Less Matters More: Joanna Walsh On The Expansive Possibilities Of The Short Story

I was connected a book circuit successful Mexico erstwhile I was emailed a dossier of property questions successful beforehand of a reading. One journalist wrote asking, why penning short stories.

“Why penning short stories” is simply a spot for illustration erstwhile Samuel Beckett wrote, “what matter who’s speaking?” a mobility that splits into import and export. Import is what’s it matter? and export is material. The worldly that a short communicative exports is short. There are nary different criteria. But still it’s a question. The short communicative is ever successful question. It mightiness beryllium nan mobility that matters.

The mobility I’ve ever been asked astir nan short communicative is not astir nan short communicative astatine all. It’s when are you going to constitute a novel? Despite nan novelty that nan connection suggests, this mobility is ne'er new, though a caller fresh still hovers eternally successful my future, and though I’ve already written 2 books published arsenic novels, which I didn’t constitute reasoning of them arsenic novels astatine all.

I don’t deliberation I could have.

For 1 thing, I don’t deliberation I person caller experience. It doesn’t arc, aliases travel a narrative: it loops, fragments, seems each opening aliases each end, arsenic truthful overmuch of my acquisition doesn’t move done clip and abstraction but done dream and memory.

Which intends it moves done language, and connection is simply a measurement of speaking matter that isn’t there, aliases what matters that isn’t there, for illustration erstwhile Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver wandered into a state that decreed “that since words are only names for things, it would beryllium much convenient for each men to transportation astir them specified things arsenic were basal to definitive a peculiar business they are to sermon on.”

A caller requires a batch of material, “but for short conversations,” Gulliver discovered, “a man whitethorn transportation implements successful his pockets, and nether his arms, capable to proviso him; and successful his house, he cannot beryllium astatine a loss. Therefore nan room wherever institution meet who practise this art, is afloat of each things, fresh astatine hand, requisite to furnish matter for this benignant of artificial converse.”

Because little matter is required to furnish a short story, little matters more. The short communicative is not Walter Benjamin’s “monumentally furnished ten-room apartment,” which is really he described nan nineteenth-century caller (Benjamin names Gaston Leroux’s 368-page The Phantom of nan Opera arsenic its “apotheosis”) whose “gigantic sideboards distended pinch carvings, nan sunless corners wherever palms stand, nan pavilion embattled down its balustrade, and nan agelong corridors pinch their singing state flames, fittingly house[s] only nan corpse. On this sofa nan aunt cannot but beryllium murdered”

Now we furnish pinch IKEA: flatpack, convenient, capable to beryllium group up anywhere, capable to furnish a room successful nan measurement of Swift’s short conversations. When everything is flatpack, everything is surface, surfaces that tin beryllium put together to create an illusion of volume. In a mini space, nan short communicative writer needs to beryllium capable to usage surfaces. These are nan surfaces of language. Inverting nan object-oriented nine that Swift describes, short communicative writers waste and acquisition successful illusion.

Writers of short stories furnish mini spaces—not ten-room apartments—with immateriality that, fragmented, creates nan illusion of volume. The part has been a point ever since astir nan clip Swift was writing, erstwhile rich | Northern Europeans started touring nan Mediterranean successful hunt of encounters pinch leftover fragments of nan classical world, nan “Grand Tour,” an acquisition that Gulliver’s Travels pastiches.

Swift’s explanation of connection arsenic matter is simply a matter of world politics: “thus ambassadors would beryllium qualified to dainty pinch overseas princes, aliases ministers of state, to whose tongues they were utter strangers.” No surprise. In 1726 nan British Empire was already expanding successful nan sanction of trade, trading nan immaterial connection Swift wrote successful for worldly goods. Language is not a worldly good. Jacques Derrida wrote that it’s a poison. Gaston Leroux turned to short communicative penning successful nan pursuit of worldly equipment aft spending his ample inheritance.

Leroux is listed connected Wikipedia arsenic a “short communicative writer” though his best-remembered activity is simply a novel. He mightiness person been a short communicative writer because of nan civilization of nan short story, nan modern monthly and play publications that made penning short stories, successful his era, a viable trade. But penning short stories is nary longer a viable trade, arsenic writers who take to constitute short stories find: When are you penning a novel?

Who are nan short communicative writers, these traders successful fragments: nan expansive tourists, aliases nan inhabitants of fragmented landscapes building pillars into single-room apartments to beryllium furnished pinch flatpack furniture? Or either, apt either. Or both, which is either’s opposite. In immoderate lawsuit their fragmented worldly conveys dream and memory. Because nan representation of these fragments is ever created, arsenic a matter of reconstruction. And creation is ever hope.

Any penning is created from excavation: columns retired of nan dormant ground. When I’m writing, I ne'er deliberation astir making things up. The matter I constitute is waiting to beryllium discovered/exhumed/whatever. If I’m extractive, I’m self-extractive. Is that a bully thing? I don’t know. I don’t person a choice. That’s really I thatch penning too: I show students, you cognize it already. No request to learn, only to “pick out,” arsenic Georges Perec wrote, “what you’ve agelong agone picked out.” He wasn’t penning astir nan short communicative but, erstwhile you get your worldly everywhere, why not use it?

It’s for illustration erstwhile Chris Kraus told maine that each novels are astir existent estate. Well that’s novels, pinch their ten-room apartments. Perec wrote astir apartments too, successful Species of Spaces. Though a room is “a reasonably malleable space,” contempt immoderate architect’s intentions, and “it is nary bully their trying to impressment america pinch worldly astir modules, and different nonsense.”

Short stories are for tenants, those who are alert that they are successful a holding space. The short communicative writer doesn’t person to build and doesn’t person to respect nan architect’s intentions. That’s because connection isn’t really an speech of objects, only their surfaces.

But these are conscionable immoderate short stories. There are a 1000 definitions, more, galore of which laic down rules connected really to build short stories, ceramic by brick. And a caller doesn’t person to beryllium a expansive apartment. It tin beryllium a coating connected a “little spot of ivory.” Whatever, I’m not 1 for rules aliases craft, much for bricolage, for rearranging nan furniture, aliases taking it isolated and making it into thing else, an IKEA hack, thing you tin do successful a mini space, Lautrémont’s “chance brushwood of a sewing instrumentality and an umbrella connected an operating table,” which is simply a very post-what-gets-called-the “industrial revolution” scope of objects and processes.

Which novels and short stories are too. Gulliver’s Travels doesn’t really count arsenic a novel. It’s sometimes called a “protonovel” and it was portion of nan emergence of nan shape during nan eighteenth century, which besides led to nan emergence of nan short communicative or, rather, nan section of narratives into agelong and short, and some are thing to do pinch nan business revolution, pinch printing presses and newspapers, and railway stations, and education, and remoteness, and clip spent betwixt places, agelong aliases short. The Grand Tour stopped being a point erstwhile nan railways arrived.

A short communicative is an economical fact, and truthful is simply a novel. That’s moreover earlier you’ve sewage to either’s material. Each is defined by nan systems that let them to exist—like nan prizes from which this postulation is drawn, for illustration independent bookshops and journals, and for illustration this book—that encourage, that publish, that finance them. Short stories are often praised for their “economy,” which suggests a definite perspective. I’d for illustration to spot a short communicative praised for its expansiveness because nan much thing is fragmented, nan much aboveground it has.

As penning becomes much portable, we person go little so. Now we activity from location connected our flatpack furniture. Wherever we are, we activity “remotely,” ever fresh to move but ne'er moving. The short communicative utilized to beryllium fable, past anecdote. Now it’s thing else. The short communicative is simply a reconfigurable, expansive aboveground of nan immaterial material, of dream and memory, that is ever bigger than nan mini room that only appears to incorporate it. It is simply a measurement of questioning spaces and nan things successful it, which is simply a measurement of questioning nan distribution of abstraction and those things, which is simply a measurement of questioning nan distribution of language: what matter who’s speaking? It is simply a question.

When nan journalist asked me, why penning short stories, dissimilar Beckett they didn’t usage a mobility mark. It was—like nan publication dreaded astatine readings—not truthful overmuch a mobility arsenic a comment: for why. In which case, I could person answered, yes.

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From 22 Fictions: New Writing from Desperate Literature and Brick Lane Bookshop, edited by Kate Ellis and Robert Loyko-Greer. Copyright © 2025. Introduction copyright © 2025 by Joanna Walsh. Available from Cheerio Publishing.