The Death of the Short Story—a modest proposal

Here are the rules to which every short story must comply these days:

-It must take place in the country, or at most a small town (preferably in the South)

-It must be written in the present tense

-It must end like an unresolved chord, without any sort of final conflict, but rather with the character making some sort of vague epiphany

-It must contains lots of rich description, preferably if it has nothing to do with the plot, in order to make the reader “feel like they’re there”

There are some other optional components for bonus points: the main character is a child, it takes place in the 1940’s, or, if the story’s going for the gold, both.

The tone goes something like this:

The rusted pick-up trundles down the road, jerking this way and that like a drunken jack-rabbit as it hits the dirt, uneven in spite of similar rusted pick-ups having packed it down over the years. A young girl stands at the top of the hill, watching its progress. She can tell it’s her father, whom she’s only seen twice (or was it three times?) during the six-and-three-quarters years of her life, because she remembers the car, and she remembers the car because she told her father once that the rust looked like frosting on a cake, and he laughed. The girl remembers this, and the side of her mouth twitches.

The “plot” goes something like this: the girl watches the awkward interactions between her mother and estranged father, perhaps she plays with a neighbor boy whom she impulsively gets angry at without realizing why, but we know it’s because she’s confused and angry about the presence of her father, and then, after her father leaves, she sees that her father has left a doll for her, which gives her the mixed and ambiguous feeling that he really does love her in spite of abandoning her.

Jesus Christ, do you people actually want to read that shit? I mean, I’ll write it if you really want, but I’m afraid my gag reflex will act up the whole time and that you’ll owe me a new laptop after I throw up all over it.

I mean, what is it about that sad, sappy, whimsical tone that people apparently just LOVE to read? If I were to read that paragraph out loud, my voice would be in that soothing, NPR voice, gliding breathily over the words. Okay, that’s great for SOME stories, but aren’t there others that demand a completely different tone? And aren’t they just as valuable and well-written in spite of being different? And yet, I’d wager that if you were to submit even a FANTASTIC story of a different style to ANY short story magazine, they would reject it on the grounds that it needed to be more “descriptive”, when what they really mean is that it’s not breathy and sappy enough.

And this is why I REFUSE to try to take writing workshops or get an MFA from a creative writing program: I DON’T WANT TO WRITE LIKE THIS. And I think the fact that NO ONE reads short stories proves that this way ISN’T WORKING. Say what you like about artistic “ideals” or whatever, but before denigrating the choices of entertainment of the hoi polloi, look inside yourself: do you really, actually enjoy this crap? You probably don’t. There’s a REASON, for instance, why the only short stories millions of people have read are Stephen King’s. (See How Not to Write a Play by the great critic Walter Kerr for more thoughts on the benefits of creating art for the masses.) And don't give me some shit excuse like "people don't read anymore" and the riffraff of the world are distracted by movies and TV and YouTube, because actually, people DO read: there's a hit novel like every week.

And if you do read short stories, it’s most likely not for entertainment or even intellectual stimulation: you’re probably a writer yourself, and you read them just to find out how to write. But there’s something so incestuous and masturbatory about that system—like a closed, continuous circle—and it’s no wonder that such a system created an in-bred monster like the short story of today.

And having reduced its audience only to wanna-be writers, it’s no wonder that this shit style seems crafted specifically for middle-aged to ancient, over-pretentious New Yorkers homesick for whatever bumpkin town they come from.

Maybe—just maybe—I’ll suddenly be compelled to write a story like this—when I’m middle-aged and living in the countryside of Montana, no doubt. But for now, I cry out for the revolution of the short story. DON’T be afraid to write in a fucking MODERN voice. Who knows, if you do, maybe a non-writer—even a young one!—will actually want to read it.

And don’t even get me started on poetry.