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Unit 1 the American Short Story UNIT 1 THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY Structure Objectives Introducing the Short Story Definitions: Their Inadequacies and Usefidness The American Short Story 1.3.1 Origins: The First Phase 1.3.2 American Short Story after Poe 1.3.3 Renaissance in American Short Sto~y 1.3.4 Hmingway and Faulher 1.3.5 Contemporary American Short Story Let Us Sum Up Glossary Questions Suggested Rdngs 1.0 OBJECTIVES In this introductory unit, we shall study the core features of the short story in general and the American short story in particular. To this end, besides a few initial broadsides on positioning the short story in chronological histoq. the unit examines several major definitions of this genre. It notes the inadequacies and usellness of these definitions, and suggests what essentially makes for a well-made short story. In the main, it posits a revaluation of the varied growth and major contributions to the American short story with special reference to Edgar Allan Poe. O.Henrq.. Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and John Barth. The unit also makes a few open-ended observations of the hture directions the short story may take. 1.1 INTRODUCING THE SHORT STORY The short story, it needs be affirmed even at the risk of mouthing a cliche, is at once old and new It may be as old as the adventure tales of the Odvssw or the religious/moral tales of the Bible. Nearer home, it may be as old as the stories woven into the Mahabharata or those included in the Panchantantra. But as a distinict art form. i.e., as a highly organized and deftly executed short narrative, it is 'a young art' which emerged in the nineteenth century and whch has fast come of age. The short story, therefore. is as old as the human inshnct to tell and listen to a slory and as new as man'sl.u;oman's craft of writing it. The ascendency and the subsequent establishment of the novel to~ardsthe end of the eighteenth century quite possibly encouraged, bq example. the growth of shorter fiction as an autonomous genre of English literature. More important. however, was the speedy emergence of periodicals and magazines during the first quarter of the nineteenth centuq whose readers made insistent demand for short and compact fiction. completed in one issue The editors of these magazines and papers, keen to boost their circulation and sales, made handsome payments to thosc titers who could meet their requirements. The short story thus reg~steredits raison d-elre and smoothly stepped into a space of its own Americnn Short 1.2 DEFINITIONS: THEIR INADEQUACIES AND Stow USEFULNESS a treasure-house of infomlation and knowledge, offers a broad-based and workable sense of what a short story is about. It points to certain mutually interdependent elements of a short story, namely "theme. or the idea on which thc story centres; &t- or the planned sequence of action; characters, or the persons who perform the action: and setting. or the time and place of the story." It therefore surmises that a short story "unfolds some kind of idea through the action and interaction of characters at some definite time and place." The Enc~clowediaalso acknowledges the scope for flexibility in situating these elements in a given short stoq. Such a formulation is obviously too wide open to pinpoint the distinctive character of the short story. It mav serve the purpose of the generalists but it leaves things wanting for a specialist, e.g, the practicing short story writers and the critics of the short story. The specialists have defined the short story more precisely but always in terms of their own predilections and perceptions, is: in terms of what they consider the core feature of a short story. Their definitions reflect not merely the variations of emphasis in regard to the above-referred elements but also affirmation of one element to the negation of another. The sharply edged inclusions and exclusions of various elements in their definitions often derive from these writers' practice of the craft of story writing in varied and even contradictory ways. Sir Hugh Walpole, for instance, asserts the supremacy of plot as the distinguishing feature of a short story which, according to him, should be "a record of things happening, full of incident and accident. swift movement, unexpected development. leading through suspense to a climax and satisfying denouement." Turgenev on the contrary maintains that the short story for him is "the representation of certain persons .. whom he wished to see in action, being sure that such people must do something very special and interesting." To him writing stories "was never an affair of plot -that was the last thing he thought of" Again. Ellery Sedgewisck stresses on hvo constituents of plot as the key features of a short story. He holds that "a story is like a horse race. It is the start and the finish that count most." And many others, including Maupassant, would not agree more. But we have Anton Chekhov who finds no use for the beginning and the end in a story. He observes that "a story should have neither beginning nor end." Further, Edgar Allm Poe, an early and masterly practitioner of the art of modem short story, gives the pride of place to a certain "pre-conceived effect" realized through the plot of a story. In his famous review of the Twice-Told Tales by Hawthorne, he maintains that "in the whole composition (of a short story) there should be no word \witten, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to one pre- established design." Such an emphasis on a predecided unity and totality of effect has also been considered too schematic and prescriptive, and by implication restrictive by several short story writers and crihcs. The French story writer Merimee. to name just one of them, refuses to subordinate his concern for 'objectivity' and 'impartiality' in a short story to Poe's over-riding accent on the totality of a pre-planned effect. He insisted, time and again, that the short story should, like any other work of art, be allowed to "stand and speak before the reader" on its own and not according to a pre-formulated strategy of its author. Besides these conflicting definitions, quite a number of short story writers and crihcs have pointed to the tremendous significance of brevity in a short story. Some of them even tend to suggest the only distinguishing feature of a short story is that it must not bc I= H.G. Wells, therefore. used to say that a story "may be homble or pathetic or funny or beautiful or profoundly illuminating. having only tlus essential. that it should take from fifteen to fifty n5utes to read aloud." Chekhov said much the same thing when he advised the short story writers that if they described a gun hanging on the wall on page one. sooner or later that gun must go off in the story. The American Poe also held that a story must be short. although he added that it must not be so short Short Story that the 'pre-established design' is not realized. And we havc Barry Pain who graphically suggested that the uncommon requirement of a short story was "much the same commonsense that prevents a hostess for giving a very large dance in a very small room." These observations, however telling or cpigramnlatic. merely draw attention to thc obvious in a short story, and do not really take us far. Nor do the divergent if not contradictory definitions discussed earlier help us in arriving at a consensus. You may. then, naturally think that they all lend much controversy an uncertainty to what constitutes a short story. You may even hold that the absence of indisputable accuracy and satisfactory finality in any of them seems merely to serve the cause of critical confusion. But the inadequacy of these definitions also implies that the short story is too many things to contain in one single definition. Ths inadequacy is. indeed. an acknowledgement and affirmation of thc limitlcss possibilitics in termsof sheer range of material which ths genre has come to realize and continues to realize. It is also suggestive of the infinite flexibility in the niodes of )\riling which the short stoq easily lends itself to. The fact that there is no definition of short story which can be universallv and uniformly acceptable demonstrates that it has evolved. in eflect. as a vchicle for eve? man's/wornan's talent. There are. then. plotted stories as also plotless stories: stories which span over a lifetime and stories which sharply telescope a few tiny moments of life, unelaborated and unexplained: stories which have a definite beginning and a definite end. stories \vhich do not bothcr for such requirements: stories which are prose-poems 1~1thall the loveliness of a lpic and stories which are pieces of solid prose in which all emotions. all actions, a11 reactions are fixed and glazed like in a finely built house; stories which are intricate and cobweb-like and stories which make for a direct, straightforward and gripping reportage; stories which focus on a character without turning into a mere character- sketch and stories which transmute certain ideas and concerns without lapsing into the fixity of an essay.. All tlus points to the insistent and eternal fluidity of the short stow and its myriad, ine.xhaustible manifestations. It is in this context that several critics have shunned from defining the short story. They have applied judicious discriminations and discernments, and distanced themselves from these lughly personalized, exclusivist, and essentialist definitions.
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