A reviewer in today's San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, Wayne Harrison, begins a sentence as follows: "In a literary landscape where short-story collections have been hammered smooth of risk and possibility in MFA workshops..." (p. F4). I agree that this assessment might be true in some cases, but it is a vast generalization (probably made to be provocative, and to highlight the book under review in contrast, but still...) that does not acknowledge the work of many wonderful short story writers writing today. Here I list (and I have written about many of these on this blog) some of these gifted writers of original, creative, surprising, enlightening, enjoyable, impressive stories (in no particular order, and in a list that does not claim to be complete):
William Trevor
Alice Munro
Edith Pearlman
Deborah Eisenberg
Julian Barnes
Colm Toibin
Jhumpa Lahiri
Margaret Drabble
Ann Beattie
Margaret Atwood
David Leavitt
Lori Ostlund
Valerie Trueblood
Carolyn Cooke
Ann Packer
Deborah Willis
Robin Black
I know that many readers of fiction do not particularly enjoy short stories, preferring the longer novel, and I respect that opinion. However, as much as I too love the novel form, I believe that such readers are missing out on some absolutely terrific fiction found in short story collections by authors such as those I have listed above.
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