It has always been my belief that the short story is the ultimate form of written fiction. Yes, I love novels, plays, and poetry but the short story has the most elements to recommend it for long term literary pleasure. The short story can be read in a minimum amount of time since most are less than 5,000 or 6,000 words in total, although some can be as much as 20,000 words but that is a fairly rare event. But my ultimate reason for loving the short story is that it is a very unforgiving form of literature to write. In 5,000 words or even less, there is little room for error. A literary mistake on the writer's part in a short story represents a far greater percentage of the entire story than such a mistake in an 80,000 or 100,000 word novel. What might be a forgiveable error in a medium to long novel can completely alter the short story of a reasonable length. What does a writer have to provide in a short story? The key elements in a short story are Plot, Characters, Character Development, Confict, and Conflict Resolution. Many respected authorities on short stories disagree as to the minimum key elements of a short story. But most of those authorities list at list five elements and some as many as nine or ten. The elongated list then grows to contain Plot, Character, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Setting, Theme, Point Of View, Character Development, Tone, and Style. Some authorities might disagree about one or more on that elongated list, but they would generally agree that a good to above average short story must contain most of those elements. The editors of the book in question, "Introducing The Short Story", list Plot, Character, Setting, and Theme. I chose to buy and read this book more because of the twenty-eight short stories it contains as examples of the seven qualities of short stories which they editors list. The seven sections they chose to list are Plot, The Magic Of Imagination, The Surprise Ending, All In Fun, Short Shorts, Fellow Creatures, and World Of People. For each of those seven sections, the editors included 4 short stories as examples of the qualities in stories. The book is presumbly intended as a high school level text in a class on the short story, and that class would most likely be considered an Advanced Placement course in most high schools. I bought it simply to read the twenty-eight examples and not for the introductory and closing material attached to each section.
When I scanned the book's list of stories, I found only five stories which I had read before and I have been reading short stories for something in excess of 65 years. I found almost a dozen authors listed among the stories whose names and work I knew above and beyond the actual five stories I had previously read. But in the stories I had not read, I found I liked nearly all of the editors' choices and came to love two or three of those previously never encounered stories. In "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell, I found one of my favorie stories of all time. I had first read and loved it in my freshman year of high school, and I have been recommending it ever since. It is one of the best action and suspense stories ever written anyone. "The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty' by James Thurber is also one of my personal favorites which also crops up in my life from time to time. "Lonesome Boy, Silve Trumpet" by Arna Bontemps is a wonderfully written story about a little African American boy in New Orleans who loves music, learns to play the trumpet against his mother's adivce, and finds himself the featured musician at a most unusual party. Two of the stories in the "Surprise Ending" section of the book are fine examples of the work of Guy de Maupassant and Ambrose Bierce. No one can say they fully comoprehend the lenght breadth and depth of the short story who has never read anything by either of those two masters. Maupassant was a French master of the short story who wrote several hundred during is lifetime along with a few novels which are less remembered and lauded than his short stories. Ambrose Bierce's "A Horseman In The Sky" is a masterpiece only slightly less well known that his "An Occurence At Owl Creek Bridge" which was turned into one of the best loved of all "The Twilight Zone". And Bierce's own demise in the Mexican Revolution which he was covering as a journalist is a story in itself. He simply disappeared and to this day no one knows where or exactly when he died.
If you are a high school or even college level English, and especially Short Story teacher, this book can be a valuable resource for you in the classroom. But if you are simply a reader of the short story, and find a copy of this book lying in a junk store for a dollar or two, it is well worth the money to buy and simply read the stories and totally ignore the supporting writing from the editors. But even better, if you are a lover of the short story who wants to know more about how that form of fiction works internally, this is a great place to start learning.
