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  • The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."
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February 10, 2005

WHY SHORT STORIES?

The following is an abridged version of the ten reasons Steve Almond (and only on a day without Mark, could TEV have a list from Steve Almond!) gave to Algonquin.  His second short story collection, The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories, is being published by them in April.

  1. The short story is the purest form of storytelling – that is, it’s the most intuitive, satisfying, and elegant of our narrative possibilities.
  2. In 1991, he opened a book up in a library (The Voice of America by Rick Demarinis) and read a story (Insulation) and for the first time in many a year, slipped into a second, created world.
  3. When thinks of his favorite authors, he believes their best book is a story collection:  Richard Ford – Rock Springs, Denis Johnson – Jesus’ Son, John Cheever – The Housebreaker of Shady Hill, and on and on.
  4. As an American, he craves variety – one book may lead to a dozen different worlds.
  5. He uses the Poker Buddy Test with his own work – would the guys at his poker games read what he’s written.  Most of them, like most people these days, don’t read literary fiction.  One buddy told him, no offense, I read your work on the can – it’s about the right length.
  6. In grad school he was handed Barry Hannah’s Airships and never wanted to leave the pages.
  7. The writing in short story collections – the rhythm of the sentences, the precision of language, the emotional intensity – is generally superior to that of novels.  The reason is simple – the barrier to market is much higher.
  8. Novels tend to disappoint him.  Even in his favorite works, there are sections that he’ll skip when re-reading them, which never happens when reading short stories.
  9. He’s not all that interested in plot.  He views it as the mechanism by which the protagonist is forced to face their deepest fears.  This occurs with more urgency in short stories.
  10. The short story is the best way he’s found to express what all art must:  what it means to be human.

Enjoy,

Posted by Dan Wickett at 05:29 AM |

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