Irrelevant Literary Musings

In which I prove that the only worthwhile short stories are badly written

Let me emphasize my aversion to short stories: There are three possible outcomes of reading a short story. If the story is good--if it uses narrative to convey feeling, story, and tension; manages to foreshadow impending doom with a single innocuous sentence; if it skips the climax and ends with a quiet dénouement or "concludes" directly after all the characters have suddenly dropped dead--you will not be able to rest. Your stomach will continue along the trajectory of the main character's path from cliff to rocky ocean, and the story's abrupt cease will only deepen the nausea felt as you wait for the character to black out just before impact. Even if the character has time to recover from the emotional simultaneous loss of their mother, sister, and husband before the story ends, you do not recover: For your character two years may have elapsed, but a single page is not enough time for a reader to grieve. 

If the story is mediocre, it will have a minimal impact on your life--you won't remember it well enough to be reminded of your main character even when you bake her favorite cookies. It will be as if the story never existed.

If the story is bad, however, you're left with a slight dissatisfied feeling in your stomach: no emotional damage will have been caused; you won't have inherited the main character's devastating (but ineptly written) fear of shoes; and moreover, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing you only wasted twenty minutes reading this flop of a story. This far outweighs any possible effect even the best short story could have--for no short stories end happily. Those are known as children's books. 

Thus ends my discourse on the evils of the "good" short story: Please await my review of How To Breathe Underwater, by Julie Orringer (a collection of her short stories) with bated breath.

Happy reading!

M. Gabrielle