Short stories—small can be beautiful

Press, 30 May 1981, Page 17

Short stories—small can be beautiful

(By Owen Marshall. Writer in Residence at the English Department, University of Canterbury.) At least one of New Zealand's major publishers does not publish short stories: the editor of another firm recently told me that short stories are at the "difficult marketing end of New Zealand fiction.” That in itself gives little indication of the literary value of the short story: and despite the difficulties many short stories continue to be published. Nevertheless the problem is real. If it is better understood why the short story is not popular, perhaps more can be done to find a remedy. My thoughts regarding the comparatively small following and low status of the short story are offered not as an indictment of the genre or readers, but in the belief that those people with an affection for the short story should attempt to share their enthusiasm, and encourage interest in the form.

One obvious consideration is that of market changes. The heyday of the short story magazine has long been over. Such outlets have continued to diminish as television and pictorial journalism have prospered. Television has itself provided an outlet for ideas which may earlier have become short stories, but the short television play rarely appears as a printed story afterwards. Also, the nature of television is such that it has tended to reward certain aspects of form, content and style at the expense of others. Some of the_ people who rest before the television set in the evening, would in earlier years have been short story readers. Yet much reading is still done, and the popularity of television does not entirely explain the failure of the short story to win readers.

A second aspect is the widespread notion in regard to prose literature that big is beautiful. Its persistence is surprising now that it has largely been discredited in poetry, and when the pressures of life would’ seem to be against it. Yet the idea is prevalent, as the success of the large American semidocumentary novel shows. I suspect that

it arises from .some tacit materialistic standard concerned with labour and product. A party companion once insisted to James Thurber that he was, not a proper writer because all he did were bits in the "New Yorker." "The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty” has since created almost a literature of its own. The fetish of size must.be combated by the encouragement of a critical appreciation which asserts the pre-eminence of quality. Associated to some degree with the confusion of significance with bulk, is the view that the short story is largely introductory: a manageable form on which the aspiring author practices until he has sufficiently matured his skills to be able to progress to a full scale work. This is rarely stated so explicitly, and yet the concept of the short story as a juvenile form is entrenched and damaging. Its existence is borne out by the comparative critical neglect of the short story. Some authors have begun with the writing of short stories, and there are obvious advantages in that. Many authors write both short stories and novels. But the short story exists as an independent and equal form. The short story is not a compressed novel; it is not a juvenile form of the novel. As a corrective there is the comment by H. E. Bates, who was wonderfully accomplished in both forms. "Because a short story is short it is not easier to write than novel ten, twenty or thirty times its length — the exact reverse being in fact the truth.” The short story must suffer also whenever subteltv is out of favour. This is such a time. The short story, by its nature, cannot be a block-buster; yet this seems an age of the literary block-buster. The powerful impact of the screen, sight and sound, has accustomed us to the most blatant presentation of theme and character, and all too often leaves little room - for a creative response. Unfortunately, if the faculty for creative response is not used, it tends to atrophy. One of the most significant aspects of the place of the short story today is that concerned with structure and intention. In the past the flexibility and variety of the

short story have been its strength: humour, pathos, satire, dramatic action, realism and surrealism all have a place. Yet increasingly there seems to be in the minds of readers a steroetype of the short story — the story with the trick ending. The line of O; Henry and Saki. fostered by the television's penchant for the dramatic, seems likely to become the norm.

The overrated stories of Roald Dahl are an example: contrived pieces in which life is manipulated into clever little plots that go off like mousetraps. In a New Zealand short story, competition last year, the sponsors were at pains to remind entrants of the great value of the ending with a twist. Sad, I thought, and it marred the sponsors' good intentions. The short storycan be so much more than an expanded w-ise-crack, or a jack-in-the-box. NewZealand short story writers are showing considerable variety- in approach: the public seems to have a particularly narrow- expectation.

When considering the short story- it is tempting for its adherents to see themselves as the Jacobites of contemporary literature: and lost causes have their fascination. I hope pessimism is not the final — or necessary — response. The short story is a resilient form. It has a fine tradition in master writers such as Chekhov. Maupassant, Anderson, Joyce, Hemingway, Bates and Powys. In New Zealand literature also, .many excellent stories are found. To be both brief and specific is to be unjust by omission, but perhaps that is justified if even one title is sought out: a story such as Frank Sargeson's "A Man of Goodwill”. Janet Frame's "Lolly-Legs,” or Norman Bilbrough's recent and haunting "Dogman., Busman". At its best the short story has a. concentration and astringency, a clarityand intensity of purpose,' above any- otherprose form. It is especially successful in capturing moments of individual revelation and realisation. The short story makes demands upon writer and reader, but once the conditions are met the virtues of the form ensure its survival, and are deserving of greater support.