Give the Short Story Another Shot
We have a book club (of sorts) at Litographs. And while we have varied interests and balance nights spent reading with TV or movies, a lot of our loose change around here goes towards books. We’re always looking to pick up an old copy of a title we carry or share a new release with the team.
After reading and dishing Dave Eggers’s new Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?, the latest book to make its way to me was George Saunders’s collection, The Tenth of December, one of the several books we couldn’t resist putting in our cart the last time we visited Elliot Bay Books in Seattle. I’m only four stories in (and they’ve all been great, by the way), but rather than hone in on this particular collection, it got me thinking more broadly about the genre.
Chances are you’ve read John Updike’s “A&P” or Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” and I implore you to pick up at least one of the stories in Junot Diaz’s “This Is How You Lose Her,” but when was the last time you read a full collection? The form received a bump in the publicity surrounding Alice Munro’s Nobel Prize, but it’s not often someone responds that the book they’re reading is actually ten stories instead of a novel.
We’ve been over this – it’s hard to carve out time for reading – and my Goodreads “To-Read” shelf is growing faster than summer weeds so it’s only sensible that I want to tackle the big ones, the novels, the titles everyone is talking about.
While I trudge on with this task, I’ve found short stories to be a great palate cleanser between books or chapters of longer books. If you’re struggling to keep up with two books at the same time, mix in a collection instead.
Instead of walking off the subway platform feeling like you just read 10 inconsequential pages in the grand scheme of a novel, you’ll be thinking about how the author was able to fit complex characters, rising action and pop culture references into just 10 pages.
The back of Little Fiction’s new Litographs Tee
Maybe it’s not for everyone, but just like the way The Great Gatsby didn’t reveal all of its gems to you the first time you read it, it could be time to give the short story another shot.