Diary of a Mad Editor

Archive for March 13th, 2008

Short Stories Live Forever — It’s Only the Writers Who Die Slow, Agonizing Deaths

A week ago, there was this brief posting about the validity of the short story on Mediabistro’s Galleycat which I found rather disturbing. I’m not really sure what I found more disturbing: the assertation from the complainers that the short story is dead because it’s no longer commercially viable or Ron Hogan’s surly response to the complaints.

The complaint about the short story being “dead” is ridiculous on two counts. First, it assumes that the short story only matters if the author is making money. Second, the disgruntled writers making this assertion assume that the short story was once-upon-a-time a cash cow for writers. There may have been a time, back in the 30’s and 40’s when a prolific hack could eek out a small income from the slicks of the day, but I doubt that was true of most writers even then. I wonder, did Franz Kafka complain that he didn’t make any money writing short stories? When Ray Carver was busting his ass in a factory and writing stories on the side, did he whine about the short story being a dead form of art? In fact, don’t most successful short story writers nowadays have day jobs? Am I wrong? It’s true that there are fewer commercial markets for short fiction presently but, overall, there are more venues than ever for stories both online and off. The short story exists with as much vitality in 2008 as it did when Washington Irving was scribbling “Rip Van Winkle” (and if Irving had fallen asleep and woke-up in the here and now, do you think he’d be displeased with the short story or marvel at how it has grown — just a thought). The genre cannot be invalid just because a particular writer feels somehow invalidated writing within that genre.

Which is not to say such writers don’t have a gripe in feeling invalidated. The problem I have with Ron Hogan’s comment is the implication that story writers outside the establishment publishing world only fail because they are bad writers. While that’s probably true enough to some degree — it’s not completely true. There are good writers who fail too. And there are bad writers who succeed for some mysterious reason I still can’t understand. For an outsider writer, the experience of writing is often akin to (Kafka, again) seeking an audience at The Castle. The Galleycat blog seems to me to have a pro-establishment bias judging by this and other posts on the website. Therefore, one wouldn’t expect much sympathy for the struggle of the average writer here. Indeed, even if the short story is alive and well, being a short story writer is frustrating most of the time. Just because there are plenty of stories being written and lots of non-paying markets to showcase them doesn’t mean the naysayers don’t have a valid argument. Short stories just don’t have quite the same cachet they once had when Hemingway was doing it. Even brand-name behemoth, Stephen King — when he even deigns to put out a new story collection — seems to look at the short story with a kind of nostalgia one reserves for a troublesome, but much-loved dead relative. The only thing worse than being a short story writer is being a poet — but poets are used to being consigned to the literary ghetto. Short fiction writers are relatively new arrivals to the gutter. The stench of the place is still fresh to them. Give them time.