On The Short Story

The short story is a rural art form. It concerns, generally, small-town people with small-town minds. People who grew up in the sticks. People who don’t have much in the way available to improve themselves or change their lives, as Frank O’Connor has argued in his classic study of the short story, The Lonely Voice. Hemingway is something of a city boy and he is a great story writer, but most of his best stories take place up in rural Michigan and many of the other good ones are part of Hemingway’s attempts to re-ruralize himself. “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” for instance.

The case could be made that most of our great writers are provincials, but certainly among story writers the number is highest. Two great contemporary North American story writers, Raymond Carver and Alice Munro, both fit the bill. One of Carver’s achievements is to bring a plainspoken rural sensibility to the burbs. Novelists are often from cities or move to them at the first opportunity. As do their characters–Sister Carrie, a classic example. Someone writes a novel out of a desire to fit into society, its progress. A story writer however is behind the times; he seeks to hold on to a locality. But of course, he fails. He finds himself at large.