| Title | : | Short Story Theories |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0821402218 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780821402214 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 265 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1977 |
Although the short story has often been called America’s unique contribution to the world’s literature, relatively few critics have taken the form seriously. May’s collection of essays by popular commentators, academic critics, and short story writers attempts to assess the reasons for this neglect and provides significant theoretical directions for a reevaluation of the form.
The essays range from discussions by Poe to comments by John Cheever. Frank O’Connor describes the short story as depicting “an intense awareness of human loneliness,” and Nadine Gordimer suggests that the story is more suitable than the novel in rendering the fragmentary modern experience. Eudora Welty sees the story as something “wrapped in an atmosphere” of its own; Randall Jarrell speaks of the mythic basis of the genre. Elizabeth Bowen and Alberto Moravia discuss thematic and structural distinctions between the novel and the story.
The collection also includes discussions of various types of stories, as satiric and lyric, critical surveys of the development of the modern short story, and the status of the form at the present time. An excellent annotated bibliography is also included, which describes 135 books and articles on the short story, evaluating their contribution to a unified theory of the form.
The essays range from discussions by Poe to comments by John Cheever. Frank O’Connor describes the short story as depicting “an intense awareness of human loneliness,” and Nadine Gordimer suggests that the story is more suitable than the novel in rendering the fragmentary modern experience. Eudora Welty sees the story as something “wrapped in an atmosphere” of its own; Randall Jarrell speaks of the mythic basis of the genre. Elizabeth Bowen and Alberto Moravia discuss thematic and structural distinctions between the novel and the story.
The collection also includes discussions of various types of stories, as satiric and lyric, critical surveys of the development of the modern short story, and the status of the form at the present time. An excellent annotated bibliography is also included, which describes 135 books and articles on the short story, evaluating their contribution to a unified theory of the form.
Short Story Theories Reviews
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"The Flash of Fireflies" by Nadine Gordimer
Gordimer argues that novels--even the most experimental are subject to the convention of "prolonged coherence of tone." It is this tonal coherence that keeps the novel unified; otherwise it falls apart. And yet, Gordimer points out, this prolonged coherence is "false to the nature of whatever can be grasped in reality," or to the experience of apprehending truth in everyday life, which is much more like an abrupt and sudden contact. The short story is not concerned with prolonged and coherent representation but with the sudden gleam of truth that is felt like the flash of a firefly. The art of the short story writer is the art of the only thing “one can be sure about—the present moment.”