Recently I saw a write-up about a rising-star author whose first book contract was causing ripples in the publishing sea. The excitement was not due to the deftness of the prose, nor the sum the book fetched at auction, although both were considerable. Apparently, the shocker was the object of this plummy deal: not a pot-boiler romantic thriller, not a cleverly phrased novel exposing the absurdity of modern life, not even an excruciating account of the author’s contorted coming of age. No, the literary darling of the moment was a collection of short stories.
Current book-marketing wisdom holds that nobody likes short-story collections. For writers, they’re hard to assemble, requiring unity and motif. Agents regard them as unlikely candidates for a big sale and/or movie deal. Publishers see them as iffy propositions, and book sellers note them gathering dust on the back shelves.
I don’t get it.
It seems to me that the way the world works now, there should be more of a demand for short stories. Readers should be snatching them off bookstore tables, clamoring for more releases by their favorite authors. After all, like a satisfying novel, a good short story is rich with characters, settings and plots. What’s different is that the story is efficient, in a way that I think fits in with current cultural preference for contained consumable products: news delivered in summary with bullets to mark key points; full meals enclosed in an edible “wrap”; adventure planned into a fully scheduled 10-day trip. These are not sham products approximating the real ones, but packages that clearly limit the time required to read, eat or challenge. When you begin a novel, the time you spend reading it depends on its length but also on the pace of the narrative and the power of the storytelling to hold you to it when you’re reading and entice you back to it when you’re not. These draws are no measure of quality–many serious readers short on time find it almost painful to read just a page or two of an enticing book. They’d rather wait for a longer chunk of time to become available. Sometimes they have to wait for days.
Not that time management is any measure of literary satisfaction; not at all. I crave long, uninterrupted stretches of reading, a fantasy that involves firm pillows and thick milkshakes. I may have once spent an afternoon like that, perhaps when I was sick. But due to the life realities that govern my time (and the time of everyone I know, and probably your time too) most of my leisure reading occurs late at night during the short timespan I am alert enough to hold a book upright. When it falls on my chin, I have to give up.
As the time available for reading diminished, my liking for short-story collections grew. Usually, I have time to read at least one story in a sitting. If circumstances force me to ignore a book for even weeks at a time, I don’t have to go back pages or even chapters to pick up details and characters. If a story doesn’t appeal to me, I can go on to the next one. Perhaps short stories appeal to some craving for closure. When work and domestic projects infinitely multiply themselves, it is satisfying to finish something, to come to the end. It is possible to finish reading a short story nearly every day.
Short stories allow you to sample the work of more writers, and get a sense of the range of an author’s work. For example, I’ve been meaning, for the past year, to read David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest.” But every time I pick it up, my back-of-the-mind calculator inputs the book’s heft, stores that back section of footnotes, and displays a total: Three months minimum, factoring in the possibility of a few rainy Sundays. But I know for sure I’ll read it, maybe over the summer. This is because I read his essay collection, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” and wanted more. After reading “The Matisse Stories,” by A.S. Byatt, I went ahead and read “Possession: A Romance,” which I found captivating. I have to admit that I read most of that novel stuck in a small-town hotel over a bitterly cold weekend. Her newer novel, “Babel Tower,” is waiting on my shelf. I might read “Sugar and Other Stories” for now. I’m not sure I can commit to a big book.
The willingness to commit is definitely a factor. Choosing a book to read is not that different from making a human connection. There are times a person is more open to developing a deep relationship, and times when more superficial companionship is what’s needed. After all, a serious novel requires ongoing intellectual and emotional interaction with the characters and the narratives. You need to listen to the voices and viewpoints that emerge and integrate them with your own understanding of the world. Sometimes, when I hear the literary critique, “I couldn’t get into that book; it was too long (or confusing, or boring),” it seems to me that the person just didn’t approach the book with all senses open and a willingness to explore possibilities. You need a certain amount of mental and spiritual energy for that.
Right now, I believe my cognitive reserves are overtaxed and limited. When I find myself wavering between a novel in one hand and a short-story collection in the other, invariably I go with the stories. There’s a little less at stake. If they satisfy, great–I’ll have the gratification that comes from good literature. If the first story doesn’t quite connect, I’ll go on. If outside pressures overtake my reading time, I can abandon the book with less regret.
On the sheerly positive side, having nothing to do with exhaustion and compromise: Some wonderful writers produce mostly or only short stories. Raymond Carver leaps to mind, as does Alice Munro. I loved Pam Houston’s collection “Cowboys Are My Weakness.” If she ever writes a novel, I’ll grab it. Ditto for Kate Wheeler, who so far has published one collection of exotic stories. Right now I’m reading the collected works of Paul Theroux, a thick volume that I probably won’t read straight through because I’ll have some other reading projects before I finish. But even if it takes months to get back to him, it will be simple to take up where I left off.
I don’t know why story collections aren’t more commercially successful, but they should be. I can’t be the only reader who feels stories satisfy when a novel is more than I want to take on. And if you’ve wondered why you haven’t read any books lately, when you always loved to read, you might pick up a collection, and sit down, and read one story. Just one. Maybe tomorrow you’ll find time for another.
