The Obligatory White Male Author’s Fiction Manifesto: Stories (Part 1)

photo credit: Alexandre Dulaunoy (http://www.flickr.com/photos/adulau/)

Because I am an author and am also white and a man, it’s inevitable that I would write some kind of manifesto of fiction. I’ve tried to avoid it — I even hacked my own hands off to keep it from being written — but such a thing is as inevitable as the Cylon ascendency, so here it all is, in two chunks.

Students always want to know: What is a short story? Versus a novel or novella, they mean. And it may seem like an obvious distinction – stories are short, other things are long – until you start getting into the stories of, say, Alice Munro or Richard Ford or Nell Freudenberger, writers whose stories may regularly go well past 40 pages. I usually start with the old Poe definition of a short story being that which can be read, in its entirety, in one sitting. While it may not be easy or desirable to read a 50-page story in one sitting, you have to remember that Edgar Allan Poe was a bit of a drinker, so sitting in one place for a super-long time was probably not hard for him. But I think when people ask what a short story is, they’re really asking: How do I know when something works as a story?

I also tell students a hodgepodge of notions I’ve heard over the years: Where novels answer questions, stories ask them; a story is about a crucial moment vs. a whole sequence of crucial moments, etc. Then there’s my own definition: A story is a short piece of fiction about The Time Something Different Happened.

I like this one because it reminds students (and me) that something has to have shifted in a character’s life in order to make a story work. And this is universal across all genres and categories of literature. Let me ask you this: What are the most important words in a children’s story? You might be tempted to say “Once upon a time.” Or perhaps “Happily ever after.” But these are wrong, and if you said either of them, you are not valid as a person. No, the most important words in a children’s story are: “But then one day….” Why? Because when you see that phrase, that’s when you know something different is going to happen. If there’s no “but then one day…” there’s no story. Otherwise, Jack and his mom stay poor (though also free from the future guilt of gianticide) and Red Riding Hood yet again safely delivers muffins or whatever couldn’t possibly have waited until she found a friend to go with her through the dark woods.

Fictional character Jeff Lebowski goes to the supermarket every day to buy cream for his White Russians. And you can write about that — but it’s not a story yet, it’s a character detail. Now: If Jeff Lebowski goes to the supermarket to buy half-and-half for his White Russians, but then one day (night) comes home to be viciously attacked by thugs who then urinate on his rug – that’s the start of a story.

[NOTE: I’ve created this example by combining elements from two distinguished American stories, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Fantastic Lebowski” (1922) and Tillie Olsen’s “It Really Pulled The Room Together” (1960).]

But Something Different Happened to Lebowski. Things have been set in motion, and now he’ll try and return things to status quo. (Spoiler: this never works out the way the character wants.)

When people find out I write short stories, a lot of them tell me, right to my goddamn face, that they don’t like short stories. “Nothing ever happens in them!” is a frequent complaint. “I feel like they end poorly,” is another big one. “They’re too sexy!” is of course the one I hear most. And I usually make recommendations. Nothing happens? Try Jim Shepard or Dan Chaon or Jhumpa Lahiri. (Just not that rolling-blackouts story of hers. Ugh, that fucking story.) They end poorly? Read Lorrie Moore or William Trevor. (Or challenge your ideas of why a story ends where it does with Grace Paley or Amy Hempel.) They’re too sexy? I’m SORRY.

But I usually also say, “You know what? I have those complaints a lot, too.” And it’s true. I was on a short story panel last year at the Empire State Book Festival, and on this panel I made a regrettable decision. After I was introduced and handed the microphone, the first thing out of my mouth was, “I don’t like a lot of short stories.” Now: I said this to a room full of people who were there BECAUSE THEY LIKED SHORT STORIES. And amid a group of fellow panelists who were all short story writers. With a moderator who is an internationally known short story writer. So this was maybe not the best place to trot out my gripes about the form. (It really was a great festival, too. Please: Go to a local book festival sometime. It’ll do your heart good to see so many enthusiastic readers in one place.) In any case, while I said, “I don’t like a lot of short stories,” and while I sure as hell wasn’t talking about any of my fellow panelists, what I’m certain everyone heard was “YOU DUMMIES, I HATE SHORT STORIES. WHEN’S LUNCH?” I’d like now to correct the record and talk about this in a more nuanced fashion. So:

I don’t like a lot of short stories.

Matt! you say. What is wrong with you? That’s not a correction at all! What I’ll tell you is this: I’ve thought about that panel a lot over the last year, and while I probably should’ve chosen my words more carefully, my feelings remain the same. And I can say this because a) I write short stories; b) I read a shitload* of them both for my own enjoyment and betterment, and to find something to give to my workshops that will demonstrate the principles of good fiction; and c) I also read thousands of pages of them in grad school and certainly many more thousands in the years before and since. So trust me on this: I’ve given it some thought. I’m not generalizing about stories the way, say, your grandma might about The Cambodians.

My issues with a lot of short stories mirror the complaints I hear: Nothing really happens, and too many writers have no idea how or where to end a piece. In terms of the former, a lot of otherwise talented writers seem to forget niggling little details like plot and character when they’re doing short stories. The form seems to invite passive characters to come shuffle in and sit down and let stuff happen to them. Or you know, just talk. These people are usually married to each other, or are friends, or maybe it’s just one guy thinking to himself. Sometimes there’s a metaphorical fly buzzing around the room. You know.

The genius and trap of the short story form is that much of the plot needs to be left “offstage,” as it were. I know you have ten pounds of shit, my friend, but you only have a two-pound bag. In Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” we’re privy to only the crisis point toward the end (or middle?) of what is clearly a much bigger story between these two characters. Which illustrates Hemingway’s “Iceberg Theory” — that the bulk of a story, like the bulk of an iceberg, is hidden from view. Quoth Papa: “You could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.” I’ve bolded the most-overlooked part of this dictum. “Hills Like White Elephants” is famous for its sharp, cryptic dialogue, all of which hints at an agonizing decision for the couple in the story. (If you haven’t read it, the woman in the story is clearly deciding whether or not to get a boob job.)

However, Hemingway was Hemingway. Most writers, due either to circumstances or genetics, are not. So you have a lot of stories where, again, nothing much seems to happen. And then when you go looking under the surface, there ain’t much there, either. This is also where you get a lot of writers who just end at a point that seems chosen at random but was, even more sadly, chosen in order to give the impression of cleverness. I know because I’ve done it myself. I’m convinced that 90% of well-written, bad stories exist because of writers who are trying to impress other writers, or perhaps their teachers of writing. Because nothing impresses, however fleetingly, like confusion.

There’s a reason “The Emperor’s New Clothes” has endured as an instructive tale all these years. It’s still a perfect illustration of how social groups work: If I don’t understand what your story’s about or why it ends the way it does, the problem is mine, isn’t it? Because in that moment, I’m terrified of it being discovered that I’m stupid. And since others in the class or discussion group seem to get it, I must be stupid – never mind that they may be feeling exactly the same concerns as me – and therefore I will say the thing works and that it is good, in order to save face. And if a thing has been published, it has legitimacy, doesn’t it? Someone – gosh, a whole chain of someones! – thought this thing was worth putting on paper and preserving for future generations. Surely this is not a chain of emperors and courtiers we’re seeing here. Surely it’s because the work spoke to them.

Didn’t it?

Tomorrow: What I want from short stories.

* this is an old Biblical measurement of volume