
Survival of the smallest: the contested history of the English short story - lermontov
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/06/survival-smallest-contested-history-english-short-story
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projectramo
When this article opened with the multiple proclamations of the return of the
short story, I immediately thought, yes it is coming back because of the
mobile phone and our short attention spans.

But then the author says:

'Other recent announcements of the short-story renaissance include one in
2014, when the Daily Telegraph called it “the perfect literary form for the
21st century” because brevity suits our dwindling attention span (more on the
stupidity of that argument later)'

And I waited for most of the (enjoyable) essay to hit on the insight:

'Given the need for a piece to be read at a single sitting – say, half an hour
for the average New Yorker story – and the compression that demands constant
and close attention to the text, it is bizarre to talk up the short story’s
suitability for time-poor readers. War and Peace is enormously long but its
chapters are short, taking five or ten minutes to read. It also includes a
list of characters and, as Flaubert pointed out, Tolstoy often repeats
himself. There’s a book for a crappy attention span.'

But if this is true, why isn't flash fiction more popular?

I think the reason is because the reader has to do a lot of work to get into a
story. They have to like the characters, figure out the setting and connect.
All the labor is lost each time a new story starts.

The solution is: flash fiction in a shared world with common characters and
locations.

