In a recent interview on Radio 3, American writer Richard Ford was talking about his collection of American short stories. Pressed to define the short story, he felt he could only honestly say that it was defined by its length. Do you agree? In its earlier form, my impression of the short story was sofas and roaring fires in gentlemen's clubs and tales of strange goings-on in the Empire, typically Kipling and Conan Doyle. But now stories describe every-day events fixed by an epiphany. The first examples being Anton Chekhov, James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield and more recently writers like Raymond Carver, Penelope Fitzgerald and Christopher Tilghman. Or maybe it's just the length.
Michael
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