Good lines: on short stories

   

     "I have always preferred writing short stories to writing novels. Not that there is much similarity and not that a writer can usually get away with writing only one or the other (Katherine Mansfield almost did). Stories of all lengths and depths come from mysterious parts of the cave. The difference in writing them is that, for a novel, you must lay in mental, physical and spiritual provision as for a siege or for a time of hectic explosions, while a short story is, or can be, a steady, timed flame like the lighting of a blow lamp on a building site full of dry tinder."

    Jane Gardam, from her introduction to her collection The Stories.

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    For more on Jane Gardam click here, here, and here.

Comments

[kate D.]

I'm enjoying the stories very much so far. There is a fabulously exuberant one about a smelly old tramp having a bath; a deeply atmospheric ghost story set in the Yorkshire Dales; but what strikes me is that they all have,along witho all the merits of characterisation and place, a proper sense of story. Something happens - and this is by no means always the case in contemporary short stories. That said, some go back to the 1970s and money values and some social attitudes can feel dated until one has figured this out. A really good read.

[Cornflower]

I read the two stories you mention this morning, Kate, and both are wonderful. I'm enjoying the book enormously.