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1 Of Sketches, Tales, and Stories: Theoretical Reflections on the Genre of the Short Story

From the book Handbook of the American Short Story

  • Lydia G. Fash

Abstract

Before the “short story” existed, U.S. writers thought about and composed sketches and tales. These two forms, one more visual and less plot-driven and the other often mythic and fantastical, helped describe a United States that was growing quickly in size and cultural ambition. Sketches supplied calm reflection and travel descriptions, and romantic tales told of the wonderful history of the self-consciously young nation. Sketches and tales remained wildly popular until the massive trauma of the Civil War shifted short fiction towards realist and naturalist depictions - and eventually towards a new genre called the short story. By the final quarter of the nineteenth century, a “short story” meant not a narrative which happened to be modest in length but a genre term with recognizable characteristics including tightly controlled atmosphere and action and, for the western humorists, much droll absurdity. Although the formal unities of limiting the story time to a short window (often a single day) and striving for a single mood still influence the genre today, the twentieth century - and its two great world wars - moved authors towards the modernist and postmodern belief that no rules could adequately explain the world or literature. Instead, authors sought their own versions of truth through spare prose, twist endings, and moments of revelation. While the elements of the contemporary short story are thus variable, writers still seek the form out as a way to forge an uninterrupted connection with readers who can sit and read an entire short story despite living in a busy and fragmented world. This chapter traces the development of this history, highlighting the words of notable U.S. short story writers who have reflected on what the genre means and how it works.

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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