Guest post by Greg Schutz. Elle magazine’s review of Julie Orringer’s 2003 story collection How to Breathe Underwater contains the following preposterous, but sadly typical, statement: “Each story delivers the satisfying details and emotional heft of a novel.” The implication here is that “satisfying details” and “emotional heft” tend to be features of the novel…
Guest post by Greg Schutz. I’m far from the first to suggest that, in spite of the form’s name, brevity should not be considered the defining feature of the short story. As Frank O’Connor contends in his seminal 1963 study of the form, The Lonely Voice, “[T]he very term ‘short story’ is a misnomer. A…
Guest post by Greg Schutz “I have always wondered why short stories aren’t more popular in this country,” muses Barbara Kingsolver in her introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2001. “We Americans are such busy people you’d think we’d jump at the chance to have our literary wisdom served in doses that fit handily…
Guest post by Greg Schutz Dear Fred, You don’t remember me. You would, perhaps–I hope so, at least–but you don’t. I just wanted to tell you that I reread a story of yours the other day, and then, even though I didn’t really have the time to spare, I reread another one. …
Guest post by Greg Schutz Because I enjoy fishing and have several tech-savvy friends who do as well, Google will every so often sift through the contents of my GMail inbox and offer me a targeted advertisement from PETA. “You wouldn’t impale a dog in the mouth,” the text reads, “so why would you do…
Guest post by Greg Schutz “Take control of your writing process,” I tell my students. “Be aware of the ways in which how you write affects what you write–and how well you write.” And as my students look up at me–we’re in Composition I, Argumentative Writing, or Developmental English; they’re seventeen or thirty or…
Guest post by Greg Schutz In “Gershwin’s Second Prelude,” the first story in Charles Baxter‘s first book, the 1984 collection Harmony of the World, the elderly piano instructor Madame Gutowski leans back to admonish Kate, her pupil. “Now listen,” she says. “You children think you are so new with your misery, with your morphia. Pain…
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