The compulsive reader

By Marya Zanders

May 07, 2008 05:20 pm

— How long can a short story be? Or how short can it be? Some short stories are as long as novellas and others are so short they take less space than a well-told anecdote. There’s even a class of the short story genre known as the short, short story. In the end it’s like asking, “How long is a piece of string?”

Alice Munro is a master of the short story genre. She’s won countless awards and has been favorably compared with Anton Chekhov and fellow Canadian Margaret Atwood. My favorite Munro story is “Half a Grapefruit”, a tale about growing up and the things we say to make ourselves seem special to our peers. Unfortunately I can’t find which of Munro’s many books has this story. I read it in a library book more than 20 years ago, but the story has stayed with me. For anyone wanting a taste of Munro’s writing, I recommend VINTAGE MUNRO, Vintage, which contains stories gathered from a number of books including THE MOONS OF JUPITER, THE PROGRESS OF LOVE, OPEN SECRETS, and several others.

Margaret Atwood’s writing also focuses on universal themes set against a Canadian backdrop. Her collection of 10 short stories, WILDERNESS TIPS, Anchor, revolves around missed connections, the unpredictable nature of life, and the incredibly fast speed at which time flies.
FINAL VINYL DAYS by Jill McCorkle, Fawcett Books, contains 9 stories. The title story recounts the woes of a music store employee who must some to grips with the extinction of his great love, vinyl records. The third section contains an odd little story, “It’s a Funeral! RSVP”, in which a woman relates how she came to give funerals for people who haven’t yet died.
The mention of Chekhov requires at least a few words on the classics of the short story genre. SELECTED STORIES by Anton Chekhov, translated by Jessie Coulson, Oxford University Press, contains the best of Chekhov. The pocket-sized volume includes “The Beauties”, “The Black Monk”, “The House with a Mezzanine”, “The Darling”, and my own favorite, “The Lady with the Little Dog.” Chekhov did not start out a writer, he was a physician. These stories were written before the Russian Revolution, some whilst Chekhov was posted on the disputed islands of Sakhalin. It’s difficult to imagine this pre-Soviet Russia especially looking back from a post-Soviet world, but Chekhov’s vivid writing takes us there, and yet Japan’s and Russia’s debate over the Sakhalin Islands still remains unresolved.

A few years back Penguin celebrated their 60 years in publishing with 60 small paperbacks selling for just $.60 each. The ones in our home library include Graham Greene’s UNDER THE GARDEN, which originally appeared in A SENSE OF REALITY. This story is a mingling of an apparent dream sequence and memories with an unexpected, but not quite surprise, ending. YOUTH: A NARRATIVE by Joseph Conrad was the first of Conrad’s Marlow stories, and is based upon Conrad’s experiences sailing in the Far East. The Penguin 60 devoted to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, BON VOYAGE, MR. PRESIDENT, includes the title story and 3 others, all of which originally appeared in STRANGE PILGRIMS. The last story, “Light is Like Water”, displays Garcia Marquez’s facility with words, it tells this delightful little story in just 4 pages. John Steinbeck’s THE CHRYSANTHEMUMS AND OTHER STORIES, originally published in THE LONG VALLEY, includes 3 stories of California. Paul Theroux’s THE GREENEST ISLAND tells of a young couple’s holiday gone bad in Puerto Rico. These Penguin 60s are little appetizers for the writers’ larger works.
For a larger collection of stories there are the large volumes that used to sell for bargain prices in the 1980s, such as 65 SHORT STORIES by W. Somerset Maugham, Heinemann/Octopus. The most famous of these is the lead story, RAIN, the tale of Sadie Thompson and a South Seas voyage, which has been made into a film more than once. The book is a hefty, but excellent, beach read, and for those on a slim budget it might even serve as a substitute vacation with Maugham’s stories hopping about the globe, from Rangoon to Pago-Pago and calling on a multitude of ports. Like the Chekhov book, it harks back to another time, for Maugham it’s the days of the British Empire.

Francoise Sagan’s stories in INCIDENTAL MUSIC translated by C.J. Richards, W. H. Allen & Co., take the reader on a French holiday with a side trip to Italy. The stories take place from the 1940s to the 1980s and have an international cast of characters.

For mystery buffs it’s THE ADVENTURES OF SAM SPADE AND OTHER STORIES by Dashiell Hammett with an introduction by Ellery Queen, World Publishing Company, a used book store treasure. There’s more than one story here featuring Sam Spade. And they are complete stories in themselves, not just practice pieces for Hammett’s THE MALTESE FALCON, but it’s easy to imagine Sam Spade’s dialogue in Humphrey Bogart’s voice.