Oh, Mr. Benfey, of this that you’ve written,
The short story is a genre in which, for mysterious reasons, Americans–along with Russian and Irish writers–have excelled. Perhaps it is because these are countries that, in their ragged and unsettled histories, have maintained oral storytelling traditions in tightly knit rural communities. It has often been pointed out that the American South, with its agrarian past and its experience of military defeat and occupation, has produced an unusually strong crop of short stories. At the same time, the writing of stories seems to be a talent, like a knack for chess or mathematics or lyric poetry, that lives and dies with youth. In the years before her death, O’Connor felt the well running dry; she wrote no new stories in 1962. “I’ve been writing eighteen years and I’ve reached the point where I can’t do again what I know I can do well,” she lamented, “and the larger things that I need to do now, I doubt my capacity for doing.”
I’d ask, in response, you’ve heard of Tobias Wollf, surely?
But Tobias Wolff, who is one of our great contemporary masters of the short story, says that the difficulty of the short story is its own reward…
2 responses so far ↓
jalyber // June 1, 2009 at 9:38 pm |
I find writing short stories quite satisfying, and I have yet to have an utter dearth of ideas despite my advanced age (mid-forties). With as long as we can live now, perhaps forties are the new twenties, and I am, indeed, still youthful??
kissthenightair // June 3, 2009 at 6:55 pm |
“With as long as we can live now, perhaps forties are the new twenties, and I am, indeed, still youthful??”
Sure, why not? That’s what they’re saying, anyhow.