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Celebrating the Short Story.

Eric Forbes takes a moment to give a tribute to that oft-neglected form of fiction, the short story, and asks:
Is the short story in dire straits? The short story is not exactly a favoured form for writers nowadays. Fewer magazines are publishing them and literary agents and publishers tend to shy away from them because short-story collections do not sell well enough to justify publishing them.
He also tells us that:
They make us see the world from another point of view; they make us do mental somersaults. The prolific Joyce Carol Oates defines the short story as “a minor art form that in the hands of a very few practitioners becomes major art,” while William Trevor, in a Paris Review interview in 1989, called the short story “an art of the glimpse,” whose “strength lies in what it leaves out.” A good short story resonates far beyond its smallness. Despite languishing in the shadow of the novel for the longest time, the short story is still alive.
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  1. ビビ22/1/07 10:52 am

    Just to let you know that I am blogging seriously again and I have reviewed (in my own way) 2 books I've read for this year. Earlier I wasnt quit sure what I wanted to do...but then we get stuck every now and then dont we?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ted Mahsun22/1/07 11:16 am

    Yeah... I have no idea what to blog half the time too...

    Good to know you're blogging seriously again. I've already subscribed to your blog feed so I'll always know when you've updated.

    ReplyDelete

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