Decline of the Short Story
Schickel, Richard
Decline of the Short Story by RICHARD SCHICKEL We have been so bemused of late by the discussion of the death of the novel that we have scarcely noticed the peculiar odor emanating from the short...
...Charles Criswell's Nobody Knows What the Stork Will Bring (McDowell, Obolensky...
...Each writer's work reminds you of someone else's...
...GEORGE W. SHEPHERD, JR...
...She is content merely to tell a story quite simply, somewhat in the manner of Katherine Mansfield...
...It is hard to say...
...NORMAN THOMAS is the well-known Socialist leader...
...there is a feeling, for example, that we have met Mr...
...Certainly these four writers have not ventured far from the familiar, safe surface...
...There are also elements of heavy-handed fantasy which seem to indicate that Malamud is impatient with the restrictions of his medium but doesn't quite know what to do about it...
...Is there any hope, then, for the short story...
...These stories deal mainly with Irish rural life and the harshness, the barrenness of living uncomfortably close to nature...
...Not a single magazine in America consistently publishes good short fiction anymore, and most of them— big as well as little—have trapped the story in the toils of formula...
...As evidence, let me introduce four recent collections of short stories, all of which are by talented younger writers and all of which, in one way or another, illustrate the decline of the short story...
...Except for their settings—so determinedly, depressingly "real"—they might have been published in one of the women's magazines, so sentimental, so treacle-laden are they...
...In short, she has what the three male writers lack: range...
...These stories, good, conventional, unpretentious though they are, really represent nothing very exciting...
...Doris Lessing's The Habit of Loving (Crowell...
...This preoccupation with the very old and the very young is one of the hallmarks of the current short story, and for this reason one is inclined to make the rather harsh judgment that Criswell's stories are but fashionable imitations of other stories by other writers...
...A modest literary tradition has grown up about rural Ireland, and it is into this tradition that West fits...
...311 pp...
...180 pp...
...The truth is that, while there is still a bit of life left in the novel, the short story has slipped away from us and gone to whatever place dead literary forms go...
...EDWARD H. BUEHRIG, a professor of government at Indiana University, wrote "Woodrow Wilson and the Balance of Power...
...But that is work for minds of rare distinction...
...She is, in the best sense of a niuch-abused term, an old-fashioned story teller...
...204 pp...
...She is equally capable of a New Yorker-ish anecdote like "The Day Stalin Died" or of a novella like "The Eye of God in Paradise...
...She is equally at home with stories of a girlhood in South Africa and with stories of life among the London intellectuals...
...But one wonders if that small, fragile form can support the kind of excavation work necessary to dredge up treasures never before seen by man...
...receives from an evening spent with Doris Lessing, it does not give one much hope for the resuscitation of the short story...
...There is a familiar ring to a number of her stories...
...He is a talented writer, but it is questionable that these stories add much either to our knowledge of the human condition in general or of life in rural Ireland in particular...
...And finally, although to a lesser degree, my generalization unfortunately fits Miss Lessing's work...
...It is turning inward upon itself...
...He wrote "They Wait in Darkness...
...But the most remarkable thing about this collection is that its contents appeared, for the most part, in the better little magazines...
...The work of Criswell, West, and Malamud indicates a basic truth about the short story...
...JOHN W. CAUGHEY teaches history at the University of California in tos Angeles and is the author of the recent book, "In Clear and Present Danger...
...Malamud writes mainly of lumpen bourgeois Jews and the atmosphere seems to ring true...
...Whatever the pleasures one MAURICE J. GOLDBLOOM has served in the U. S. Foreign Service and was once editor of the foreign affairs department of the American Jewish Committee...
...It is possible, though one hates to say it, that life—and the writer's vision of it—is just too complex to be communicated successfully in the short form...
...His remark is equally applicable to the short story...
...As monotonous as the oft-repeated theme is the repetition of basically similar plot situations and the appearance throughout the stories of more or less standard characters—especially old people and children...
...What remains are hidden deposits and perilous ventures into the depths where, perchance, the most precious crystals grow...
...Anthony C. West's River's End (McDowell, Obolensky...
...Therefore her work is refreshing because it represents a turning away from the currently modish...
...Story after story deals with the loneliness of individuals cut off—usually by death—from a loved one...
...First, there is Bernard Malamud's much-praised The Magic Barrel (Far-rar, Straus and Cudahy...
...is a member of the editorial board of Africa Today and formerly served as director of the American Committee on Africa...
...Ortega y Gasset said of the novel that "the large veins accessible to any diligent hand are worked out...
...This is not to say that Miss Lessing is always successful...
...4) is a less pretentious collection than any of the above, but it has a far wider range of themes, settings, and characterizations...
...Rogers of "Pleasure" several times before, in other stories...
...Decline of the Short Story by RICHARD SCHICKEL We have been so bemused of late by the discussion of the death of the novel that we have scarcely noticed the peculiar odor emanating from the short story...
...ELTON ATWATER, on leave from the political science department of Pennsylvania State University, is associate director of the Quaker program at the United Nations...
...3.50) is an incredibly monotonous collection...
...They are less annoying than the others mentioned simply because Miss Lessing's models are older ones than Malamud's, West's, and Criswell's...
...3.50) is a collection which eschews sentimentality...
...But there is a sentimentality to these tales, as well as a condescending cuteness which mars them seriously...
...and Mrs...
...There is a feeling, also, that Miss Lessing doesn't always come to terms with her material...
...She does not write with West's richness, or with Malamud's color, but one feels she has something more important to do: the illumination of various odd corners of existence...
...In short, they are emotional cliches...
...Cliches, however, are still cliches, even though they are not much used at the moment...
Vol. 22 • September 1958 • No. 9
