I hope you’ll like this book, Constant Reader. I suspect you won’t like it as well as you would a novel, because most of you have forgotten the real pleasures of the short story. Reading a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair. I can remember commuting between Maine and Pittsburgh during the making of Creepshow, and going mostly by car because of my fear of flying coupled with the air traffic controllers’ strike and Mr. Reagan’s subsequent firing of the strikers (Reagan, it appears, is really only an ardent unionist if the unions in question are in Poland). I had a reading of The Thorn Birds, by Colleen McCullough, on eight cassette tapes, and for a space of about five weeks I wasn’t even having an affair with that novel; I felt married to it (my favorite part was when the wicked old lady rotted and sprouted maggots in about sixteen hours).
A short story is a different thing altogether—a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger. That is not, of course, the same thing as an affair or a marriage, but kisses can be sweet, and their very brevity forms their own attraction.
Writing short stories hasn’t gotten easier for me over the years; it’s gotten harder. The time to do them has shrunk, for one thing. They keep wanting to bloat, for another (I have a real problem with bloat—I write like fat ladies diet). And it seems harder to find the voice for these tales — all too often the I-Guy just floats away.
The thing to do is to keep trying, I think. It’s better to keep kissing and get your face slapped a few times than it is to give up altogether.
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