A Short Post On Short Stories

Bookfox has an excellent list of best collections of short stories of the decade, and links to another list on the AV Club blog. The two titles both lists have in common are Pastoralia by George Saunders and Runaway by Alice Munroe.

Perhaps there are others you could add yourselves? I am surprised not to see Yiyun Li on the list ...

Lately ... the short story seems poised to get its due. This fall, a handful of collections from writers such as Alice Munro, Lydia Davis, Kazuo Ishiguro and Ha Jin have put a dent in the dominant view of short stories as an inferior cousin to the Great American Novel. And changing technology and reading habits have provided a boost for short fiction as more readers discover literature through online literary journals and Web sites, or download short fiction onto mobile devices

says Alexandra Alter in The Wall Street Journal. And indeed, The Atlantic Monthly is going to be the first magazine to sell short stories for the Kindle. The e-book format looks like it is going to give a real boost to the genre, and also to the novella.

One important bit of short story news I forgot to post - the BBC National Short Story Award was won by poet Kate Clancy for her story The Not-Dead and the Saved is apparently only the third piece of short fiction she has ever completed! Prospect Magazine has very kindly put the story up for us online to enjoy.

Sheddings and Beheadings

One of the National Short Story Prize finalists, Hanif Kureishi, is reportedly very angry with the BBC which has cancelled the radio broadcast of his shortlisted story.

Weddings and Beheadings describes the work of a cameraman who has been forced to take on work filming the executions that have become a feature of recent kidnaps in the Middle East. BBC officials felt that broadcasting it "would not be right" as concern grows for BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnson.

Kureishi says:

There are journalists and newspapers in peril all the time around the world. We support them by supporting freedom of speech rather than by censoring ourselves.

I agree.

Incidentally, you can read Kureishi's story on the Prospect Magazine website.

Postscript:

Maureen Freely on the Guardian blog makes the very important point that even nice censorship is censorship and therefore cannot be condoned.

... and the more we condone it, the more we wrap it up in sheepish clothing, the more we convince ourselves that it is the only way to fend off the wolves, the more of it we'll see.

(Photo nicked from the BBC website.)

The Goddess of the Literary Bordello

I blogged before about how the short story was fast becoming an endangered species in Britain.

Now there's news of a new £15,000 National Short Story Prize funded by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) and supported by BBC Radio 4 and Prospect magazine.

It's hoped that the prize will put the short story

"... back at the heart of the modern literary landscape."

Britain's literary landscape that is.

Elsewhere, the short story is alive and well.

Now isn't this just such a lovely bibliobibulous soundbite from Alex Linklater, deputy editor of Prospect?:

The novel is a capacious old whore: everyone has a go at her, but she rarely emits so much as a groan for their efforts ... The short story, on the other hand, is a nimble goddess: she selects her suitors fastidiously and sings like a dove when they succeed. The British literary bordello is heaving with flabby novels; it's time to give back some love to the story.

You can read Linklater's article here.

And the article by Raymond Carver that Linklater refers to can also be found here. If you have any interest in writing short fiction this is compulsory reading - from arguably the greatest master of the genre.