(from Alice LaPlante's "the Making of a Story")
[p168] “the anecdote, stripped of its trimmings, is insignificant and often inane.”
[p168] “a short story must be an idea … It must be a picture, it must illustrate something … something of the real essence of the subject.”
[p169] “It cannot be summarized or reduced without sacrificing the very qualities that do in fact distinguish an amusing dinner-party anecdote from a great work of art - depth, resonance, harmony”
[p170] “if we find a way to describe what the story is really about, not its plot but its essence … there is always something there” But this is so very true of novellas and novels as well. This is not a unique aspect of the short story.
Poe: everything should work towards an effect.
[p172] V.S. Pritchett: “The novel tends to tell us everything whereas the short story tells us only one thing, and that, intensely… It is, as some have said, a ‘glimpse through,’ resembling a painting or even a song which we can take in at once, yet bring the recesses and contours of larger experience to the mind.”
[p176] “To claim that every short story should include a moment of epiphany is like insisting that every talented, marvelous dog jump through the same narrow hoop.”
Why should everything in the world of a short story be “put there for a reason” [p177] Can its internal dissonance not be a major part of the story’s impact?
[p178] “we understand something new, something solid”, again, that is true for truly artistic (moral) novels too.
