Desperate Literature
It’s always been interesting to me that late and early in each year, several news items we touch on at Publishing Perspectives have to do with short stories.
This normally is sustained no longer than the stories themselves are.
Within a week or two, this little confluence of storytelling and issues of brevity is swept into the rest of the new year’s avalanche of news.
But it’s quite distinctive.
- In France, for example, an independent publisher called L’Ourse brune (The Brown Bear) has been set up to produce “the promotion of short stories by prospective authors.” Martine Paulais, based in Notre-Dame-de-Cenilly in Normandy, says that too many French editors neglect the form.
- Then in London, there’s a shortlist of short stories–or a short-story shortlist, which is harder to say three times fast. The Costa Book Awards in January name the writers behind a shortlist of three short stories. (The authors’ names are not known until public voting on the stories is finished, so that the vote is “blind” and not swayed by issues of possible familiarity with one of the shortlisted writers.)
- Also in the United Kingdom (land of literary awards, as you might remember me pointing out in the past), the BBC National Short Story Award program has opened and will, in early October, enrich a fortunate author by £15,000 (US$20,438), and four shortlisted authors by £600 (US$817) each.
- Then in Madrid, there’s perhaps the most aptly named event, the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize will not only pay a writer €1,500 (US$1,821), but also will send that writer to a seven-day artist’s residency at Umbria’s Civitella Ranieri retreat and provide the writer with a consultation with an agent in London. It’s named, by the way, for the Desperate Literature bookshop that produces the award.
There probably is no real rhyme or reason to the way short-story news gathers in little corners of coverage near the end and beginning of a year, although this year we could be forgiven for speculating that it might have something to do with “the times.” More than once since January 6, I’ve misheard a news anchor or a correspondent and thought she or he had said that more than 100 “writers” had been arrested in connection with the rampage at the US Capitol. Can Rioters Unboxed be far behind?
Awards programs operate on their own fiscal-year model (which is why, in fact, the Costa program in London is about to award its 2020 prizes in 2021). So it’s not just that “startup” factor of the top of the year having arrived.
You wonder if during even more orderly and safe times than these, however, there might be a practical element to short-story activity at an annual changeover.
To be clear, I respect and admire the short form as the entity-unto-itself that it is. I also don’t think the consumer base always gets the efficacy of short stories, many making the Brussels sprout mistake of believing that a short story is a baby cabbage. Of course, sometimes a story is a baby cabbage and an author will go on to develop that story into a book.
Could short story work have to do with testing out ideas that might become bigger projects during the year? Might a short story be a misfire, an intended book chapter that ended with more finality than expected?
Tumult and Traction
In a bit of a follow to my column from December 18, I might suggest that there’s an opportunity here in the unholy start of 2021–the angry equinox of lies harvested–not always offered to those who might want to work in shorter forms.
In that December piece, I argued for work as a shelter, a haven, the gift of “a way to work,” as actors say about the approach to a given role. They’re trained to look for “a way to work” on a character’s development by seizing on one or another key factor of that role’s personality for stabilization, traction.
What tends to arrive as we cross into a new year or a new era or a new administration is a clatter of close looks at things.
They seem to drop all around us, like an evergreen’s needles sifting to the ground. An anecdote. An image. A concept. A tightly constructed chord on a piano, one with stress and dissonance in it. A breeze that makes you catch your breath and then disappears. Lovely, dark, and deep.
As it has turned out, 2020 was the bestselling year for print books in a decade, per NPD’s research. That’s not what many might have expected from a year in which bookstores were at times shuttered. The industry, early in the year became increasingly alarmed at the pathogen’s threat, then realized the contagion was helping its business in various ways. Print book sales rose 8.2 percent year-over-year, to 751 million units (copies).
So there was an upbeat surprise coming. And we couldn’t see it then. You wonder if the story you’d have written in March would be the one you’d write in November.
What I’d like to ask you today is whether you’ve ever been surprised in reverse, thinking that a short story might lead to a book (probably the most regularly anticipated progression), only to find that a book led to a short story instead?
Beyond the obvious jaw-dropper of congressional deliberations overrun by domestic terrorism, have you found smaller surprises waiting for you yet this year? Are those clattering anecdotes and images and concepts catching your eye? Do you write short works? And, maybe more to the point, do you do it deliberately?
Let me know what you think. And don’t lose heart. In some years, we get more than one New Year’s Day.
About Porter Anderson
@Porter_Anderson is a recipient of London Book Fair's International Excellence Award for Trade Press Journalist of the Year. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, the international news medium of Frankfurt Book Fair New York. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for trade and indie authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman. Priors: The Bookseller's The FutureBook in London, CNN, CNN.com and CNN International–as well as the Village Voice, Dallas Times Herald, and the United Nations' WFP in Rome. PorterAndersonMedia.com
Happy New Year, Porter. I’m a big fan of shorts and often experiment in that form because it *is* a way to test out ideas. And publication is nice too.
My hope lies not in politicians or princes but in God. Praying for His Kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.
ps: I just finished reading your response last month, which I missed, in praise of Harty’s Hallelujah. Thank you for the link–I will listen.
Porter, my brain was on Hallelujah, hehe. I just finished listening to the Handel-Harty Messiah while I prepared supper and it was truly a joy. Thank you. On Spotify now.
So glad you enjoyed the Handel-Harty, Vijaya, thanks for listening to it — always a rush.
-p.
Brilliant, Vijaya,
Thanks for the kind note and for your thoughts on the issues.
I’d just see your kingdom-on-Earth point and raise you one Shavian caveat.
George Bernard Shaw’s theological concept was that while there is indeed a “Life Force” that we might recognize as a deity, that force needs our hands and our minds to do its work — to make that kingdom arrive. And this is why we vote. And this is why we legislate. And this is why we prosecute. Because the kingdom cannot come until we have done the work of the Life Force, ourselves.
Pray as we might, it’s then up to us to say “amen,” get off our knees, and do the work.
From Shaw: “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”
And:
“Beware the man whose god is in the skies.”
:)
Warmly,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
At my agency we had a court-side seat to last year’s rise in book sales. Royalty statements were windfalls, big ones.
Which showed me that in the time of pandemic and madness, people sought the safety and sanity of books. We are not lost after all!
Our sales of new work were also at record levels. Since those are books that will not publish until late this year or 2022 or later, it tells me that, long term, we need not fear. We have not lost our civilization, our minds, or our appetite for stories. We can breathe…and keep writing.
Happy New Year, Porter. Good to read your provocation, as always.
Hey, Don,
Great to hear from you, thanks much for the note, and I’m delighted you could see the dynamics at play in the pandemic’s impact on the market. I get these reports from so many in the industry, and it is indeed heartening.
My own version of this experience has a personal parallel. In most cases, I have tended to prefer reading (Kindle editions) to audiobooks, mainly because I normally have trouble listening to what narrators do with texts — especially the ones who feel compelled to perform “100 funny voices” for a cast of characters, etc. But in the pandemic, I’ve had to do a lot more of my own exercise activities than I used to do at the athletic club, which won’t be safe until our vaccinated future. So I turned to audiobooks because it was clear I could be using the exercise time to get some of my “reading” done. And — surprise, Porter! — I find that I can just decide to overlook various narrators’ hyperactive delivery and get the message an author is sending me. It’s not unlike overlooking a silly font in a print book or a superfulous “enahanced” feature in an ebook.
Aha. Old critics CAN learn new tricks, Don.
There may be hope for me yet. :)
We can indeed feel reassured in the performance of reading and book sales in the face of the pathogen, and this is reflected in all of the international markets we’re covering at Publishing Perspectives, Paris just confirmed heightened business during its second wave of confinements. Berlin has had less happy experiences, but they tie this more to their bookstores’ struggles, while the French demanded essential status for their commerce, and did better.
I agree we can breathe — and keep writing. Just with masks firmly in place until we can inoculate enough people to reach the nirvana of herd immunity.
#MaskUp and Happy New Year to you and the family!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi Porter, The major published work I have is a collection of short stories, some of which were taken from longer works. In my early years, short stories were the best way to exercise my writing muscle. Helen DelMonte at McCalls thought so too, yet she never could settle on one and publish it. Same with Gary Fisketjon. I am a saver, so I still have their rejection letters–they make me realize I have some talent. Wishing you a new and improved year–we all need and want that. I haven’t sent out my unpublished stories lately–maybe I should. Beth
Hey, Beth,
Anything that can make you realize that you have some talent is fantastic! :) You definitely have talent, and it’s actually visible to us quite frequently in smaller works and achievements — the bigger efforts take on lives of their own and don’t have the succinct closure of the smaller ones.
So hang on to those short works with pride and take inspiration from them, they’re feats of accomplishment most people couldn’t manage.
Looking forward to that improved year, thank you, and wishing you the same!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
One of the few positive outcomes of the train wreck/dumpster fire of the political scene of 2020 is the potential for story, long or short. Character, conflict, motive, all ready for the picking. What’s going on in the life and head of the guy driving from small-town Minnesota to Washington, DC to stop the child slavery ring he heard is being run from a pizzeria? What revenge is the hung-out-to-dry associate of the President who demanded blind loyalty and then turned on those who risked their career and reputation for him? It sets my imagination racing and my pen itching to write.
Christine, this is a great way to redeem some of the obscene farce we’ve had to survive, indeed, and there will be more such cues in the effort now needed to stabilize the shambles being vacated and fumigated on the 19th and 20th.
Make notes of these ideas and concepts to be sure they come back to you when you want them. Our natural inclinations will be to forget some of this inanity in our bid for recovery, so be sure to capture them for the future.
Thanks much for reading and dropping a note!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hello to you, Porter, THE voice of witty, civil discourse about publishing.
Along with many memorable things he said and wrote, Norman Mailer could be bone-headed. That was true when he dismissed the short story by saying that “anyone can be great for ten pages.” Wrong, Norman. Didn’t you ever read Mansfield or Hemingway or Katherine Anne Porter (any relation, Porter?) or Carver?
To your question as to whether WU writers are turning to shorter projects: I have been doing that lately. But the recent riveting and chaotic nature of political events has usurped my attention. My pieces don’t actually qualify as short stories. They’re satirical dialogues and riffs on absurdities in the press. Other than tinkering with an upmarket novel I’ll never sell (I’m too old to interest agents), that’s what I’m writing. I try to make the pieces work, then quickly send them out to sites on Medium. It’s my personal way of saying “No!” to chaos, and it gives me immediate gratification as a writer.
Hey, Barry,
Thanks for the kind words and the insight into how you’re using the shorter-form response as a way of grappling with and contextualizing the unforgivable pageant we’re watching played out by the wanton perverse followers of cruelty and anger.
Working quickly makes sense because the cues to which you’re responding are flashing by.
Do not tell agents your age. It’s none of their business. I’ve already told Don Maass you’re 27.
:)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
P.S. I just read your Dec. 18 post. You couldn’t be more right in describing the stringing together of sentences as a refuge, a place of sanctuary in a dark time. Other than casting my vote as a more or less sane person, and writing modest checks in support of sane candidates, I can’t do much. But I get to go on doing something that I like to think I’m still getting better at. No political mob boss or the pseudo-religious true believers who support him can mess with that.
As for not telling agents my age, that probably won’t work: I’m writing about retirees living on a Florida golf course. Talk about an “under-represented, marginalized and neglected” market–there’s one for you.
Thanks again for respecting language, and using it so well.
Barry, Floridian retirees on a golf course? — do you know the size readership you could have for that topic? It could end up in every golf cart in Naples and every doctor’s waiting room in Boca Raton. The potential revenue from a crowd like that will make you look younger than springtime to every agent out there.
Shop it around now.
Trump is about to make golfing retirees great again. :)
-p.
Porter, while playing duck and cover for much of this past year put my fiction writing in the freezer, thawing only for some flash (and not flashy) fiction, I hope to return from the writing Land of Nod by way of a short story, one I thought about (productive me) all year.
Shorts can be beautiful things all on their lonesome: I read Ted Chiang’s invention collection, Exhalation last year and loved it, as well as Hilary Mantel’s bright The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher—short yes, but immersive stuff.
Loved the Rioters Unboxed thought. And your note on stories sometimes being likened to baby cabbages did remind me of Mark Twain’s jab that cauliflower is nothing but a cabbage with a college education. But a short story can be the whole salad. Thanks for the post
Oh, that was supposed to be “inventive collection” dangit.
I like “invention collection” — and rather wish I had one, with a lot of patents.
-p.
Ha! Go for the whole salad, Tom, after all that thought, the new story should be great. :)
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter @Porter_Anderson
Porter:
The conversion on your post has gone into Day Two. I’ll add to my previous post by pointing out that writing stories on the political machinations of the last four years is also the chance to explore with empathy the lives of people on the other side of the political divide. That guy driving from Minnesota to break up the pizzeria child slavery ring might be dealing with the same garbage a lot of people face — lousy job, failing marriage, general feeling of helplessness and frustration. He’s just decided to take a stand, do what little he can to change the world, to save someone. Kind of noble, in its tragicomic way.
Hey, Christine,
Absolutely, I think there can be value to the exploration of both sides — all sides, since there are more than two — of the ongong political and social divisions in the States (and everywhere else, for that matter: they’ve arrested Navalny in Moscow today).
In my international work, translation is very big for us, and the kind of work you’re talking about is akin to what translated content does, bringing insights from one culture into another.
My marketing head, however (that’s another career, 17th century), tells me to be careful about material themed on the political situation. I found myself reminding some folks in London that a new online “festival” of reading called the “Lockdown Literature Festival” may not be so attractive to an audience in our vaccinated future. We may find that we don’t want to hear the word “lockdown” again in our lives. Reminders of the pathogen’s progress and lockdowns and curfews and closed stores may not be such an inviting thing to people trying to get their lives back on track and moving forward again. It’s probably similar for the political situation.
But you go for it.
As I say to myself every day — okay, every hour — what do I know? :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson