Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, Kate Mansfield, Charlotte Perkins Gillman, Edith Wharton, Katherine Susannah Prichard...
What do these authors have in common?
That's right, they all wrote some pretty rockin' short stories. Heck, one of the most famous literary characters of all time - Sherlock Holmes - was from a series of short stories.
Short stories really had their hey day in popularity stakes back in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, when magazines like The Strand, Pearsons and Longmans were among the hottest tickets going. But that doesn't mean that short stories aren't still being published today in fantastic publications like Meanjin and Overland. And you can still buy magazines dedicated to short fiction in the news agencies (like The People's Friend) and subscribe to journals that publish, say, science fiction, speculative fiction or crime fiction... It's just that, these days, short stories belong to a more specialised market, rather than pop culture.
However, they are, and always have been, a little piece of magic, so we were glad that this week's Reading Challenge gave us the chance to delve into the world of short fiction.
Brenda Carter read Wilder shores: Women’s Travel Stories of Australia and Beyond edited by Robin Lucas & Clare Forster.
Although not exactly an anthology of short stories, these travel stories by a ‘who’s who’ of Australian female authors are both short and satisfying. Some are fiction, some are non-fiction; some are excerpts from longer short stories or novels, letters or diary entries. Either way, they will inspire you to read more.
With sections entitled ‘Arrivals’, ‘Away’ and ‘Journeys Within’, Wilder Shores explores journeys to, from and inside Australia. These include the stories of indigenous and non-indigenous women, migrants, pioneers and settlers, and encounters with Asia. The reasons for these journeys goes beyond the traditional ‘looking for love’ motive, with the form of travel being either real or imaginary.
Wilder Shores is the perfect collection to dip into, with each story comprising just a few pages. You can find it on the shelf at 910.4082 WIL.
I’m going
to focus on just one story in this collection for reasons that will become
obvious very soon. That is not to say that the other stories are not good –
they are fantastic. Borges was very inventive with his method of storytelling.
And while there is a great depth to his work, it’s also a lot of fun, with a
sense of play throughout.
The publisher Melbourne Books came up with a scathingly brilliant idea a little over ten years ago - collate winning short stories and poetry from competitions all over the country, and make them available to the wider public by publishing them in a book.
The Award Winning Australian Writing series of books has been bringing short fiction and poetry to the book-buying public ever since. Without a publication like this, most of these works would win their prize (it's worth noting that some of the prizes come with a nice sum of money, if there are any aspiring authors out there), and then practically vanish from the face of the earth.
As an anthology goes, it's a very mixed bag. Different competitions exist for different audiences and purposes, so the poems and stories come from all parts of the spectrum, with entries by primary school students rubbing shoulders with entries from professional writers. Some of the stories are quite captivating, others are less so.
However, the book reminds me about just how short short fiction is these days. I still love reading the old stories from The Strand and similar publications when I can get my hands on them, and you could make a movie out of most of them (and a lot of people have). Most of those short stories run for at least ten pages. The stories in this collection rarely go for more than four pages.
Then again, maybe that's what people are looking for in a short story in the 21st century. The anthology lives at 820.8A AWA, if you want to take a look for yourself.
What do these authors have in common?
That's right, they all wrote some pretty rockin' short stories. Heck, one of the most famous literary characters of all time - Sherlock Holmes - was from a series of short stories.
Short stories really had their hey day in popularity stakes back in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, when magazines like The Strand, Pearsons and Longmans were among the hottest tickets going. But that doesn't mean that short stories aren't still being published today in fantastic publications like Meanjin and Overland. And you can still buy magazines dedicated to short fiction in the news agencies (like The People's Friend) and subscribe to journals that publish, say, science fiction, speculative fiction or crime fiction... It's just that, these days, short stories belong to a more specialised market, rather than pop culture.
However, they are, and always have been, a little piece of magic, so we were glad that this week's Reading Challenge gave us the chance to delve into the world of short fiction.
Brenda Carter read Wilder shores: Women’s Travel Stories of Australia and Beyond edited by Robin Lucas & Clare Forster.
With sections entitled ‘Arrivals’, ‘Away’ and ‘Journeys Within’, Wilder Shores explores journeys to, from and inside Australia. These include the stories of indigenous and non-indigenous women, migrants, pioneers and settlers, and encounters with Asia. The reasons for these journeys goes beyond the traditional ‘looking for love’ motive, with the form of travel being either real or imaginary.
Wilder Shores is the perfect collection to dip into, with each story comprising just a few pages. You can find it on the shelf at 910.4082 WIL.
I want to
talk about The Library of Babel (860A
BOR 2B LAB) because it
highlights the inventiveness of Borges and speaks a lot about librarians. In
this story, the world is known as the library and consists of a seemingly
infinite series of hexagonal rooms, filled with books. All possible books are
found in the library. Every imaginal variation of every text in all possible
languages, some differing only by a missing space between two words, or an
additional comma. The Library of Babel sounds a bit like the Internet except we
don’t physically live inside it.
The great
thing about this short story is that it alludes to a librarian who is
worshipped as some kind of God (about time!) and delivers some great lines such
as:
“The
universe (which others call the Library)…” and something that many students and
librarians have muttered to themselves over the years, “I declare that the
Library is endless”.
Sharon Bryan read Award Winning Australian Writing (10th ed), edited by Pia Gaardboe.
Sharon Bryan read Award Winning Australian Writing (10th ed), edited by Pia Gaardboe.
The Award Winning Australian Writing series of books has been bringing short fiction and poetry to the book-buying public ever since. Without a publication like this, most of these works would win their prize (it's worth noting that some of the prizes come with a nice sum of money, if there are any aspiring authors out there), and then practically vanish from the face of the earth.
As an anthology goes, it's a very mixed bag. Different competitions exist for different audiences and purposes, so the poems and stories come from all parts of the spectrum, with entries by primary school students rubbing shoulders with entries from professional writers. Some of the stories are quite captivating, others are less so.
However, the book reminds me about just how short short fiction is these days. I still love reading the old stories from The Strand and similar publications when I can get my hands on them, and you could make a movie out of most of them (and a lot of people have). Most of those short stories run for at least ten pages. The stories in this collection rarely go for more than four pages.
Then again, maybe that's what people are looking for in a short story in the 21st century. The anthology lives at 820.8A AWA, if you want to take a look for yourself.
Comments
Elizabeth Smyth read Six Bedrooms, by Tegan Bennett Daylight.
Remembering life as a teenager can be awful or great or a mix of both. In Six Bedrooms, Tegan Bennett Daylight draws us back to those days, when forging an identity and gaining a sense of belonging was all that mattered.
Nearly always depicted though the eyes of a girl, Daylight subtly illuminates the strength that resides within, when girls seek independence and follow their desires regardless of social norms.
This deceptively simply book is a lesson in curating a collection of stories, each one a new lens through which to observe the teenage mind at work.
Here, Daylight lures us with the deftness of a professional spy into the shadows of discovery, to witness first encounters with alcohol, sex, death, parental conflict, and shared accommodation. The repercussions leave us teetering on the outskirts of a sharp-edged world, wondering, like a teenager, how to proceed. Our peers, the other teenagers all around us, are equally clueless on how to live a good life.
The greatest pleasure in reading a collection of short stories is the ease of reading a whole story in one sitting, perhaps at the end of a day’s work or study. In this case, a problem (someone else’s) is quickly resolved. And so the next day begins with a sense of accomplishment. A teenager is set on a new path, to who knows where. Exactly as life should be for someone that age. Six Bedrooms is available through the JCU Library’s Interlibrary Loan Service, the place to request material from other libraries.