ACL 1001 |
Lecture 3 by Ian Syson |
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This lecture will look at the form of the short story, comparing it to that of the novel. It will discuss the techniques of short story writing using examples from the short stories in the Unit reader. What is a Short Story? A short story is exactly what it says it is: a story that is short. But how short can a story be? It might be argued that shortest story in the world is told in childhood. In �Beyond the Pleasure Principle' Sigmund Freud recounts the incident of his grandchild playing with a toy on a string who throws it over the side of its pram and utters the German word �fort' (gone) and then reels it in and exclaims �Da!' (Here). This sense of progression � gone and here/absence and presence � is perhaps the underlying structure of all stories. Ulysses leaves to fight the Trojan wars and he returns years later to reclaim his home and wife. The narrator of Peter Carey's short story �War Crimes' moves from an absence of knowledge (fort) about the true reason for his profits being siphoned off, to its presence (da). Narrative � Recounting presence and absence If all narratives are about recounting presence and absence in one form or another then to define the short story we need to think about what distinguishes it from other story-telling forms. This is not such a simple task. As Michael Wilding says in this week's reading:
Yet it is different. The short story and the novel So, we are caught in a dilemma of knowing that there is a form of literary writing identifiable as a short story but not really knowing how to distinguish it from other forms. We could say that the short story is a piece of prose fiction writing that runs from anywhere between 500 and 10,000 words. Beyond this we might say that we are in the territory of the novella, and eventually the novel. Like all numerical definitions these are not absolute. In many formal aspects the short story is most obviously linked to the novel. novel Derived from the Italian term novella, �tale, piece of news', and now applied to a wide variety of writings whose only common attribute is that they are extended pieces of prose fiction. a form of story or prose narrative containing characters , action and incident , and, perhaps, a plot . US critic Suzanne Ferguson argues that the �main formal characteristics of the modern novel and the modern short story are the same.� Evolution of the short story: from myth and fable A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms , edited by Roger Fowler.
story Penguin claims that the short story is one of the most difficult forms to classify. There seems to be little point in measuring it. Related to myth, legend, parable, fairy story, fable and so on. Wilding sees the short story as a democratic, egalitarian form. We all have stories within us. Form especially suited to Australia Evolution of the short story: tales and sketches The literary form of the short story has evolved over the last 150 years or so. According to Robert Marler it became distinct from the �tale' in the 1850s when the tales being published in periodicals were receiving poor critical reception. These tales and sketches were seen as being exceedingly didactic, sentimental and poorly written. Stories that found critical praise were those which contained their moralizing within the work of plot and characterization, rather than authorial intervention. Evolution of the short story: Poe and the �single effect' The short story grows around the concept of the reader who is able to read the story in a unified single sitting � this is in opposition to the novel in which the reader is in different states of mind at each sitting The writer and critic Edgar Allan Poe set the critical parameters for the short story in his review of Nathaniel Hawthorne's �Twice Told Tales'. He described short stories as: �short prose narrative requiring from a half-hour to one or two hours in perusal.' Allied with this idealized brevity is the concept of what Poe calls the �single effect'. Read from Childs. Epihany
Absence of plot in the short story A main difference between the novel and the story is the deletion of elements of the plot that would be filled out in the form of the novel. Nonetheless we are able to construct what might be called a hypothetical plot. This deletion gives rise to two forms of plot:
The omissions in both types of plot cause a rise in the work rate of the reader. Effectively we are asked to give some thought to making out the underlying hypothetical plot. Elliptical plot In the elliptical plot there are omissions from the chronological series of events which might be referred to but which are never directly narrated. The entire story might take place at the moment of some crisis, or immediately preceding it. The emphasis is on the narration of the moment. A novel does the work of elaborating or returning to those plot points, but a short story with an elliptical plot will not. Metaphoric plot A metaphoric plot will represent aspects of the hypothetical plot by way of a set of images and events. A metaphor, you will remember, is a function of language which relates two seemingly unrelated subjects by way of direct comparison. To say of a sports person, for example, �She's running hot today' compares the abilities of the sportsperson to an engine working at full capacity. Short story plots: Two Sisters 1 Let's work through Ama Ata Aidoo's story �Two Sisters' to get a clearer idea about elliptical and metaphoric plots. �Two Sisters' � Events of the story The events of the story are relatively simple and occur in scenes on two days. Day one: Finishing work and wearing a new pair of shoes, Mercy comes home to the house of her sister Connie (Sissie) and her husband James.
Day two: Connie and James discuss the changed political situation.
Formal elements We manage to develop a sense of the hypothetical story from certain formal elements of the story:
The other major device used in this story is dialogue. Through dialogue some events (such as Mensar-Arthur's jailing) are referred to indirectly. �Two Sisters' Hypothetical plot These formal elements allow us to piece together from the elliptical plot the chronological events of the story, not all of which have not been directly narrated � the hypothetical plot.
Elliptical detective work This story is not an extreme example of ellipticality (much of what happens is referred to directly) (of course the misbinding of the story this week made the job of establishing the plot much more difficult). Nevertheless putting together the omitted plot aspects of �Two Sisters' allows us to see that the work of narrating � or assembling a story � is done somewhere between the writing and reading This detective work is part of the work of making sense of an elliptical plot We make sense of a chronology of events that have been omitted in the same way that we collect the impressions of light portrayed in the Monet to piece together a �real' version of the image of a small boat on the water at sunrise. http://www.monetalia.com/paintings/large/monet-impression-sunrise.jpg Metaphoric plot The sense of metaphoric plot is also at work here. The events being narrated present a narrow domestic and personal story of the opposing approaches that the two sisters have toward obtaining personal gain through one sister's morally doubtful association with political figures. We also read the omission here of the larger political story as significant � or rather we can read the small events which are foregrounded as standing for the larger events. Technically this is known as metonym. (In the same sense that we refer to the White House when we mean the entire institution of the US presidency.) We have here an African country independent of its colonial power, run by people like Mensar-Arthur who exploit their position of power to enhance their economic and personal status. There is reference here to a larger economic and social order which, in a novel, might have been more fully explored but which here has been backgrounded. This backgrounding of political events which clearly has an enormous influence on the lives of the characters is juxtaposed against a sudden broad view through the deliberate shift of the point of view. The point of view moves from that of the sisters, and even a more objective third person to the sudden meta-objective focalization of the Old Sea which observes the political and sexual powerplays with bored detachment. The metaphor at work here, especially with the change of power that comes with the coup and the oblique references to centres of economic and political power like London where Mensar-Arthur travels on a trade delegation, and �the white man's land' where cars are manufactured, could be one about the transitory nature of power and status and their contingency on other centres of power and status. �Two Sisters': Post-colonial contradictions Aidoo's �Two Sisters' concerns itself with a historically �real' situation which is told through a sometimes non-realist method. The function of this method might be to allow her to point out the contradictions that exist in a post-colonial society, the perhaps too-idealistic attachment of Connie to her Presbyterian morality and her support of the coup which overthrew what she thinks of a corrupt regime whose end would be the ruin of her sister. One question you might like to consider is whether the story suggests it is more beneficial to remain pragmatically attached to whoever is in power as Mercy does, or to remain �true' to ideals, as exemplified by Connie. An important point to make here is that this is a story about an African experience written from the �inside'. This is not colonial view of Africa , which might observe its characters as exotic Others. �War Crimes': counter-culture capitalists Carey's �War Crimes' is typical of his 1970s short stories in that that it presents a vision of a post-apocalyptic world, or at least some kind of future dystopian reality which is nevertheless seen as being continuous with the reality of the 1970s. The story might be read as a critique of the loss of idealism among the hippie counter-culture generation of the 1960s and the cynicism that came to characterize the punk era of the late 70s. This story imagines a world in which there is massive and perpetual unemployment, a welfare state which supports those who are marginalized by rampant capitalism. The Balloon Is an example of what some might call a postmodern story. How does it relate to the following aspects?
Conclusion These are three examples of a form of fiction that with its economy of language, its sometimes oblique attitude toward the chronological and �realist' re-presentation of events, people and objects and its tendency toward metaphor, operates perhaps � in opposition to the novel � more like a poem. |