Morphologies: short story writers on short story writers : essays

SARA MAITLAND on NATHANIEL HAWTHORNESEAN O'BRIEN on EDGAR ALLAN POEJANE ROGERS on FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKYBRIAN ALDISS on THOMAS HARDYMARTIN EDWARDS on ARTHUR CONAN DOYLEFRANK COTTRELL BOYCE on ANTON CHEKHOVADAM ROBERTS on RUDYARD KIPLINGSTEPHEN BAXTER on H.G. WELLSSTUART EVERS on SHERWOOD ANDERSONALI SMITH on JAMES JOYCETOBY LITT on FRANZ KAFKADAVID CONSTANTINE on D.H. LAWRENCEALISON MACLEOD on KATHERINE MANSFIELDRAMSEY CAMPBELL on H.P. LOVECRAFTSIMON VAN BOOY on F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
What makes for a good short story?
Being short, you might think the story's structure would yield an answer to this question more readily than, say, the novel. But for as long as the short story has been around, arguments have raged as to what it should and shouldn't be made up of, what it should and shouldn't do. Here ,15 leading contemporary practitioners offer structural appreciations of past masters of the form as well as their own perspectives on what the short story does so well.
The best short stories don't have closure, argues one contributor, 'because life doesn't have closure'; 'plot must be written with the denouement constantly in view,' quotes another. Covering a century of writing that arguably saw all the major short forms emerge, from Hawthorne's 'Twice Told Tales' to Kafka's modernist nightmares, these essays offer new and unique inroads into classic texts, both for the literature student and aspiring writer.