What makes a good short story?
I love short stories; I love reading them; I love writing them. Recently, I saw Sarah Polley’s film Away from Her based on Alice Munro’s short story “The Bear Came over the Mountain.” As I watched the movie, I was viewer and reader at the same time. The movie was at once literary and visual and…well…perfect. I wonder, what makes a great short story? Raymond Carver. Alice Munro. James Baldwin. Margaret Atwood. Louise Erdrich. Flannery O’Connor. Anton Chekov. Toni Cade Bambara… When someone says, “S/he’s a master of short story writing,” how is that defined? What makes a master?
I put this out as a question to anyone who may be reading these journal entries. It occurs to me, the more I write, that I would be content just reading and writing my life away. Well, I’d like some bread and cheese and wine mixed in, perhaps some human contact, perhaps a walk in the woods, an occasional TV show—but you get my point.
Reading short stories satisfies me. Writing them does also. I want to devote more time to this form. So write back and let me know what satisfies you in a short story. And if you want, recommend an author or a story or a collection.
Thanks.
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Recommendation:
Edward P. Jones’s collection, Lost in the City. I just read them this summer after going to a reading of his work. Amazing — each 20-page story like a window into one room of the world.
Jane Nov 9, 04:25 pm