tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3161136885462262525.post1810349413219528830..comments2024-03-09T00:19:36.011-08:00Comments on Reading the Short Story: Steven Millhauser’s “A Voice in the Night” and Flannery O’Connor’s Romance Short FictionCharles E. Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11642048806407593585noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3161136885462262525.post-59791274031411173992013-01-07T14:54:22.426-08:002013-01-07T14:54:22.426-08:00Thanks for your, as usual, thoughtful response, Er...Thanks for your, as usual, thoughtful response, Eric. Perhaps you and I are not using the words "mystery" and "spirituality" in quite the same way. And I am not sure you are using the word "grotesque" the same way Flannery O'Connor uses that term. And when O'Connor talks about the "romance" form, she is not defining by length, but rather by theme and technique. In my own essays on O'Connor, I focus on the similarity between the theme/technique of the romance form (as the term is used by Hawthorne, for example) and the theme/technique of the short story form--neither of which adheres to the same technique as the novel as a genre generally. Thanks again for reading and reacting to my blog, Eric. I much appreciate it.Charles E. Mayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11642048806407593585noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3161136885462262525.post-22266886501041300702012-12-23T18:49:46.183-08:002012-12-23T18:49:46.183-08:00The above post got published before I could proof ...The above post got published before I could proof read it, because I got all bollixed up trying to log in. I meant "spirituality" not "spiritually" in the last sentence.Theorbyshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16626985721724069042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3161136885462262525.post-46774681291227626672012-12-23T18:43:54.412-08:002012-12-23T18:43:54.412-08:00Millhauser's miniessay was a pleasure to read,...Millhauser's miniessay was a pleasure to read, and he would seem to be a strong champion of scale in what sets novels apart from short stories. Although I love the poetics, I am not sure I get it. What is true of a grain of sand is surely true of a rock, a boulder, a mountain. Each, as much as the other, contains within itself the whole world. The grain of sand is more poetic, more dramatic, more likely to seize our all too seizable mind, but does it really have a microcosmic advantage the boulder does not? Even if it did, the novels world is not the silicosm of sand but rather the bibliocosm. Open the pages of a book (while you still can) and you open, potentially, whole worlds of lands and seas and cities and peoples and times.<br /><br />Flannery O'Connor's essay seems to me to have been pretty clearly talking about novels and novelists, but if living in the South in and before 1960 she could not see what was grotesque about it she must have been deaf, dumb, and blind. It was grotesque and appalling on a mind boggling human scale. Ooops sorry, don't really want to go there. But the mystery and romance she is talking about, it seems to me, she certainly sees in novels. In any event, perhaps realism per se has its advocates, but it seems to me to be more of a critical windmill than a giant. Writers are taken to task for being unbelievable in the context of their own writing space more than in the context of reality. No literate person today, I hope, would criticize Kafka's Metamorphosis (et al) because it isn't realistic.<br /><br />I mention this in the context of O'Connor because I do not understand the privileged status of short stories (although I do not deny it, it just isn't proved yet for me) vis a vis the mysterious, sacred, spiritual, inner, etc. O'Connor does not seem to be limiting "romance" to short stories, or even to be concerned with them. The words "novel(s)", and novelist occur 29 times in this rather short essay, and clearly seem to be able to carry the burden of mystery. I don't see at all that Wenlock Edge, Amundsen, Chef's House have an aura of mystery or spiritually whereas Murakami's Kafka on the Shore or Windup Bird Chronicles are overflowing with mystery.<br /><br />Eric<br /><br />PS I just read Osamu Dazai's collection of short stories "Blue Bamboo" several of them seemed to me to be truly wonderful (and I admit, full of strange mysteries). Dazai was a Japanese writer, active around and just after WW2 who committed suicide in the late 40s.<br /><br />Theorbyshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16626985721724069042noreply@blogger.com