Exhortation: A Short Story

I am happy to report the successful resolution of an experiment in changing one’s tastes.  As noted here some months ago, I had a true lack of appreciation for the Short Story.  Believing this to be a failing of some magnitude (OK, perhaps not as great as being a serial murderer, but nonetheless, a failing), I embarked on a quest to develop Taste (always a Nobel Quest).  It worked.  It took months, but little by little, I developed an appreciation for the advantages of the form. 

I have also realized why I had such a difficult time learning to love the Short Story.  The problem arose from their length—they are short (hence the name).  Now, if you want to publish a book of short stories, you necessarily need more than one story.  So, let’s imagine you have four really good short stories written, and you want a book, what do you do?  Add a bunch of mediocre stories.  The experience of reading a book of short stories is thus one of enjoying a story a lot, wishing it would go on, and then instead of starting off on another similarly brilliant story, reading a mediocre effort which only amplified the sense of longing.

Collections of Great Short Stories don’t solve this problem—in those, all the stories on their own may be good, but they are in different authorial voices, so they don’t necessarily cohere very well.  And, in that case, the collection feels like constant whiplash.

It took me months, but I finally developed the ability to do the obvious—take each story on its own merits.  Some are great.  Some are horrible  But each one is complete unto itself.  At this point, the Reader is exclaiming, “Well, no duh.” (Does anyone actually talk like that anymore?  Is “No duh” still an expression?  And now that I am thinking about it, what exactly is the “duh” which is being negated?  And, don’t the expressions “Duh” and “No Duh” mean the same thing?  Odd.  Why have I never thought about this before? (Yes, I know you, the Reader, are not wondering why I never thought about it before, but why I am thinking about it now.))  But, while I realize this is not an insightful realization, I do wonder why I have never learned this before.  I suspect it is because the bulk of my literary reading is books, complete books.  I have, before now, rarely ever sat down to read just a single short story.

The immediate occasion for these comments on the short story is that I read George Saunders’ Tenth of December, a collection of (surprise) short stories.  It was fantastic.  The whole book.  Sure, some of the stories are better than others, but even the low points were really great.  Yet, I have no doubt that if I had read this a year ago, I wouldn't have enjoyed it nearly as much as I do now.  Each story stood on its own—I had no mental temptation to blur them into some sort of long novel.

Saunders reminds me of Wodehouse, and I suspect that is the first time that comparison has been made.  Wodehouse is a story writer who consistently reminds the reader of one thing—that life is a grand comedy.  In story after story, Wodehouse coveys the same message and feeling—life is really funny and we should just laugh.  Saunders similarly conveys the same message and feeling in every single story in this book.  The stories are different, but the underlying theme is exactly the same.  That is how he is like Wodehouse.  How is he unlike Wodehouse?—well these are not stories that remind us that life is funny.  They are stories that consistently, unrelentingly remind us that Life is Cruel and Brutal. 

Yet, the stories are nothing like what the reader is imagining when hearing that the underlying message is the cruelty of life.  Saunders is a brilliant writer (and I use the word brilliant there not as cheap praise, but as accurate praise—it is truly brilliant writing).  The stories have a light air, one would think the story being read is amusing, but it isn’t.  It is cruel.  Just like life—the cruelties of life are rarely akin to arriving home and finding my house burned down and my family dead.  The cruelties of life are more systematic, that we all just go through our day not noticing just how bad things really are.  Just like Wodehouse shows us how funny life is when we don’t really notice it as funny, Saunders shows us how cruel it is, when we don’t notice the cruelty.

So, who is right?  Oddly, both Wodehouse and Saunders are right.  Yes, their messages are rather different, but nonetheless, they are both entirely correct in their depiction of this world.  Life is really funny.  Life is really cruel.

Anyway, I’ll be reading more Saunders.  (And thanks to Diane for the book.)

For more on combining funny and cruel, there is this.