AMBER SPARKS | ELECTRIC LITERATURE
Google almost any celebrated short story writer – George Saunders, Kelly Link, Alice Munro, Isak Dinesen, Joy Williams – and you’re likely to see the same two words over and over again: “writer’s writer.” Lest you be tempted to exalt that phrase’s use, consider Cynthia Ozick’s description: “Every writer understands exactly what that fearful possessive hints at: a modicum of professional admiration accompanied – or subverted – by dim public recognition and even dimmer sales.” Other words might be “underrated,” “under read,” even “obscure.” Ask your co-workers who Lorrie Moore is and watch the blank stares you get in return. Click over to Goodreads and check out some of the reviews of short story collections, and you’re likely to get comments like “I wish he’d write a novel,” and “I just hate short stories.”
As a short story writer, I lived in denial for years. I pretended that the editors were all wrong when they said that short story collections don’t sell, that the Goodreads comments were sullen outliers. After all, most of my friends loved short stories! Never mind that most of my friends were writers, and when I told non-writer friends that my book was a short story collection they were congratulatory but fervent in their expressed hopes that I would someday, finally, write a novel. I did, one sad afternoon, suck it up and start asking people – non-writers – whether they read or enjoyed short stories, and after that proved too dispiriting I took to the internet and read lots of reviews and comments and criticisms and understood, finally: It’s all true. >>READ MORE
