collection, and though very good, it feels stilted, unsteady. Some might even say, ‘uneven.’
Still, great individual works of fiction and the collections of those great individual works–works that have been cobbled together because each piece made it to some lit mag on its own merit–are another beast. I would argue a more ragged beast, but more beautiful on the whole–the shedding buffalo to the milked cow, if you will. Stylistically the works may not fully complement one another (due to experimentation, trials with POV, what have you), but deeper down, thematically, I think it is there. When the critic fires off their comments of unevenness or claim the work lacks consistency, I believe it’s often the fault of poor reading.
A work that comes to mind is E. Annie Proulx’s Heart Songs. There is a quality to each story that remains consistent, but it doesn’t take this grand thread to tie all the pieces together. This thread is almost an afterthought, and surely it was for the writer if the goal was to write great fiction, where the story guides the way to the end, rather than some forced hand that draws it toward whatever prescribed, thematically correct end that has a chance of fulfilling a publisher’s, agent’s, editor’s notion of wholeness to a work–the ideals of the committee. I think the greatest works, the greatest collections, have no desire to pound out the theme, but rather that theme is implied. The writer himself lives and breathes the ideals that are most emotionally, psychologically, spiritually true to their art and writing at-hand. The writer lives the themes, the big stuff. He does not create them. Whatever he goes out to write, those goals will surely bleed through each individual work. And these ragged beasts should be celebrated, not tossed aside as incomplete, uneven, lesser collections of short fiction.
Thank you again.
Very best,
Mark
I enjoyed reading this posting, as with other of your work here. As for reviewers, they could, in using the word “uneven,” have Hollywood casting director mentality, an inability to see or enjoy an artist’s capacity for richness, fullness, diversity. Or maybe you said that. If so, consider it resaid.
Personally, I would welcome “uneven” with an author trying on different hats, some fitting better than others, to a collection of stories with such a similar tone, point of view, personality or storyline that they all start to sound monotone and bland. There have been times when I’m more inclined to pick up a collection that is a compilation of different authors for fear of too much evenness. I welcome the collections of stories that first appeared in a variety of magazines because I feel there is a greater assurance of disparity in the collection. I want the ride to have a bit of bump.
Yeah, Kim, I know what you mean about how a collection can start to sound monotone and bland. It’s as though the stories start to blend into one another — tough to distinguish between them.
I’ve never really thougt about this before, but it does seem interesting that “evenness” is generally considered to be a positive quality of short story collections. I wonder if this isn’t somehow related to the old model of albums in which thematic consistency and track congruity were considered masterful (St. Pepper, Pet Sounds, etc).
I wonder if titling isn’t partially to blame as well. If you give your short story collection some sort of novelistic title, then maybe your reader expects a coherence that wouldn’t be expected were it named something like “Stories II.”
That said, I do know the experience of readerly whiplash that occurs when a story seems to a completely difference beast than the established tone of a collection. Wells Tower’s EVERYTHING RAVAGED, EVERTHING BURNED comes to mind. The last story is about Vikings where the rest were set in present dayish mid-Atlantic to southern states. A change of pace can be engaging, but 90 degree turns at full speed seems a bit much.