Big and small

Steven Millhauser, both novelist and short story writer extraordinaire, explains the differences between the novel and the short story, and what they really want to do for and to us:

The short story — how modest in bearing! How unassuming in manner! It sits there quietly, eyes lowered, almost as if trying not to be noticed. And if it should somehow attract your attention, it says quickly, in a brave little self-deprecating voice alive to all the possibilities of disappointment: “I’m not a novel, you know. Not even a short one. If that’s what you’re looking for, you don’t want me.” Rarely has one form so dominated another. And we understand, we nod our heads knowingly: here in America, size is power. The novel is the Wal-Mart, the Incredible Hulk, the jumbo jet of literature. The novel is insatiable — it wants to devour the world. What’s left for the poor short story to do? It can cultivate its garden, practice meditation, water the geraniums in the window box. It can take a course in creative nonfiction. It can do whatever it likes, so long as it doesn’t forget its place — so long as it keeps quiet and stays out of the way. “Hoo ha!” cries the novel. “Here ah come!” The short story is always ducking for cover. The novel buys up the land, cuts down the trees, puts up the condos. The short story scampers across a lawn, squeezes under a fence.

Read the entire essay at the NYT by clicking here.

5 responses

  1. So, I began with the skull. I have taken your hand, lead you to to Sumer; to the Royal Tombs of Ur, and bought you a drink. You have watched me drink my drink, place the glass back to the table; where it rested, for a while, before I drank from it again.
    Yet, you seem confused by the mention of Japan. There is no remedy, I just wanted to show off my new watch. It talks, in Japanese. A language which I don’t understand, yet, if you listened to me for long enough, you may believe I had travelled there once, perhaps sometime in my youth.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s