The Short Story Reading Challenge: "BATTLE ROYAL" by Ralph Ellison

Monday, February 4, 2008

"BATTLE ROYAL" by Ralph Ellison

Hello, Everyone!

I'm a novice when it comes to short stories. I'm working to develop an appreciation for them, and I have chosen Option #1. Most of the stories I read will come from a Literature textbook kindly given to me recently by an English professor with whom my husband works. My first story for the year is "Battle Royal" by Ralph Ellison, and you can follow the link to read my impressions on my blog.

I'm looking forward to more discoveries such as this.
Thanks for the Challenge!
Lezlie
White Bear Lake, MN

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: If you're trying out some short stories, try "Winter Dreams" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's based in White Bear in the 20s. (He doesn't name the location, but refers to the lake as "Black Bear Lake").; February 25, 2009 at 4:18 PM

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This is a group blog dedicated to the Short Story Reading Challenge which will run throughout 2010. Participants can post their reading lists, recommendations, and reviews of specific short stories and short story collections here, as well as ruminations on and links related to the short story form more generally. (There is also an archive here of posts from the initial incarnation of this challenge which ran throughout 2008.)

New participants are welcome at any point in the year. If you wish to join the challege, contact Kate via e-mail.

Quotations

Flannery O'Connor: "When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning, and the purpose of making statements about the meaning of a story is only to help you to experience the meaning more fully."

Jackie Kay: "A short story is a small moment of belief. Hard, uncompromising, often bleak, the story does not make things easy for the reader. It is a tough form for tough times. If the novel sometimes spoon feeds the reader, the short story asks her to feed herself. A story asks the reader to continue it after it has finished or to begin it before it began. There is space for the reader to come in and imagine and create. There is space for the reader to think for ages, to mull the impact of a story over, to try and recover from it!"

Mavis Gallant: "There is something I keep wanting to say about reading short stories. I am doing it now, because I may never have another occasion. Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait."

William Boyd: “…the true, fully functioning short story should achieve a totality of effect that makes it almost impossible to encapsulate or summarise. For it is in this area, it seems to me, that the short story and the novel divide, where the effect of reading a good short story is quite different from the effect of reading a good novel. The great modern short stories possess a quality of mystery and beguiling resonance about them—a complexity of afterthought—that cannot be pinned down or analysed.”

The Short Story Reading Challenge

Monday, February 4, 2008

"BATTLE ROYAL" by Ralph Ellison

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