Short Story

B

Germany

The Novelle (the counterpart of the older Italian novella) flourished in 19th-century Germany, in the hands of a variety of writers including Hoffmann, Kleist, and Theodor Storm, author of the classic romance of childhood Immensee (1852; trans. 1863). The Novelle focuses on a single unusual or striking event, on a character or group of characters to whom the event occurs, and on a surprising conclusion that is propelled by a significant turning point.

C

Russia

Mikhail Lermontov's concern with character study in the exquisite cycle of stories A Hero of Our Time (1840; trans. 1886) contrasts with Ivan Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), a cycle in which a huntsman's visits to various rural locales is used to paint a convincing picture of Russian life. Gogol influenced later development of the short story when he fused dream and reality in “The Overcoat”: an insignificant clerk is crushed by the theft of his new overcoat, but returns from death as a ghost to seek justice. Gogol's influence can be seen in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's fantastic story “The Crocodile”, in which a civil servant, although swallowed by a crocodile, continues from within the monster's belly to develop principles of economy. A different strain in Russian fiction is represented by the realistic stories of Leo Tolstoy. “The Death of Ivan Ilych”, for example, analyses a man's thoughts and emotions as he gradually realizes he is dying; at the same time it criticizes the shallowness of Ivan's family and friends, who refuse to face the reality of his death. The master of ironic detachment in Russian stories was Anton Chekhov. For Chekhov, character rather than plot was important. In “The Heartache”, a hack driver tries to convey to his passengers his sorrow at the death of his son, but no one will listen except his horse. In “Vanya”, a boy writes to his grandfather asking to be rescued from a hard life, but the letter is posted without being properly addressed or stamped.

D

France

During the 19th century in France, Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert, better known for their novels, wrote several justly admired short stories. Prosper Mérimeé, on the other hand, concentrated his talent on short fiction. Despite the controlled, detached style of his masterpieces ( Colomba, Carmen, and The Etruscan Vase), they manage to express fierce passion. Fanciful stories such as “Father Gaucher's Elixir” and the other tales collected in Lettres de mon moulin (1869; Letters from My Mill, 1900) won much popularity for Alphonse Daudet, who also produced many Realistic and Naturalistic stories. The greatest of the Naturalistic short-story writers in France, however, was Guy de Maupassant. His 300 stories demonstrate mastery of the economy and balance necessary to the perfectly crafted, formal short story. Taken together, his stories paint a detailed picture of French life towards the end of the century.

IV

The 20th Century

Since 1900, enormous numbers of short stories have been published annually, in almost every language. Experiments in subject matter and narrative technique vie with displays of skill in the art of telling traditional stories in a traditional manner, as in the work of the English writer Somerset Maugham. A disciple of Maupassant, Maugham was one of the most prolific and popular of all short-story writers, writing mostly about British colonials in the South Pacific. Many countries boast of at least one great 20th-century short-story writer; for example, Katherine Mansfield, the New Zealand author, whose own style shows the influence of Chekhov, may be considered a formative influence on the genre. Her obliquely perceptive stories of life's ironies fostered several generations of imitators.

A

The United States

Nowhere else, however, has the form flourished so extravagantly and extensively as in the United States. At the turn of the century, Mark Twain, O. Henry (famed for his paradoxes and surprise endings), and the regionalists Stephen Crane and Willa Cather played important roles in this development. Sherwood Anderson proved in his short-story cycle Winesburg, Ohio (1919) that absence of plot could enhance portrayal of character. Many of Ernest Hemingway's short stories, economically written as they are, seem full of insignificant detail; the detail, however, is used to reveal subtle shifts in a character's psychological states. William Faulkner probed the deep recesses of the human psyche while experimenting with fictional forms and creating, in successive stories and novels, a mythic South. In “That Evening Sun”, for example, he dissected a black woman's fears while creating a believable world peopled with characters who evoke in the reader both pity and sympathetic laughter.

Among the newer American story writers, those critically acclaimed since the 1940s, are two other southerners: Eudora Welty, with her mixture of humour and pathos, and Flannery O'Connor, with her passionate moral concern. John Cheever and John Updike, noted for their dispassionate stories about the ironies of northern suburban life, were among the most polished short-story writers to emerge after World War II. Leaders of the avant-garde in various experiments with narrative format include Kurt Vonnegut, Donald Barthelme, Joyce Carol Oates, and Ann Beattie.