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- Volume 1, Issue 1, 2011
Short Fiction in Theory & Practice - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2011
Volume 1, Issue 1, 2011
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Endings and beginnings: reading Clark Blaise's 'A Fish Like a Buzzard'
More LessThis essay examines the highly nuanced and highly powerful ways Clark Blaise revisited and reinvented classic conventions of the modern short story in his first published story, 'A Fish Like a Buzzard', a story that, forty years later, Blaise would choose to open (metafictively, this essay argues) the first volume, Southern Stories, of his four-part Selected Stories (2000-2006). Particular attention is given to Blaise's treatment of successive beginnings and endings in this three-part story, to his sense of how stories' endings, like the writing of this story for him, can and must involve looking backward, but also, and more importantly, looking forward. Contexts for the analysis provided in this essay include Clark Blaise's key theoretical essay 'How Stories Mean', from his Selected Essays (2008), along with individual stories by James Joyce, Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor
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Look back in wonder: how the endings of short stories can be their most powerful and effective distinguishing features
More LessDrawing on her experiences as a writer and teacher of short fiction, the author offers an interrogation of the defining qualities of short stories, with a particular focus on how the ending of a narrative can be one of the most useful ways of teasing out generic differences between short fiction and other prose forms. A survey of critical and writerly opinion leads into a practical demonstration of how endings work, with detailed reference to James Joyce's Dubliners. The essay concludes by suggesting ways in which Dubliners prefigures the composite novels and story cycles that are prominent features of contemporary practice.
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The frame within a frame: a short-short story sequence theory in a sequence of short-shorts
More LessThe short-short has often made the most of its contemporary surroundings. Content on the Internet in the world of self-publishing, it seems to be the embodiment of a twenty-first-century trend for playfulness; that which embraces technology rather than shying away from it. But this has often given the short-short an air of fleetingness, of transience, and therefore something not to be taken seriously. But the short-short demands and deserves scrutiny; it is a complex form which thrives on possibility, which thrives on questioning boundaries. Those that have dismissed the short-short as it sped past them may have failed to recognize its ability to reflect fragmented twenty-first-century identities, and how it is steadily creeping out of the Internet, out of collections and anthologies, into more manifestations, manipulating the novel to its own ends. This article explores the short-short story sequence in a sequence of short-shorts, demonstrating how fragmented, protean short-short writing reflects marginalized experiences, creating performative texts.
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Making micro meanings: reading and writing microfiction
More LessThis article aims to explore the concept of microfiction as both a reader and a writer: that is to say, as a critic and a practitioner. It examines the historical roots of microfiction, such as fables and parables, and its sources in China and Japan, until its development as a genre in its own right in the twentieth century and beyond, where it is becoming more and more popular. Its generic patterns, such as its search for epiphany and use of poetic techniques in a prose form are also discussed, whilst surveying its relation to flash fiction and prose poetry. Microfiction here has been used as a blanket term for all forms of very short fiction, and all very short forms have been discussed together, taking a holistic approach rather than a divisive one. As well as critical questions, this article also looks at the creative process and ways of writing microfiction, with examples and advice.
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Orcs on Mars: historical fiction and the short story
By George GreenThis article looks at the history and practice of writing historical short fiction. It begins by commenting briefly on the historical context of historical fiction, in particular the short story. It then goes on to contrast this with recent trends in writing historical fiction, and then to discuss the forces that shape, promote and restrict it. It then looks at the problems facing the writer of historical short fiction, both insofar as they share the problems common to writers generally, and the specific difficulties attendant upon them. The article concludes by looking at some examples of short story writing in the context of the discussion.
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Reader as consumer: the magazine short story
More LessThis article considers the influence of the emerging mass magazines at the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century on the poetics and reception of the short story. The author outlines the commodification of the short story within its magazine frame during this period and argues that much of the genre's critical marginalization can be traced to this era in its material history, as can the form's continued popularity with both writers and the reading public.
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From New Wave to SciFi Strange: thematic shifts in the SF short story
More LessContemporary developments in science fiction (SF) storytelling echo the innovations in the 1960s, led by New Worlds magazine. A new mode of SF, characterized as SciFi Strange is defined in terms of its literary qualities, sense of wonder, acceptance of diversity, reflection on basic human values and needs and exploration of the boundaries of reality and experience. Interviews are conducted with Michael Moorcock, editor of New Worlds from 1964-73; Andy Cox, editor of the SF magazine Interzone; Jason Sanford, SF writer and originator of the SciFi Strange concept and three other contemporary writers of SF short stories. It is concluded there are shifts in thematic emphasis similar to those inspired by New Worlds: these are emergent trends rather than managed, top-down changes. Modern SF writers seem to be rejecting nostalgia for technologically focused stories in favour of stories that tackle significant aspects of human experience such as politics and the abuse of power, ecological disaster and the fragility of identity. Writers and editors seem to share the view of those behind the 1960s new wave that mainstream literary fiction is not well suited to addressing these vital and complex issues.
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Exploding the open book: The Atrocity Exhibition, Vermilion Sands and the ethics of the short story cycle
More LessIn 1989, Robert Luscher distinguished the terms 'short story sequence' and 'short story cycle'. Luscher argued that the term 'cycle', associated with texts such as Joyce's Dubliners (1914), presupposes a totality. Instead, Luscher proposed the term 'sequence' to denote collections in which the text does not arrive at a unity, but with each successive story opens and expands. The individual meanings are not subsumed within the whole but instead grow within, what Luscher calls an 'open book'.
Luscher's account is a revisionary exercise that substitutes 'sequence' for 'cycle'. He does not consider their respective differences in terms of the modernist/postmodern paradigm. Instead, Luscher's use of linear and binary thinking places his critique not only on the side of modernism but also on definitions of the short story that emphasize its impressionistic and epiphanic qualities. The openness of the sequence is, in practice, far less liberated than Luscher claims.
While the stories assembled to form Vermilion Sands (1971) can be described as late modernist pieces, the avant-garde design of The Atrocity Exhibition (1970) effectively explodes Luscher's 'open book' by refusing to be reconciled within any meaningful structure. In so doing, Ballard calls into question the academic tendency to define the short story.
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Reviews
Authors: Carol Fenlon and Loree WestronWILD CHILD, T.C. BOYLE, (2010) London: Bloomsbury, 320pp., ISBN 9781408804803 (hbk) £16.99
TOUCH, GRAHAM MORT, (2010) Bridgend, Wales: Seren, 260pp., ISBN 9781854115126 (pbk) £7.99
THE PROPER CARE OF FOXES, WENA POON, (2009) Singapore: Ethos Books, 225pp., ISBN 9789810836467 (pbk)
MATTAPONI QUEEN, BELLE BOGGS (2009) Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 240 pp., ISBN 9781555975586 (pbk), $15.00
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