The Short Story as a Phenomenal Class: The Pool of Many Springs
Joe E. Dees

   Short story: what does this term mean?  It means “story,” i.e., according to Webster’s New World Dictionary, “the telling of a happening or connected series of happenings, whether true or fictitious” (I have some delimitations to make of this later), modified adjectivally (or adverbially if “story” is the adjective, as in the dubiously existent “short story form”) by “short”, i.e. according to the same “authority” “condensed or concise, as a literary style, story,…”  When the two words are taken together, Dan’l (Webster’s) linguistic legacy labels their linked succession as “a kind of story varying widely in length but shorter than the novel or novelette: characteristically it develops a single central theme or impression and is limited in scope and number of characters” (only the word “characteristically” partially saves what succeeds the colon; even then these qualifications are true of some novels and not true of some short stories).

   Now, before we venture further, it is time to (or the paragraph has arrived to) proceed with the delimitation, denigration, and general derogation of the above definitions – in other words, it is spacetime for rank, rough and rude criticism of the recognized “authorities” in such definitional matters.  The two delimitations have to do with the term “story.”  First, “connected series of happenings” is incorrect if the implicit assumption is made that there are cause and effect connections.  J.D. Salinger, for instance, mentions the death of an adolescent’s infant avian acquaintance at the end of his story “Just Before the War with the Eskimos” (part of his Nine Stories collection).  The supposed connecting link is that as she was for a long time unable to divest herself of the berigored bird, so also she is unable to discard a nauseating chicken sandwich foisted upon her by a queer duck, with whom we are supposed to suppose she will rendezvous, post-denouement.  This is not even a psychological causal chain from the point of view of the character (if we “literally interpret” the text), for it is not said that she thought about the previous event or that it affected her actions; it is simply stated that it happened.  But how simple is it?  No so simple, actually; it was done with a quite subtle purpose in mind.  Salinger wished to evoke a congruency of reader mood between the preceding exposition and the subsequent “unconnected” event.  The concise poetic restatement of the chick’s angst elegantly serves the purpose of reinforcing it in the reader’s consciousness.  Second, not only does “whether true or fictitious” (since it denies nothing) not serve any negating (ergo no definitional) purpose, but also, since language is a collection of signs referring to things, situations, ideas and/or events other than themselves, all accounts are fictitious, for they are, after all, accounts of X, and not themselves X.

   After the preceding disembowelment and defenestration of the dictionary definition of “story”, one might expect the essayist to crush and castrate the definition of “short” in a homologous manner.  However, it is the essayist’s intention to state here and now (or at least successively and subsequently) that not only are “condensed or concise” both quite acceptable, but that the former entails the latter.  Furthermore, these properties (although existing only as comparatives, that is, as relative to an other, namely, the novel) are the sources of some of the most prevalent, although not necessary, devices and techniques to be discerned within the “short story.”

   Speaking (well, typing) of “short story”, it is now time to analyze the definition accorded the conjunction of these two terms.

   Of course, the emparenthesized conclusion to the first paragraph of this inquiry is a valid objection; Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw” and Salinger’s “Zooey” are either short stories or novelettes, while John Steinbeck’s “The Pearl” and Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” have been called not only by both these appellations, but also by the third one, “novel.”  The line of distinction is, if not totally nonexistent, at the very least not finely drawn.  I say “not totally nonexistent” only because it is somehow as obvious to me that Hemingway’s four-page “A Day’s Wait” is not a novel as it is that James A. Michener’s 1084-page “Chesapeake” is not a short story.  Novels themselves have central impressions and central themes, although there is more room for the weaving of these from subsidiary impressions or themes; all novels are limited in scope (I have yet to read one that “says it all”, and sincerely doubt that I ever will, and not even the New York City telephone Directory has an unlimited number of characters).  However, a certain trend is evident within the short story genre towards the directions enunciated in the definition: these “rules” are recognized as such because exceptions are, after all, exceptions.  They “probe the rule” (Aristotle); although they do not prove it, their classification as exceptions assumes a rule or rules that their noncompliance probes as a measure of the rule or rules’ validity.

   “Central themes or impressions,” “limited in scope and number of characters,” and like phrases therefore compare the short story to the novel, and would be more correctly stated in the form “…more…than the novel.”  This is because the short story is “shorter than the novel or novelette” in the general sense.  This does not mean that the generality subsumes all of its constituent particulars; it does mean that it subsumes a great majority of them.  This tendency of the short story to be short (or at least “shorter than…”) is what necessitates the short story’s tendency to be “condensed and concise.”  Poetry is the superlative of these tendencies, and is characterized by painstaking word choice.  Each occurrence and placement of every word within a poem is submitted to both pre- and post-publication scrutiny, and this scrutiny is intense.  Ideally, every word of every work of every literary type would be both constructed and criticized in like manner; however, the selection of an adverb, or even a phrase or sentence, on page 532 does not concern the novelist as much as the selection of a syllable concerns the haikuist, simply because the syllable is a much greater part of the haiku than the aforementioned adverb or phrase or sentence would be of our hypothetical novel.  The inexact choice of an adverb or construction of a phrase or sentence would not significantly subtract from the greatness of an otherwise monumental novel; one misplaced syllable destroys a haiku.

   The foregoing illuminates the fact that word choice is more important, as a rule, in the short story than in the novel.  After all, a word is, in general, due to the relative truncation of the format, a larger part of a short story than it is of a novel, and therefore carries more weight.  Also, there is another point that directs the manner in which this choice is made, but first we have to consider the relationship between words, as signs, to the referents that they denote.

   Any thing, situation, idea or event may be considered from an infinite multiplicity of perspectives.  In the novel, all perspectives that are not irrelevant or insignificant to the literary purpose may be elucidated, and in the novelette a goodly number of them can be.  In the short story, on the other hand, one is, for the sake of relative brevity, severely restricted as to the number of perspectives that may be considered, as well as to what length each perspective may be explicated/explored.  This has to do with authorial presentation of characters, setting, and plot (or event-chain: events, it is to be remembered, are not limited to the physical, since climaxes, epiphanies, and/or “shocks of recognition” (a la Aristotle) may also be psychological and/or spiritual).  There is a tension between major attributes and nuances; although the major attributes are the necessary and essential “conditions without which…nada” of the fiction, the addition of an apparently minor nuance can, because of word weight, subtly alter and enhance an already excellent short story and elevate it to the level of artistic masterpiece.  Certain devices are employed to resolve this tension to the satisfaction of both poles.  One may choose words possessing multiple meanings where one desires more than one meaning to be taken.  One may evoke an emotion that deepens the intellectual significance of the theme (as did Salinger).  One may match overall style to substance (as did Hemingway).  One may project moods throughout the work congruent to those moods that inspired its conception (as did Edgar Allen Poe and Willa Cather).  One may do any or all of these things, but they must be done concisely.  Henry James, as great as he is, wrote not short stories, but novelettes; this is because the multiplicity of the perspectives which must be proffered to evoke a confrontation with primordial ambiguity are relatively uncongenial to implementation in the short story form.  It is far easier when one strives for elegant simplicity (Hemingway) or determinate emotion (Poe and Cather) or poetic illumination (Salinger, but to a degree, the others, also).  “The Turn of the Screw, though brilliant, is not in this sense poetic, for paucity and sparseness are eschewed.

   Edgar Allen Poe, the “father” of the short story (although there are many writers in that woodpile), speaks (in his Review of Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1842):

“A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale [short story].  If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents [or embellishes them] – he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect.  If his very initial sentence tends not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step.  In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design.  And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred heart, a sense of the fullest satisfaction.  The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished, because undisturbed; and this is an end unattainable in the novel.  Undue brevity is just as exceptionable her as in the poem; but undue length is yet more to be avoided” (bracket contents mine).

And again:

“Were we called upon however to designate that class of composition which, next to…a poem…should best fulfill the demands of high genius – should offer it the most advantageous field of exertion – we should unhesitatingly speak of the prose tale…We allude to the short prose narrative, requiring from a half-hour to one or two hours in its perusal.  The ordinary novel is objectionable, from its length…As it cannot be read at one sitting, it deprives itself, of course, of the immense force derivable from totality.”

And yet again:

“The true critic will but demand that the design intended be accomplished, to the fullest extent, by the means most advantageously applicable.”

Verily, a passed master hath spoken.

              But what were Poe’s “tales of effect”?  Were they unqualified successes?

              No story is perfect, or even, in principle, perfectable.  The intended impression is ever and always incompletely (ergo imperfectly) communicated.  Why is this so, you might ask.  To answer this question, let us construct a paradigm.  Let Paul be our writer, and Peter our reader.  Paul has constructed events that evoke, for Paul, a certain impression.  But the manner in which this impression is experienced depends to a good degree upon Paul’s past experiences and his memory of them, i.e. Paul’s personal history.  For Paul’s story to evoke Paul’s identical impression within Peter, Peter would have to have not only shared all of Paul’s, experiences, but also Paul’s perspective(s) upon them, and to have experienced nothing further; in short, Peter would have to be Paul, and thus writing only to himself.  Any story told to an other therefore necessarily falls short of the ideal of exact sympathetic reduplication.  However, basic impressions, such as love, hatred, fear, bravery, etc., are more easily communicated, and especially so within a shorter format.

              Tough turds.  The trend within the evolution of the short story as a form or structure (although both of those words distress me) is to successively do more with less.  It is not (or no longer) good enough for a short story to be short; it must also be good.  This may mean complex, subtle, precise, and in fact means all of these.  The more complex structure, the more nuanced emotion, the more precise exposition; it is these that render the masterful short story a Pieta rather than a pissoir.  Especially, lately, the intellectual approach, which is emotion (as premise) developed to a conclusion, or the impossibility of one, has recently become predominant (Poe saw it coming – he placed great emphasis upon “ratiocination”, and, in addition to his tales of horror, wrote some of the first detective stories).

   Now we are ready (as much as we can be) to turn to the short stories of John Barth (Lost in the Funhouse).  A mathematician as well as a literary artist, he could not help but be aware of Godel’s Proof, which has been called the most important theorem in mathematics.  It is breathtakingly simple.

   Let’s say we have axiomatic system A.  All statements within A are true, and no true statements are outside it.  Now let us construct statement B.  B is a self-referential statement: B states that “B is not an axiom of A.”  What has happened?

   Well, if B is inside A, then A contains a false statement (B’s statement that it is outside A).  However, if B is outside A, then A does not contain B’s true statement that it is outside of A; A therefore does not contain all true statements. To put it simply, B cannot fit either inside or outside A; to put it more precisely, B either belongs both inside and outside A, or neither inside nor outside A, and the paradox is unresolveable.  The bottom falls out; we behold mathematics as ultimately a Zen koan.  Godel’s conclusion: any axiomatic system that claims internal consistency and is complex enough to allow self-referential statements must necessarily be incomplete.  But aren’t works of fiction themselves axiomatic systems, each with its own internal logic and direction, and comprised of statements strung like pearls upon a linguistic chain of reasoning?  Yes, they are.  Also, the physical world is ensnared in the Godelian quandary; the wave/particle duality of light, the absence of a fixed frame of reference, the equivalence of matter and energy, the inseparable symbiosis of space and time – the theory is no sterile abstraction.

   We are B.  Self-consciousness is, of definitional necessity, self-referential and thus open-ended, incomplete.  No system, soul, or story can own an absolute meaning, while lacking an absolute structure (which would be either the meaning itself or its skeleton).  This is how the paradox can arise that the meaning of a story is that nothing has meaning, that it can cause one to doubt the existence of cause, that it can direct one towards the apprehension of the absence of all direction.  We are primordial B, for statements assert, and this presupposes an intender and an audience.  Whither goeth the Moebius, so go we all.  Any absolute is chosen, and this is a contradiction in itself.  Existential shell shock ensues: we apprehend ourselves as inundated within an ocean of arbitrary and contingent constructs.

   Barth saw this (I believe), and decided to complete the Strange Loop.  He demonstrates the inescapably self-referential nature of his narrative by writing it and writing about it at once.  He ritualistically reiterates the rules of direction and continuity while at the same time mercilessly violating them.  He loses one in complications by following all syntactic laws, logically impels one’s trains of thought to inevitable paradox, with painstaking exactness irretrievable abandons one to ambiguity.  He’s the magician who gives away all the secrets, who shuffles the shells in slow motion, who performs sleight-of-hand with his left while pointing it out with his write.  He has sounded a death knell for all those who cannot accept the absurdity of their own pentimentoes; he has likewise given a baby shower for those who revel in that absurdity, and who, fully knowing the rules, nevertheless intentionally break them and thus create yet more absurd significance from the “meaning” of their violations.  Barth is the changing of the guard.  Threat to some, challenge to others, and an invitation to still others, if they write, he is unavoidable, whether they are serious or not (or, to put it less simply but more precisely, whether they are serious about seriousness, or playful about it, or playful about being playful, or serious about it).

   None of the authors and stories I have read is, or could be, typical, and there is no way that I could find a single quality or device (besides the alphabet and incompleteness) common to them all.  There can be no ironclad definition of a short story; I’m glad before we forgot this and forged our own flawed limitations, that Barth was kind enough to remind us of the fact.  Read Barth, but do not read him first.  Read Poe and Hemingway and Salinger first (Cather and James will prepare you also, but there’s method behind my suggestions).  Read Kurt Vonnegut and Truman Capote and Joyce Carol Oates and Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison and Thomas Pynchon – read all of them, if you like; then read Barth.  But just don’t read him first (and hopefully, not last).  After all, one must work up to him; he talks from the page to you (as I’m doing now) about the same things that can be but dimly glimpsed in Poe, which are only implicitly stylized in Hemingway, and which transcendentally and mystically inflict and infect Salinger’s characters.