Sunday, July 08, 2007

More on short stories

I still haven't found any short stories that have really moved me, tho mostly I've been looking in the same places, reading more from the America's Best New Voices. I need to switch it up. But now what I've noticed is lots of detached description that seems intended to be slightly satiric. Little windows into rural life, the lives or retired suburbanites or other semi-exoticized lives that I sense are written in tones intended to be respectful but also attempting to highlight common absurdities of these places. Lots of humor that's not really funny, though the kind of lines I could imagine getting a somewhat forced laugh during a writing workshop.

Though just about every story I've read has been first-person, I've come across very few instances of narrating thoughts or feelings rather than events. One major exception was 'Winter Never Quites' by T. Geronima Johnson, which I enjoyed most out of what I've read from this collection or the Granta stories so far.