Long Live the Short Story

Ria, your cry to knock down the wall between literature and daily life put a big fat smile on the face of this fiction writer. Was the Times op-ed section the most appropriate place to run a short story? Probably not. I agree with Bonnie on that one, and like Jill, I wouldn't advise messing with Modern Love either.

I'm less occupied with the placement of fiction, however, than I am with my new fantasy that major news publications will resurrect the short story. Some might argue that the short story is doing just fine. After all, Elizabeth Strout's collection Olive Kitteridge, currently number 23 on Amazon's bestseller list for fiction and non fiction, won this year's Pulitzer.

But even before the economy took a nosedive, my fiction writer friends and I heard many a warning from seasoned literary agents and editors that short story collections simply do not sell.

I worry that the difficulty in publishing short story collections will damage or perhaps extinguish a whole crop of literary talent. Some writers are more suited to the short story, as certain runners are born to sprint and others to compete in marathons. What will we lose if we force our finest literary sprinters to retard their fast twitch fibers?

Clearly, I'm shamelessly peddling the short story today. The pace of modern life is frenetic, and you can read an entire short story during the course of a metro ride or in the time it takes to down a turkey sandwich and a bag of chips. Renowned short story writer Steve Almond put it best when he said, "Every great story fires its characters and readers headlong towards the hidden caverns of the heart. All but the essential details are left aside. You only know what is required to feel what you have been waiting to feel."

What better vehicle than a newspaper or magazine to recruit new literary travelers or to give voice to a budding Anton Chekhov, Grace Paley or Raymond Carver? Maybe I'm getting carried away here, but I'm optimistic that a little short story sampling could promote literature in general. I was disheartened to discover in Ria's post that last year, the NEA estimated that only 50 percent of American adults read a work of literature in the form of a novel, play, poem or work of short fiction.

Perhaps the short story can enhance the quality of news publications as well. I often quote writer John L'Hereux to my fiction students, "Journalism aims at accuracy, but fiction's aim is truth."