Inger Stevens reading.
I took a collection of short stories by a single author along with me when I knew I was going to be doing some waiting. Read Story One and it was a winner. Story Two, great too, but the setting was much like the one in the first one.
Story Three, now the characters are beginning to seem a little similar. All three stories on their own were winners in any book. Full of atmosphere, character, and enough plot for a short story at least.
But read one after the other, this author's stories lost something critical-- freshness and surprise.
Now I wonder why publishers don't take say three or four writers, each different in style, atmosphere and theme, and publish perhaps three stories from each of them in one volume.
Sure there are collections where every story is from a different author-but you don't get the feel of any individual author that way. They are usually the "best of" or more thematically linked.
What do you think? Would you split the royalties in order to have four of your stories in a book? Would you as a reader find this interesting? Are there single-authored collections where each or most stories are distinct or are they just not meant to be read all at once?
25 comments:
I know what you mean, Patti. I've just read four Liz Williams novels in a row. With each novel, the characters and the plot became more predictable. The same thing happened when I read six Agatha Christie novels in a row to prepare for the six episodes of Poirot and Miss Marple on MASTERPIECE MYSTERY. By the third book, I had Christie's method down pat. Immersing yourself in a author's work yields mixed results sometimes. That might be part of the reason fewer and fewer single-author collections are being published.
And this was a really good writer. Any one of her stories would knock me out-but how many stories set in trailer parks with dissolute men and tough women can you read in a row.
So many writers work with similar themes again and again that, when reading single author collections, I usually sprinkle the stories out between books by other writers.
There are plenty of anthologies out there, and I have no idea how the publishers sort out the royalties (though I suspect it is a flat rate that is paid up front, but I suspect someone more familiar with the publishing industry can correct my supposition if it is wrong). I personally enjoy thematic anthologies, though they can also become redundant. Single-author anthologies can be problematic (i.e., repetitious in theme, tone, style, etc.), but superb writers somehow rise above that problem. Consider the collected short stories of Chekhov, Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, and Eudora Welty (just to name several of my favorites); within each of those authors' collections you have a wonderful variety that only the most insensitive reader would fine boring or redundant. Finally, academic anthologies--notwithstanding their tendency to reprint the "canonical" stories--are wonderful starting points for a reader who wants to sample a wide variety of the very best in short fiction. In fact, I prefer the tried-and-true masters to the contemporary writers whose stories are too often idiosyncratic flourishes that are unlikely to see the light of day in any sort of reprinting beyond the initial appearance.
Yes, I've had a few stories in those. The writers you mention all rise above it somehow. Maybe by having a large world to write about. You can be a fine writer but only see/experience a small part of the world too. Those stories just need to be spread out as Randy suggests.
You make an interesting comment about a writer's experiences and vision; "The writers you mention all rise above it somehow. Maybe by having a large world to write about. You can be a fine writer but only see/experience a small part of the world too." While it could be argued that a writer needs plenty of experiences (and perhaps plenty of encounters beyond one's own little corner of the world) to become a superb writer, I can point to Flannery O'Connor as a notable exception since her world--except for a brief period of time in Iowa and the northeast--consisted almost exclusively of her family farm in Milledgeville, Georgia.
I suspect imagination observation, intellect, and a willingness to be "taught by example" (by reading the masters) are superb substitutes for experience and travel.
I like to think that someone reading a collection of my stories would 'wonder' if they were all written by the same person. there probably is some stylisic similarities but the settings are extremely varied. I hope the characters are too.
I have seen anthologies like you speak of, with 3 or 4 storise by King, and Koontz, and someone else. I kind of like them, and would be happy to be among them.
I find that single author short story collections are best suited for reading a story here and a story there, but not in one sitting. Maybe as something to read between novels, or on your daily commute (if you are not driving that is).
I would love to see more options the kinds of anthologies that are released. Maybe with the spread of print on demand readers might be able to create their own anthologies. Just think if you could select the stories you wanted from a data base, they would be collated, printed and sent to you. Maybe an iTunes like set up for books.
I also think it would be a great marketing idea for smaller publishing houses to add a short story to their novels, either another story by the author or one by a related author. Think what kind of cross promotion you could get out of putting a Donald Westlake short story at the end of Richard Stark reprint.
By The Way- my random prediction for the second title from Hard Case Crime this December is that they are going to print and anthology or short stories from authors that they have published books by.
I always mix and match short stories, usually reading a collection by one author and an anthology with multiple authors at the same time. I also quit reading novels by the same writer back to back long ago after discovering the pitfalls.
As for anthologies with only a few authors, Dark Arts Books is doing just that. Their collections usually have four authors, each with three stories (one reprint and two originals). The catch is they mainly do horror fiction.
John Weagly
I don't know the answer to your questions, but I always thought that Inger Stevens was hot.
Patti:
Clearly it depends on the author. I love the Continental Op collections from Hammett--could read those forever. Here's a single author collection I'd highly recommend (and would qualify for the forgotten books)--Far from the City of Class by Bruce Jay Friedman. You can find used copies on amazon. It's probably my favorite collection of short stories, barely nudging out A Good Man in Hard to Find collection by Flannery O'Connor.
She was hot although I can't name a single movie. Did she do the TV version of THE FARMER's DAUGHTER.
Thanks for the BJF recommendation. It's been too long since I heard his name.
John-horror is a perfect idea for this.
I absolutely think you're on to something here. The counterpoint is that readers are a lazy lot- but they do pay our bills!
Lots of good ideas, Eric. A database of stories and you can select your 12 and they print them off and ship it. I find it hard to read online for more than a single story.
Inger Stevens was an overdose in her thirties. Darn.
As the writer of several single author collections (with another one on the way), I guess I have to play contrarian here. I own probably fifty single author collections, written by writers ranging from with Stephen Crane to Raymond Carver. I've rarely read any of them straight through but I do enjoy seeing one person's worldview applied to a variety of situations. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Erskine Caldwell stamped their worlds indelibly, for instance, and I never get tired of hearing their voices. To me these collections are often as important as the novels they accompany. Irwin Shaw, for example, was a solid novelist but in many instances a brilliant short story writer. Without his collection we wouldn't remember him at all. Here's for single author collections.
This is one of the reasons why I rarely read short stories for my own sake. As a teacher, I do it all the time, of course, but usually by a wide variety of authors, knitted together by some common theme.
Like R.T. I would prefer such a thematic anthology when the author is not one of these few whose stories you never grow tired of.
I think we also need to say a word here about the editors of such collections. Just as there is an art to sequencing a record (CD, album, what have you) there has to be an art to sequencing an anthology. The editor of an effective volume should take it upon themselves to make sure that they aren't giving the reader 10 or 14 stories that are just alike-- unless there is a reason (maybe a chronological publishing of short stories). This also speaks to the intent of the collection: giving readers a taste of someones short work, an overview or best off collection, or giving a broad view of an authors talents. It's all also in the presentation, a good introduction that introduces a set of stories, explains why the selected were chosen or not chosen can do wonders in helping a reader enjoy a collection.
As everyone is throwing out examples of single author collections that don't become repetitive, I'll throw out my own-- H.P. Lovecraft, a writer who's longer works are arguably his lesser ones, and who's short works have most often been effectively collected.
Girls in Their Summer Dresses, one of my favorites. But in this particular collection, and I really do think she's a terrific writer, all of the stories and characters are too much the same. Read one at a time over months, they would probably hold their own. Actually I own hundreds of single-author collections-and if I don't read them straight through I can enjoy them. If a writer is not overly attracted to a single setting, a single type of character, a particular sort of dilemma, they work better. Perhaps in crime stories, the crimes differ enough to make them stand apart. Your novels are so different, Ed, I have to assume your stories would be too.
I am about to take this back in one respect. Collections of the best of an writer, over many years, do not suffer this fate. It tends to haunt collections of stories written over a shorter period more. In other words, the collected stories of Andre Dubus, Eudora Welty, Richard Bausch, Richard Yates, and some of those mentioned here are superlative.
Iren suggests: "Maybe with the spread of print on demand readers might be able to create their own anthologies. Just think if you could select the stories you wanted from a data base, they would be collated, printed and sent to you."
Such a publisher exists: http://www.anthologybuilder.com
Michael Bracken said...
"Such a publisher exists: http://www.anthologybuilder.com"
I checked it out, it's a nice start, I hope that it takes off and the stories, artwork selection grows.
Oddly enough, I have a Bruce Jay Friedman novel and a collection 15 X 3, short stories by Herbert Gold, R. V. Casill, and James B. Hall, a collection which anticipated, for example, the DARK VISIONS tripartite collections of horror fiction of the 1980s, On Deck, so to speak, as my FFBs to come. Can't add too much to what has been noted so far, except that most of the writers I read, including the simply Good ones, have enough variety in their short fiction to make the reading of their collectins worthwhile...I'd say that the Janey One-Note you're reading probably should broaden her palatte or at least her approach. I don't think monotony is the reason short ficton collections aren't as popular as novels with publishers...I think that it's a matter of marginal readers tending to want to get as much as possible out of one set of imagining what the writer's getting at, and marginal readers do make up the bulk of larger audiences. However, I see no shortage of collections from the smaller publihsers...and the problem with, say, three-writer collections is that the reader might well only like one of the three writers (I could imagine a DARK VISIONS antho featuring one third Joe Lansdale, one third Edward Lee, and one third Al Sarrantonio...and I know which third I'd actually read, if I chose to buy the book at all).
Lester Del Rey used to suggest that both anthologies and collections be read only one story per day, at most...with certain writers, apparently, you might want to try that out, Patti.
And, of course, a number of volumes over the years have included a short story or so along with a (usually a novella or short) novel...Fritz Leiber's YOU'RE ALL ALONE and the original edition of Ray Bradbury's FARENHEIT 451 come to mind thus. But given the trend toward putting a chapter or passage from the writer's Next novel into paperbacks over the last decade, appending a short story really couldn't hurt.
DARK VISIONS btw was the Brit title for what was actually released first in the US as NIGHT VISIONS. Dunno why the Brits didn't like the original title...I cite the usual Middle Aged Moment as to why I landed on their title rather than the original. (or perhaps I can blame the word verifictation: qualume...)
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