Word Pirates

Stephen King said what I’ve been thinking about short stories for The New York Times last week. But, oddly, the Grumpy Old Bookman does an even better job of summing up King’s problems with the short story:

And [King] puts his finger very precisely on what is wrong with the modern short story, whether American or otherwise. It’s pussy-whipped, that’s what’s wrong with it. I speak metaphorically, and I paraphrase Mr King, but that’s the gist of his argument. And the pussy to whom vast numbers of modern short-story writers are beholden is the vain hope that they might actually, one day, get published in the New Yorker. As if that goal was one which any sane person would consider important! The New Yorker short story is traditionally one in which absolutely nothing happens.

The audience for short stories has shrunk to the point where most of those reading the few magazines that still publish such stories are reading them in order to find out what gets published there, in the hope that they can do the same; and thus win a fellowship, or a teaching post somewhere, or acquire reputation as a writer of sensitivity and style. Thought and care for the kind of reader who used to read the pulp magazines and now watches football or reads the tabloids is a long way from their mind.

King read some hundred of stories before making the final selection for his anthology, and many of them, he says, ‘felt show-offy rather than entertaining’. They were ‘written for editors and teachers rather than readers’, and they read like a ‘fraidy-cat’s writing-school imitation of Faulkner, or some stream of consciousness about what Bob Dylan once called “the true meaning of a pear”.’

This is a recipe for disaster, as is blatantly obvious to anyone who bothers to read a so-called literary magazine.

This is why Word Pirates focus on stories having a point and being entertaining. It’s why we believe in keeping them short. It’s why we experiment. Stories should be relevant to life, and life today is harried and busy and bright and interesting. It’s unfortunate, then, that so many short stories published in lit mags are boring, long-winded, and self-indulgent. It’s time for a short story revolution!

Don’t look at me to supply it though.

~ Joy