Hello Everyone,
This is such a great idea. I've been meaning to read more & more widely for so long, but without any plan it never happened...
I'm going with Option #1. And I'll be trying (since I'll only be reading English Language short stories) to read stories written (in translation!) in 10 different countries--starting with Japan because I also have a copy of Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami!
About
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.
New participants are welcome at any point in the year. If you wish to join the challege, contact Kate via e-mail.
Participants
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!"
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.”
Blog Archive
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2008
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February
(25)
- Women in Ukrainian literature
- "I'm getting fond of the room in spite of the yell...
- Irish Girls About Town
- The Story's Signature Space of Tethered Ferocity
- The Gipsy's Baby
- Selected Tales by Jacques Ferron
- John Mutford's 6th Short Story Pick- Kenneth J. Ha...
- Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears - Ellen Datlow & Terri...
- I combed my bookshelf for short story collections ...
- Paingod and Other Delusions by Harlan Ellison
- Smoke And Mirrors by Neil Gaiman
- THE TUESDAY NIGHT CLUB
- AWAITING ORDERS
- Across the Wall: A Tale of the Abhorsen and Other ...
- Friend of My Youth
- My Short Story Challenge List
- Shiloh and Other Stories, by Bobbie Ann Mason
- John Mutford's 5th Short Story Pick- Leon Rooke's ...
- Next Up at the Short Story Discussion Group
- The Scent of Cinnamon
- Hello--
- "BATTLE ROYAL" by Ralph Ellison
- Short Stories read by Seachanges
- The Laws of Evening, by Mary Yukari Waters
- The Woman in the Woods
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February
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1 comment:
February: Japan
* 'Tony Takitani' by Haruki Murakami.
Yes, the story the movie was based on. I find his writing draws me in like a conversation. At times it seems to go offtrack, but then you are never sure where precisely the track is supposed to be, and he has this beautiful voice and is creating a fascinating & enticing (though not necessarily beautiful) landscape so you just keep reading. Tony's self-sufficient isolation is so clearly presented at first. Necessarily evolved because of the name his almost pathologically self-absorbed (but charming) father allowed a well-intentioned but culturally obtuse American to bestow on the baby he had forgotten to name or collect from the hospital. But this self-sufficiency & therefore his protection against loneliness disappears once he falls in love... with the unnamed woman who we are told strikes him with how beautifully & naturally she dresses... like a bird wrapped in a special wind. However we also learn that her apparent natural appearance conceals an obsession with buying designer clothes. Trying to break herself of this--after returning an outfit that keeps flashing back to her mind--she is killed by a truck. And this time when Tony T is left alone he is truly alone. She leaves him with a roomful of beautiful dresses (size 7) and 112 pairs of shoes (22cm). He advertises for a secretary--no funny business involved--to wear his late wife's clothes. After changing his mind about this he is haunted by the image of the woman he almost hires bursting into tears at the sight of the roomful (larger than her whole apartment) of beautiful designer clothes. After that, he sells off the clothes at much less than they cost him. After his father dies, leaving him a large collection of jazz records, he sells these for much more than he expected, but none of these acts have any impact on the loneliness now colouring his isolation. This life, the roomful of clothes, the quick death, the jazz playing father... all these different pieces seem to be significant and yet significant only for a moment & only as long as they are remembered, but how long will that be?
Oh yes--I liked it. Wish I caught the movie!
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