Keeping it Short

I'm currently studying a subject looking at the "modern" German Short Story.  I've been looking forward to taking this subject since I enrolled in the course back in 2011, so I'm determined to see this one out even if I might not finish the degree (there's a bitter and twisted story behind why I might not finish the degree - but suffice to say that the bureaucracy of the university has made it impossible for me to finish this year, and I had no intention of working on it next year).

I love short stories, but hardly ever seem to read them.  I'll go through a phase of reading three or four short stories in a couple of days, and then not read another for a year or more.  I have many anthologies of short stories decorating my bookshelves at home (much like my vast and mostly untouched books of poetry and plays) and I refuse to part with them because I love short stories... but somehow this doesn't translate to reading them as often as I would expect.

I love short stories for completeness of them.  These tiny little jewels can give you a head-long rush into another world, and then finish the story and leave you standing on the other side of the bridge - all within a single evening.  They tell the kinds of stories that novels can't tell well - and I have read many a novel that should have been a short story.  When they are written well, they are very similar to poetry.  The language just sings; the ideas are whole and complete, well-wrapped packages.  I think the tightness of the form lends itself to people taking the kind of care with their language that would get tiresome in a full-length book.

However, I think it's also the completeness of them that helps me to ignore them for so long.  A novel strings you along so that you keep reading (sometimes, long after you've stopped caring).  You can quite easily and happily read one short story and stop.

Short stories don't have the same level of fame as their longer cousins.  I could name a few you might have heard of:  The Yellow Wallpaper, The Tell-tale Heart, The Adventure of the Speckled Band, The Union Buries It's Dead, The Incident at Owl Creek Bridge...  However, very few short stories will ever get the street cred of Pride and Prejudice or Jane Eyre.

I also find the 19th Century short story (and the early 20th Century short story) so much more interesting than the "modern" short story (those written after 1950).  In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, the short story was the television of it's day.  People bought and read magazines like The Strand, which were mixtures of serialised novels and short stories.  Our good friend Sherlock Holmes was one of the few enduring success stories from the non-novel side of things.  After radio and TV came along to plug that gap, the short story genre seemed to be handed over to the "serious" writers - artsy types writing for a "literate" audience.  Only speculative fiction and sci-fi seemed to carry the torch for populist short stories.

With, of course, a few notable exceptions.  James Herriot, anyone?

And, though I must admit it isn't always the most stimulating read in the world, I do admire The People's Friend magazine for keeping the flag flying.

Many of the short stories you find yourself reading for literature classes are rather silted and depressing, which probably does the genre no good at all.  Reading "literary" short stories makes me hanker for the fun stuff.  Give me a good collection of detective or ghost stories any day of the week.

Speaking of, I wonder if my library still has the works of M.R. James floating around...