Between the Novel and a Poem

A short story can do everything a novel can do – except be long. Conversely, a short story is arguably better suited than a novel to adopt poetic logics such as compression, ellipticism, associativeness, metaphorical charge, etc. In this way, even though short stories are shorter than novels, I like their capaciousness. They can tell a story whilst simultaneously claiming poetry’s prerogative to communicate before it means. I like that everything – including mistakes – is accentuated in short stories; that readers need to be persuaded to fall deeper, even though they know the end is near; all this makes the stakes higher.

Nam Le, winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize is interviewed over at the Times.

From Refugee Baby to Award-Winning Author

Vietnamese-Australian author Nam Le has won the international Dylan Thomas Prize for young writers for his first collection of short stories. The award, worth £60,000 recognises the best young writer in the English-speaking world and ensures that the inspirational nature of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas' writing will live on.

Le arrived Australia as a baby with his refugee parents . He grew up in Melbourne and studied law at Melbourne University. At 25 he joined the famous Iowa Writers Workshop where he wrote the stories in The Boat. He now works in New York, where he is the fiction editor of the Harvard Review, and will take up the David T.K. Wong fellowship at the University of East Anglia next year to work on his second book.

The Sydney Morning Herald quotes Peter Florence, chairman of the judges, as saying of Le's work that it demonstrated :

... a rare brilliance that is breathtaking both in the scope of its subject matter and the quality of its writing. Nam tackles his own background and circumstances as well as that of others with a clear eye, focused intelligence and wonderful use of words.

While Ben Ball at Penguin Australia, commended the impressive shortlist for the prize, but remarked :

But Nam has another gear that takes him further into unexpected geographical or emotional territory. He has said that every sentence is an opportunity to lose a reader, so he can't let a semi-dud one by.

(I bolded that bit because I think that every writer who wants to suceed should engrave that on his/her heart!)

Here's Nam Le's website for The Boat, where you can read an extract and reviews, as well as more about the author.

Janet Tay reviewed the book some time back in Starmag. (The unedited version is here.) Eric blogged an email interview with the author here. Eric also wrote about the other shortlisted books.

Congrats to the author, and let's give a big cheer for the short story (which folks predicted was dying, not so long ago, but which just doesn't lie down and give up that easily!)

I've not yet read the book (I stared at it, it stared back at me in Kinokuniya when I was making tough choices) but hope to soon.

Short Story Scoops

On Eric Forbes' blog, Eric and colleague Janet Tay scoop a couple of interviews with authors nominated (as of course Wena Poon is) for the Frank O'Connor Short Story Prize.

Nam Le is a Vietnamese-born author, raised in Australia and his whose 7-story collection The Boat has already received some very positive reviews (see his website) ; and British author Clare Wigfall who wrote The Loudest Sound and Nothing.

Wigfall has this to say about writing the short story :

One aspect I appreciate is the economy of the form; the story must create a world, a mood, a plot, wholly-real characters, an exploration of life and its complexities, and all within the space of only a few pages. There’s something almost beautifully mathematical and precise about it, and what you leave out is as important as what you leave in. For that reason, I suppose in a way your safety net is taken away, because when you write a short story you’re relying on an unknown quantity: your reader. With a novel you have the space to fill in all the gaps, with a short story you’re forced to leave these for your reader to complete—the difficulty for the author is getting the balance perfectly right, creating something that will satisfy.
This is probably what makes short stories—when they’re written well—such an intellectually demanding form of literature, and I suspect is why so many readers shun them. Those who like to stretch their minds and imaginations when they read often feel passionately about the form. A great short story may be brief, but it demands and relies upon personal investment from the reader. I believe this is why the very best short stories can haunt you long after you’ve read the concluding line, because so much of the experience is not just about the words on the page, but is individual to you and the way your own brain interprets and digests what you’ve read. There’s something magical about that.

Elsewhere, Eric also lets us in on his tips for this year's Booker!