Every so often—sometimes in October, when the annual Best American Short Stories anthology is published, or on the infrequent occasions when an iconic short story writer like George Saunders, Alice Munro, or Lydia Davis wins a major award—an article appears asking a perennial question. As The Guardian put it in 2018: “What is a short story? Why should we read them?”Article continues after advertisement
I find these articles amusing and also sad. They repeat a kind of ritual, not unlike the rituals you’ll find in some of the most famous short stories, like Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist.” A troubling object, or troubling person (or, in this case, a troubling genre) is put on display where we can see it and consider what to do with it. What is the problem with this thing? Why does it not fit? It arouses strange feelings in us—pity, guilt, instinctual dislike, fidgety disapproval. Wouldn’t it be easier just to get rid of it, dismiss it, smother it?
One theory I have about the supposed public dislike of short stories is that people associate them with middle school English—you’re already dealing with warm cafeteria milk, training bras, a bit of lettuce caught in your braces, and then the teacher hands you a smudged copy of “The Lottery” or “The Gift of the Magi” or “The Telltale Heart” and tells you to answer five questions about it by Monday. Nobody likes homework. Nobody associates it with pleasure.
