In the age of Twitter, the short story thrives

Print is dead. Long live the short story.

So suggested book critic A.O. Scott in The New York Times in April: "The death of the novel is yesterday's news. The death of print may be tomorrow's headline. But the great American short story is still being written, and awaits its readers."

Scott reasoned that in our Internet age, with its v-blogs, e-readers and iPods, the short story could make a big comeback. "[J]ust as the iPod has killed the album, so the Kindle might, in time, spur a revival of the short story. If you can buy a single song for a dollar, why wouldn't you spend that much on a handy, compact package of character, incident and linguistic invention?"

Since Scott's essay appeared, two nearly unprecedented events have made him look like a prophet. First, Elizabeth Strout won a Pulitzer Prize for "Olive Kitteridge," a set of short stories tied together by the recurring appearance of her title character. Pulitzers for short fiction have been given out only twice in the last two decades: Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of the Maladies" in 2000, and in 1993, Robert Olen Butler's "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain."

Then in September, Oprah Winfrey selected African writer Uwem Akpan's short story collection "Say You're One of Them," her first book club selection in more than a year, and the first time she has chosen short fiction rather than a novel.

Meanwhile, two short story collections have made the finalist list for the 2009 National Book Award: Bonnie Jo Campbell's "American Salvage," and Daniyal Mueenuddin's "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders."

Do these high-profile events presage a renaissance for short fiction?

"It's a nice idea," Southern fiction superstar Lee Smith said in a recent phone interview. "Never before in this country have we had so many truly extraordinary short story writers."

Indeed, local writers continue to turn out well-received short fiction collections. This year, The N&O has reviewed Nic Brown's "Floodmarkers" and Jill McCorkle's "Going Away Shoes." UNC's Marianne Gingher edited an anthology of "flash" (fewer than 1,800 words) fiction, "Long Story Short," catering to super-short attention spans, while Chapel Hill resident Wells Tower's collection "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned" took Manhattan literati by storm.

Next year promises much, too: Smith comes out with "Mrs. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger," and the brilliant Ron Rash with "Burning Bright," which Smith describes as "what Cormac McCarthy would write if he wrote short stories."

But Smith is hardly sanguine about the fate of literature in the Internet age. "Everybody's so busy communicating with each other -- Facebooking, Twittering, telling each other their stories -- that they don't have any time to read," she says.

It's true that fiction, especially literary fiction, demands an emotional commitment from its readers that a song on iTunes does not. "You can't multitask a short story," Smith argues.

A publisher believes

Don't tell this to Kevin Morgan Watson, publisher of Press 53, a small house based in Greensboro. Watson is passionate about short fiction and regularly uncovers winners such as "Parlous Angels," another collection of linked shorts, this one by Winston-Salem's Ed Southern. ("I was knocked out," Smith says of "Angels.")Watson, who has published 15 short-story collections in the past four years and says he plans to bring out at least six new ones in 2010, is encouraged by the new celebrity of Oprah-pick Akpan.

"When Oprah speaks, people trust her," Watson commented by e-mail. "Lots of people who have never considered a collection of stories will do so now... [I]f Oprah picks another story collection again this year or even next, then that shift could pick up some serious momentum. ... I think the larger publishers will seriously up their investments in short story collections."

Watson downplays the idea that short fiction fits in a fast, easily digestible world. The genre will rise, he says, "because readers will ... rediscover the staying power and satisfaction of a well-written short story."

But even a publisher who's a true believer needs two coins to rub together. Watson survives by keeping his costs super-low. But is there any evidence that short stories can make actual money?

Help with marketing

Genre writers and publishers seem to think so. Harlequin, the 1,000-pound gorilla of the gargantuan romance market, publishes long lists of short stories both in print and online

Raleigh romance powerhouse Virginia Kantra recently cracked The New York Times best-seller list - not the first time, by the way - as a contributor to an anthology titled "Shifter," and regularly joins other authors in collections of abbreviated girl-gets-her-guy tales.

Short fiction can also help with marketing. As a promotion strategy, Kantra is considering releasing a free novella or short story electronically to coincide with a mass-market release.

Kantra points out that the uber-selling Jayne Anne Krentz is Tweeting a "micro-novel" from her best-selling detective series, "Arcane Society," 140 characters at a time, as a way of keeping her readers plugged in between releases.

Science fiction has embraced the e-concept, too. Authors such as Cory Doctorow have led the way among young, Web-savvy authors who believe that offering free fiction online can only help one's sales.

"The idea is that people are online constantly looking for content," said John Kessel, N.C. State University professor and prolific science fiction short-story writer. "And if you're giving it free of cost, people will discover you and read you and maybe buy your book."

If they don't, the reasoning goes, you haven't lost anything, because they never would have read you in the first place.

Kessel is on board: His collection of micro-tales, "The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories," is available as a free download from Small Beer Press.

The 21st century isn't the world of Flannery O'Connor or even that of John Cheever, when "people used to read short stories for fun," as Kessel said only half-jokingly, and there were money-making literary magazines aplenty. Nowadays, the landscape is more crowded -- the potential authors limited only by the number of blogs and Facebook and Twitter accounts.

It may be that the short story, which cannot be multitasked, may ultimately need to multi-task - both as a market hook as well as content for its own sake - to survive and thrive.

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