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Short fiction is vanishing
just like the dodo bird
By RAY DREYFACK
of TheColumnists.com
Charter (and sole) Member
Short Story Preservation Society
Inside every nonfiction writer there beats the heart of a storyteller yearning for expression and recognition.
Okay, I’m a peasant at heart. But when I read a short story I want sentences that make sense to follow other sentences that make sense and lead to a conclusion that makes sense. Does that make sense?
I believe it does. The question is: To whom? The way I see it, the short story as an art form falls into two categories: Pop Art, defined as ‘commercial’, ‘slick’, or mass audience; and Elite Art, mostly abstract or experimental, demanding as much from the reader as the writer. Having read an Elite story if one asks, “What does it mean?” the question is as much verboten as it would be to question the meaning of a canvas containing three straight lines and a circle. It means what you want it to mean!
I like my short fiction
straight. To me as a mainstreamer ‘commercial’ is not
a dirty word. I view a commercial story as appealing to a wide
audience of readers. I see it as a tale purchased at a hopefully
fair market price by an editor whose job it is to give pleasure
and satisfaction to a large number of subscribers and/or newsstand
buyers.
Does that make me an anachronism? I wonder. The purchase of commercial
short stories--plain as opposed to fuzzy, English as opposed
to broken English--occurs rarely these days. The pop short story,
I contend, is in its last throes, a dying art form. I recall
with heart-wrenching nostalgia the joy derived from stories like
Dorothy Parker’s, “Here We Are,” J. D. Salinger’s
“A Perfect Day for Banana Fish,” Poe’s “Tell
Tale Heart,” Hemingway’s “Killers,” to cite
a tiny sampling.
Forgive the cliché’, but I long for ‘the good old days’. I revere the era when I could pick up Colliers, The Saturday Evening Post, This Week, Liberty, Story, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, or Argosy and become happily engrossed in a story I understood and enjoyed. Or declining that, I had the option to class down a notch or two and cuddle up with a sports, adventure, detective, or thriller pulp for a couple of enjoyable hours. These choices no longer exist. Pulp fiction has all but disappeared from the marketplace. Colliers, SEP, Story, This Week, and the like, and along with them short pop fiction, are for the most part kaput.
Am I a lone lamenter? I think not. I see the Pop Story as a dear departed friend mourned by millions. Several well-established writer friends agree, as do many friends who are readers.
So much for the writer as reader. Worse off is the writer as writer? A Rhodes scholar I’m not. I make this concession reluctantly. But neither am I mentally retarded. I have written and ghosted nonfiction for years as my livelihood and earned a decent living doing it. In days past--long past--I even sold occasional short stories to secondary publications. The point I make is that, although not loftily esoteric, I am qualifiedly literate.
Please don’t sign off. I have not stopped lamenting. Like selective nonfiction scribes of my acquaintance I am a frustrated writer of fiction who is faced with a problem. In my dotage (or getting there), the short story bug again gnaws at my craw. Not just the reading bug; the writing bug as well. I feel the old powerful yen to write great short stories and get them published. But as every Creative Writing 101 student knows, before one writes, one must read. You have to pinpoint what the editor wants. The more accurately you zero in, the better your chance to get published.
The obvious question that follows is what do you read? The only potentially publishable short stories these days are Elite Art in the literary genre, or what writer Lorrie Moore classifies as “serious fiction.” Sorry, Lorrie, but I resent the implication that Pop Art is not serious fiction. If it keeps a multitude of common folk happy, relaxed, and satisfied, it is serious indeed.
So, with Colliers, SEP, and the like off the playing field, what players remain? The New Yorker, of course, I salaam low to the ground. With runners-up like The Atlantic Monthly, Harpers, Esquire, and perhaps a sprinkling of others. So, addicted to punishment, I devour these classy mags, and begin to turn out what I believe to be publishable short fiction.
Publishable, where? Aye there’s the rub. Take the status-swollen New Yorker. The brutal truth is that even if my stuff put Ernie, Edgar, and J.D. to shame, I would have as much chance of cracking The New Yorker--or Atlantic Monthly, Harpers, or Esquire, for that matter, as Bill Clinton has of being reelected president. (Although I for one would vote for him!)
The New Yorker, according to The Writer’s Market, receives “approximately 4,000 submissions” per month. Fiction editor Bill Buford states the case bluntly enough. “Despite countless hours spent on unsought stories, I can’t recall the last writer who leapt from the crates to the page.” But like many other fools of my ilk I ignore Buford’s well-intended hint. There must be an editor somewhere, I conclude, who welcomes the creative output of a talented credential-stacked writer like me.
Somewhere. But on which planet? If not a primary market, what about the secondaries? Hmmm. At this point in my life, comfortably ensconced financially and with the kids successfully launched, the dollar payoff is of minor import. I want my deathless prose published and appreciated--by someone. According to short story scholar Mary Rohrberger there are 600 or more universities that offer creative writing degrees. Most if not all publish magazines, usually with the word ‘Review’ in their title. Most claim, on the Internet and in writer’s market books at least, to welcome short story submissions.
Welcome is what I yearn for. With prime markets unreachable, I explore the literary marketplace where payment for an accepted story (a week or month in the writing) averages $10 or less, plus copies of the magazine. Or just as often, copies alone. Still, in an effort to hone my art, I pull several volumes of “Best Stories” (mostly Elite lit Art), from my library’s shelves and receive an ego-diminishing jolt. Story after story has me going back again and again, and scratching the back of my neck until I develop a rash to find out what the damn thing is about. Jiminy Cratchit, can I be that thick! I contact fellow writer frustratees and spell out my experience. The virtually unanimous response: “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
Says one, smarter than I, who gave up. “I refuse to rack my brain to decide whether Mr. Groper’s walking stick symbolizes a penis or a bandleader’s baton.”
I have no argument with experimental and far out Elite Art. Writing it, reading it, and reviewing its meanings and merits can be fun and keeps the imaginative juices aflow. It is a great subject for Creative Writing 101 classroom discussion perhaps, but it is not mass audience stuff. In a nutshell, it is not the art form I am hot for.
So where does a guy like me go from here? I concede the sensible course would be to toss in the proverbial sponge. But whoever accused me of being a brain? I continue to turn out my Pop Art short fiction and send them to this, that, and the other Review.
Blessed fate! I am not
unencouraged. On some computer-spewed notes in my postpaid, stamped,
and addressed return envelope, a box is checked off, PEASE SEND
MORE. Unnfortunately, encourageement is not always encouraging.
One well-meaning editor scrawls “I thoroughly enjoyed this
story. Excellent work, timely, intriguing, with a perfect ending.
Best of luck in finding a home.” Thanks, pal. But better
a note bluntly stating, “How could you have sent me such
garbage!”
Included with almost every response is a subscription form for
the magazine. With literally millions of wannabes yearning for
publication, I speculate on the yield and realize I am in the
wrong business. Then a flash of insight suddenly strikes. I realize
my fatal error. I failed to sign my stuff John Updike or Joyce
Carol Oates.
I repeat, woefully, that
the plot-driven, popular, understandable-even-if-you’re-not-a-
Rhodes Scholar, mass audience short story is in its dying throes--except
for thousands (millions?) of diehards like me who keep punching
them out.
©2004 by Ray Dreyfack. The illustrations are from IMSI's
Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael,
CA, 94901-5506, USA.
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