Death of the Short Story (not)
June 28, 2006
Eric Rosenfield thinks the short story is dead and then points to a dissection of the Best American Short Stories as proof!? BAS hasn’t been representative of the most vital aspects of the short story for decades (if ever). It, like the Best American Poetry series, is representative of a very narrow, exceedingly mainstream slice of its chosen genre. They are both comprised largely of stories from the biggest magazines and presses byt the Usual Suspects of the moment. If you want to make a judgment, at least open your eyes to the whole range of what is available, not the narrowest, staidest of anthologies. The only thing shown so far is that Best American Short Stories is predictable.
Judging only from Best American Poetry, one would think poetry completely moribund as well… and yet it couldn’t be further from the truth. For better or for worse, we are in the midst of a poetry renaissance. Poetry, like short fiction, has grand days ahead of it, not only because there are remarkable talents, but because everything technological is in their favor: the market shift to the long tail, podcasting, alternative reading devices, microformats and usable small-payment and independent subscription and production systems…
Tags:
anthologies, fiction, poetics, poetry, Publishing, short fiction
All me-stream all the time.
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June 29th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Wow. Did you even read the article I wrote? I didn’t say the short story is dead, I referred to an n+1 that said that, agreed with certain, specific, points it made, and ultimately disagreed with it on the whole as being hypercritical and snobbish. I didn’t use BAS as an example, the author of the n+1 essay did.
Short fiction, however, is still a losing proposition, almost as much as poetry is. That is to say that there seem to be fewer and fewer people reading it, and sales reflect that (short story collections as a whole sell in significantly lower numbers than novels, and poetry’s numbers are much lower than those). But, as we pointed out in the “What is Wet Asphalt” essay, we think that short fiction and poetry are still relevant, and it’s just a matter of making the audience aware of the good stuff so that they’re not mired in the endless oceans of the bad.
The short story is not dead.
June 29th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
When you write: “Well, yes, exactly. And then the author proceeds to dissect the very publication that I have been wracking my head trying to dissect in an essay that may now never see the light of day: The Best American Short Stories.”
it sure seems to imply that you agree with the article– even to the point that you may not have to write your own dissection of the same publication which you DO use as an example by implication.
Then you write: “Batuman makes a compelling case for the American short story being a dead form”
Am I supposed to think that this means you disagree?
Unfortunately, your soggy conclusion did little to counteract the first 2/3 of your piece.
The ratio of bad/good short fiction is no worse than it has ever been– your own attempts at “rescue” notwithstanding. Short fiction sales have ALWAYS been lower than that of novels.
Traditional poetry publishing sales are *arguably* down, but anyone who actually reads poetry knows that the real, vital work of today is happening outside of the mainstream in the small presses and blogs.
Those who want to can gorge themselves on fantastic writing in EVERY short form so far thought of– it’s an embarrassment of riches out there right now. That doesn’t fit in with your lukewarm thesis, but it’s true… just because you aren’t necessarily seeing it doesn’t mean it’s not there. You’re just looking in the wrong places… and even taking the time to poke long dead horses– workshop fiction? poetry from the mainstream press? Come on!
I admire N+1– at least what I have seen of it. But this kind of critical assessment really isn’t that much different from those from the Eggers’ side of the fence. Both are focused on strawmen.
Thus I come to my original point: what does one EXPECT when they are looking at the Best American Short Stories? Real fans of the genre, like fans of poetry, know what a joke the Best Of collections are, representing all the worst tendencies of the major outlets. As a target, they’re beneath you; as representatives of a genre, they are wholly unfitting.
July 3rd, 2006 at 8:55 am
You seem to be conflating several things together. When Batuman calls MFAs the “ghastly imprimatur of the fiction factory,” I said well yes exactly because I agree with that specific complaint. When I say he makes a compelling case, I’m saying he’s making a compelling case not that I’m agreeing with it. This is a rhetorical device that I assumed people would understand, like when a lawyer says “The opposition has painted a pretty compelling picture here.” and then proceeds to dismantle it. Which is to say that I was presenting Batuman’s argument so that I could then disagree with it. My own unfinished essay on “Best American Short Stories” was less about the short story being dead than about most short stories being written (or at least valued) today being boring, derivitive, slice-of-life work, desperately aping Hemingway, Joyce, Chekov and most especially Raymond Carver. Part of the problem with that essay is that this is much less true than it was say, ten years ago, and I actually think short stories are getting better.
I’m really trying not to be mean here, but your analyses continually show an inability to parse language or the think critically about it. You jumped to sweeping generalizations about what I was saying without actually looking at what I was saying. Sometimes people say things that are more complex than “this is good” and ‘this is bad.”
Also: “anyone who actually reads poetry knows that the real, vital work of today is happening outside of the mainstream in the small presses and blogs.”
The only work of today is happening in the small presses and on the Internet. That’s part of the problem.
July 3rd, 2006 at 9:16 am
I’m willing to take heat for jumping to conclusions, but I think the central problem here is your own lack of clarity and the following assumptions. When you applaud the power of an argument and imply that it makes a piece of your own unfinished writing moot, the natural tendency is NOT going to be for the reader to think “hmm, he must have had something different to say” but to think “I guess he must have been in agreement, otherwise he’d still need to finish his piece.”
I’ll let my record represent myself when it comes to an “inability to parse language or the [sic] think critically about it.” There’s plenty of writing here and in other forums that people can make the case for themselves. I will note that I agree about Carver’s infuence, but I suspect for different reasons (most people, particularly those that believe the inept labels of “minimalism” or “dirty realism” that were applied to Carver, never really understood his work… they aren’t even aping Carver’s work, they are aping a completely skewed, shallow, and ultimately misleading representation of his work).
As for poetry, you are simply wrong. Maybe you need to get out more. Within the poetry world there is a continuing and fractious debate between various schools of poetry, much of which centers around poetry coming out of the mainstream press vs independent publications and the various Internet outlets. There is plenty of work coming out of the mainstream publishers– it just generally happens to be the usual suspects, which is what causes all the handwringing.
The problem isn’t that the ONLY work is happening in the small presses, it’s that the large presses are still publishing essentially the same work they were publishing 20, 30, even 40 years before, mostly by the same names. Of course, given your continuing lack of clarity, you might have meant “only” rhetorically, in which case you simply agreed with my point, for which I can only commend your intelligence
July 3rd, 2006 at 9:35 am
[...] From 1993-2004, the number of books in the poetry/drama category of US trade publications grew almost four times over. I have no numbers, but I imagine that small press and online publications grew at least 100x. The decline of mainstream poetry is a myth. We can still argue whether more or less of that poetry is any good (I’ll stick with Sturgeon’s Law, generally, though undoubtedly the newest and most avant-garde work is happening online). We can also still argue whether or not poetry has any real role in most peoples’ lives anymore (unfortunately, I don’t think it does now; I do believe there was a time when it was important to a much higher percentage of people). But to maintain that only the small press is publishing poetry is just silly. Even rhetorically it’s non-sensical, otherwise the post-avant crowd wouldn’t be so worked up about the poor quality of– and (ironically) their own exclusion from– the mainstream. [...]