The Best International Short Story Collection of 2011 (maybe)

At this very moment, in a Top Secret International Venue*, three highly esteemed Lit-Criterati** are debating the merits of a collection of short stories published in 2011, with the primary expectation of handing out a very large sum of wonga "rewarding an individual author's commitment to this most exacting of forms and encouraging the publication of collections of stories in book form as distinct from single stories in periodicals".

Yep, it's the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, which is either going to be won this year by:


Gold Boy, Emerald Girl - Yiyun Li (Beijing-born, American Resident)
Light Lifting - Alexander MacLeod (Canadian debutante)
Saints and Sinners - Edna O’Brien (Irish)
Death is Not an Option - Suzanne Rivecca (American Debutante)
The Empty Family - Colm Tóibín (Irish)
Marry or Burn - Valerie Trueblood (American)

We will be reading THE WINNER.

(Alas, this is the way our X-Factoried world works: people want to read WINNERS, not LOSERS, even if the winner in this case might not be the book of stories that is best placed to foment your personal and probably rather particular spiritual, aesthetic and humoral juices.)

If you want to spend some time with a couple of  LOSERS (I'm currently reading Colm Tóibín's collection, see photo, who has the face but not the literary CV of a LOSER), you may wish to work your way through the whole darn short list, or even the long one.  Whatever you do, we will be gathering to discuss on November 16, the WINNER of this year's Frank O'Connor International Story Collection.

Should also be a nice tie-in with National Short Story Week, if you go for these kinds of annual remembrances.

*Slough
**They did it for the free books. Wouldn't you?

Will the real (i.e. best translated) Chekhov please stand up?

If we're going to do this proper-like, it makes sense (at least at the beginning of our endeavor) to tip our collective hats to the progenitor of the modern short story, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. So this is who we shall be reading and discussing in October's Meet-up.

As Chris Power says in the first entry for A Brief Survey of The Short Story:

"I couldn't justify starting with anyone else because for me he's the uncontestable father of the modern short story, both by dint of bridging 19th-century realism and 20th-century experimentation and because his stories are some of the best that have ever been written. Plus, spit in a bookshop and chances are you'll hit something marked by his influence. Unless you're in the coffee bar."

Indeed.

But which translation to go for? A bit of Internet delving would seem to suggest that the husband and wife team of Pevear and Volokhonsky are at the moment in possession of the leafiest of the translation laurels, but but Mr Knowles has said he'd sound out a Professor or two on this matter too (thank you Mr Knowles).

Here's a pic of Pevear and Volokhonsky, BTW. Bless.

The Granta Book of the American Short Story, Edited by Richard Ford

As I'm something of a sucker for American short story writers, I thought I'd nail our colours (though not necessarily red, white, and blue) to the mast and suggest we get our club a-rockin' and a-rollin' with this superb selection by Richard Ford.

Oodles and oodles of good stuff to be savoured and talked about. Classics and stories-on-the-verge-of- becoming-classics. It also trounces the Joyce Carol Oates Oxford collection, I would suggest, which I find to be a somewhat overtly well-meaning, and didactic affair.

The Ford selection is however, a big fat collection, and I know that one of the undeclared aims of our group is not to have to feel the ponderous heft of Literature weighing down upon us from month to month as we submit to the pleasures of short fiction. So please feel free to read a couple of pieces only; whatever takes your fancy really.

As opposed to novels, which I would expect to hook me in a chapter or two, I usually don't force myself to read much beyond the second page of a story that's not exciting me. However, saying that, there is the odd tale that has won me over on page three or four. Few and far between though. The whole raison d'etre of the form (God bless it) is to grab you from the offset.

More about the September Meet Up and future books we'll be exploring can be found here.