The Readers' Comments section of today's New York Times tosses out the following quote by Stephen King, editor of "The Best American Short Stories 2007," for us to chew on: Modern American short stories are, according to King, “show-offy rather than entertaining, self-important rather than interesting, guarded and self-conscious rather than gloriously open, and worst of all, written for editors and teachers rather than for readers.”
The more than a hundred responses that the prompt generated range from impassioned defenses of the contemporary American story (oddly enough, the most oft-cited author in its support is the Canadian Alice Munro) to enthusiastic affirmations of King's sentiments that lay the blame variously on MFA programs, academia, censorship, the Internet, a pervasive acceptance of plagiarism, the decline of literary magazines, and the shrinking working class in the United States. King is accused of small-mindedness and ignorance one moment and hailed as a prophet the next.
Whether we think that King is a thinly disguised imperialist (several readers suggest that his biggest fault as a literary critic is his lack of appreciation for world literature--perhaps they missed the fact that he's talking about the decline of the American short story?) or want to praise him for telling it like it is, the question of what makes good literature continues to be a hotly contested one. As for me, I don't care whether you like American stories or don't like them, or what your personal feelings are for King himself, or whether you're a lifelong Hemingway loyalist or Jhumpa Lahiri's biggest fan. Keep the controversy coming, and American fiction will prosper from it.
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2 comments:
I’d been thinking the same thing as King, after reading Atlantic Monthly’s latest collection. Too much form and artifice, and too little great story telling. None of the stories that Atlantic thought worthy has stuck in my mind in any way. Great characters and keen insights, too, seem to be lacking. I don’t much like Nick Adams, but I remember him. Where are Bartleby and Walter Mitty? Where is the illumination of “The Lottery” or “The Bear”? I think that maybe writers spend too much time looking over their shoulders instead of into their hearts. Publishers, too — because they are still the gatekeepers; anyone can publish on the Internet, but the idea still prevails that a “real” work needs a publisher’s imprimatur. And, of course, we readers need to insist on something better, through our purchases, our letters to book reviews, our posts on Amazon, our critiques to our English professors, our recommendations to our friends. As Anna said, such dialogue can help spur new literature, and maybe inspire writers to forget about “device” and “hook” and instead tell the stories that need to be told.
Sorry -- that's Checkerbloom, not Checkerblood...
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