Some Anomalies of the Short Story (from Literature and Life)
Some Anomalies of the Short Story (from Literature and Life)
The paradox at the heart of this book: why do short stories that delight in magazines sometimes disappoint in collected volumes? Why does the form that thrills in isolation sometimes exhaust us in sequence? William Dean Howells, the first American Nobel laureate in literature, turns his exacting eye on the form he helped define. Drawing on decades of reading and literary friendship, he explores what makes short fiction succeed as isolated art and fail as collective experience, probing the strange psychology of how we consume stories. He traces the form's evolution across cultures, weighs its possibilities against the novel's scope, and reflects on what the American short story specifically achieves and neglects. This is not dry theory but the considered wisdom of a man who read everything and thought deeply about what reading does to us. Essential for anyone who has ever wondered why a form so brief can feel so demanding.
