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The 1990s have seen a renaissance in short fiction studies. Today's short story writers are testing the boundaries of short fiction through minimalist works; extended short story cycles; narrative nonfiction forms, such as histories, memoirs, and essays; and even stories created interactively with readers on the computer. Short story critics, in turn, are viewing the short story from the perspective of genre, history, cultural studies, and even cognitive science. This volume brings together the opinions, theories, and research of many of today's best-known short story writers, theorists, and critics. Contributors include some of the most widely read contemporary authors, such as Joyce Carol Oates, John Barth, Gay Talese, W. P. Kinsella, Robert Coover, Barry Hannah, and Leslie Marmon Silko.
The authors and scholars who have contributed to the volume provide an entertaining and informative exploration of modern short fiction. The volume traces the origins of the short story back to Chaucer, the joke, and the instinct for play, and follows the development of the form through today's hyper-stories created interactively in cyberspace. Along the way, it presents essays on miminalism in short fiction, on the transformation of short stories into films, and even on AIDS and the short story. The broad scope of the volume includes a wide variety of critical approaches brought to bear on literature from around the world, including short stories from Africa, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States.
List of contents
Introduction by Susan Lohafer
A Novel Perspective: "It's a Short Story" by John Barth
Form and the Short StoryHow Minimal Is Minimalism? by Ewing Campbell
Social Critique and Story Technique in the Fiction of Raymond Carver by Hilary Siebert
Picturing Ann Beattie by Susan Jaret McKinstry
The One and the Many: Canadian Short Story Cycles by Gerald Lynch
History and PlaceThe Origins and Art of the Short Story by Joyce Carol Oates
They All Laughed When I Sat Down to Write: Chaucer, Jokes, and the Short Story by Barry Sanders
Southern Women Reconstruct the South: Limit as Aesthetic in the Short Story by Barbra C. Ewell
The Place of (and Place in) the Anglophone African Short Story by Roger Berger
Generic Variations on a Colonial topos by Ian Reid
Roles and GenresBreaking Down the Boundaries: "A Conversation with Leslie Marmon Silko"
Poe's Legacy: The Story Writer as Editor and Critic by Ann Charters
"Stories with Real Names": Narrative Journalism and History by Gay Talese
Story in the Narrative Essay by Mary Swander
Hemingway's "Indian Camp": Story into Film by H. R. Stoneback
An Unfilmable Conclusion: Joyce Carol Oates at the Movies by Brenda O. Daly
Cognition and the Short StoryStorying in Hyperspace: "Linkages" by Robert Coover
HyperStory: Teaching Short Fiction with Computers by Charles May
Interdisciplinary Thoughts on Cognitive Science by Susan Lohafer
A Map of Psychological Approaches to Story Memory by Steven R. Yussen
Short Story Structure and Affect: Evidence from Cognitive Psychology by William F. Brewer
"Story Liking" and Moral Resolution by Paul E. Jose
Deixis in Short Fiction: The Contribution of Deictic Shift Theory to Reader Experience of Literary Fiction by Erwin M. Segal
The Future of the Short StoryTelling It Again: "Ruminating with W. P. Kinsella"
The Way We Write Now: The Reality of AIDS in Contemporary Short Fiction by Sharon Oard Warner
The Future of the Short Story: A Tentative Approach by Claire Larriere
Where Do We Go From Here?: The Future of the Short Story by Mary Rohrberger
Speaking of Writing: "Spies With Music" by Barry Hannah
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
About the author
Rick Feddersen, Susan Lohafer, Barbara Lounsberry, Mary Rohrberger