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A. I've always loved short stories
and the curious bent directions they elect. It's been rather a
joy to see how the form has changed since we studied Poe at school;
we were told that the story had to have one central point toward
which all the narrative flowed. Well, that narrowness has been
exploded in our century. An
idea will come to me, sometimes through a scrap of conversation
or through an experience I'm lucky enough to witness -- and the
short story seems the ideal form to direct it toward. The idea
may be too slim for a novel, too playful to sustain over a long
trajectory, but it nags at me until I find a home for it. I love
to find a way to match the form with the material or, in other
words, to construct a container that is, at once, both story and
vessel.
I'm not aware of any overriding theme for my stories, though I
notice they are often about the stability or instability of personal
identity. I feel lighter when I write stories, more like a tap
dancer moving along and just touching the tops off my own thoughts.
Q.
A recent article in Harper's magazine ("The quiet renaissance
of American short fiction") suggests, as you have yourself, that
today's short fiction can be more experimental and more varied
than the short fiction of Poe's era or even Hemingway's. Do you
believe there has been a "renaissance" of short fiction in the
1990s?
A. I'm never sure whether more
people are reading short stories, but I know more people are writing
them. The creative writing programs in Canada and the US have
given the short story -- since it formats so well for workshops
-- a great deal of attention, even as markets for stories have
shrunk.
The postmodern discussion has created plenty of theoretical fog,
but it has opened up certain forms to a kind of playfulness in
language and in structure. That old narrative line of ascending
action -- what some feminists call the ejaculatory mode of storytelling
-- does not work particularly well for women writers; they have
had to find other patterns. I love stories that sprawl, that include
little side-stories, that go off on random journeys and that end,
sometimes, not with a dying fall or a resolution, but a sudden
jetting-off into space. A good story is one that I am happy to
be inside of. Sometimes its surfaces are enough.
Q.
It seems that more short story collections are being published,
and finding more readers now. What do you mean when syou say the
markets for stories have shrunk?
A. I am happy to hear that more
short story collections are being published and sold and read.
That's good news. But the traditional "slots" were in magazines,
and these have become more and more rare. The New Yorker used
to publish two every week, and that was more frequently than any
other publisher. STORY m agazine has just announced that
they are closing, and they were such a force for so long. I'm
not sure how often Saturday Night does a story, but I can
actually remember when Maclean's published fiction. Chatelaine
always, at one time, had a fiction piece. It would be interesting
to track just when this change came.
The
situation is very different in England. The BBC has bought five
of the stories from my book, and several others have been sold
to magazines. Women's magazines actually publish rather on-edge
fiction here and in Ireland.
Q. If the exposure for the story
through the media is diminishing, what might account for the increase
in readership for short story collections? I think it's fair to
say if the short story "slots" are fewer so too are the slots
for fiction of any sort. Why then does the novel maintain its
position of fiction of choice over the short story?
A. I think about these things
all the time, beginning with the question of why people read fiction
at all. Because our own lives aren't big enough, wide enough,
varied enough for us. Through fiction we expand our existence,
which is always going to be confining. My friends tell me they
love to "get lost" in a novel, and I understand part of that.
One becomes thoroughly acquainted with certain characters in a
novel. Other people tell me that they think of short fiction as
a form of poetry that "knocks" on their consciousness, surprises
them, and often -- if a story satisfies -- answers some questions
they weren't even aware of asking.
Q. Very few writers choose to
write exclusively in the short story genre. Why do you think that
is?
A. I've sometimes had students
writing short stories, and I really feel they should be writing
novels. There is something novelistic about the texture of their
prose, more space around it, more thickness. I've also read novels
-- most recently the Booker Prize winner, Disgrace --that
are really so spare and open that they seem closer to being short
stories.
READ
Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 1 (May 2000) pp.22-23. READ is available
in bookstores across Canada, free of charge.
Interview
reprinted with permission. Copyright Random House Canada.
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