tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3161136885462262525.post7026979417509275636..comments2024-03-09T00:19:36.011-08:00Comments on Reading the Short Story: V.S. Pritchett: Neglected British Master of the Short StoryCharles E. Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11642048806407593585noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3161136885462262525.post-35750359457691250402015-06-15T11:44:51.153-07:002015-06-15T11:44:51.153-07:00I was lucky to pick up 3 volumes of Pritchett'...I was lucky to pick up 3 volumes of Pritchett's work when my local library had a de-accessioning sale. I'll be taking the Collected Stories volume on my vacation. Thanks for the Pritchett essay as well as the short story month essays. Ann Grahamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08257054651903250806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3161136885462262525.post-20970359272180748862015-06-15T09:27:21.927-07:002015-06-15T09:27:21.927-07:00I thought this would add to this discussion:
I wa...I thought this would add to this discussion:<br /><br />I was reading an old NYer article (Louis Menand) on the art of short fiction (mostly about Updike) and it digs into the "magic" I have resigned myself into accepting about a "great" short story. Here are excerpts: " [referring to baseball players]...a disproportion mastered by a difficult but, to the ordinary observer, almost invisible technique...a short story's aim is to create an 'effect,' by which [Edgar Allen] Poe meant something almost physical...in the end there has to be the literary equivalent of the magician's puff of smoke, an outcome that is both startling and anticipated...a general sense of Whoa!, not exactly a term of art. You know it when you feel it though...the whole idea is to make language perform its own little supernatural act..you could say the complexity of the machinery used to produce this is hidden beneath the surface of the writing, expect that the writing is the machinery just as sex is only bodies."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com