In Witness, we have our first short story collection of the year. I love short stories because it is quite a feat to tell a a whole, immersive story within the constraints of a short story. The best short stories make me think and feel and while I may not have all the answers I seek, I am satisfied with what I’ve read. What do you like most about short stories? And in thinking about this collection as a whole, what were your favorites? I want to say that they were ALL my favorite because I found something incredible in each of the stories but if I had to choose just one I would go with Sahar because it was suffused with a particular kind of loneliness and charm.
I haven't read the collection yet and this is coming from someone that loves short stories too. I'm enamored with other writers who are able to craft a great short story because I always seem to fall short or go too far in length. Always. Oh my life.
I have been a less than enthusiastic short story person. My mother, however, was a fiend for the short story, and had tons of collections in our house. I read them hungrily as a child, and when I was in college and taking creative writing, I even wrote some short stories. The form was never comfortable for me either as a writer or reader after that point. I think after reading Witness, which is staggering good, I’m about to read more, obv his first collection, but others too. Any ideas? As to my favorite story, it’s Blessed Deliverance. Why? For one, there were moments in it when I stopped breathing. Passages like this came from Brinkley pulling back from the dialogue (which was sugar delight good) and making observations through the narrator’s mind. Here’s just one: “We-the-five weren’t a thing anymore, and we wouldn’t be ever again, but for a little while, as long as Headass kept up the intensity of his racket, we could be part of another thing, a large and incoherent body that had plenty to say and no need or desire to justify itself.” But the scene in the story that I will never be able to be free of was the one with the narrator and his father. Not long after dinner, Brinkley writes, Dad started crying in his room again. Here’s the passage that lifted me out of my life: “When you hear someone you love make a sound like that, the problem isn’t that you don’t know how to respond, it’s that you lose all your reserve, the discipline and self-restraint that were actually keeping everything intact. So you take liberties. You close the door to your friend’s room and begin gathering the dented soda cans and empty water bottles, arranging them in rows on his desk. You pick up every loose bit of soiled, funky clothing from the floor and the chair and drop them into the hamper in his closet. You stack the crusted cereal bowls on top of the smeared...etc.” It goes one like a holy litany, bringing me back to the title, the way in which the animal shelter was a storefront church.
I ❤️ short stories! Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing,” Anne Petre’s “Like a Winding Sheet,” Katherine Anne Porter’s “Rope,” Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation,” Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” I could go on and on. There are so many wonderful women writers that are doing and have done short stories so well!
Exactly this! For a reason unbeknownst to myself, we seem to view short stories as inferior - that they're not really worth our while. But there is something phenomenal to me about them. To be able to break up my time reading an entire story instead of a chapter or two, to observe the magic that goes into the creation of a short story - ingredients neatly compacted, compounded, creating a delicious snack rather than attempting to consume an entire cake in one sitting!
I just this afternoon had a discussion about the unique beauty of short stories with the former fiction editor of Redbook Magazine, which was widely known in its heyday for its superb fiction. I'm so glad you're celebrating the form.
I loved all the stories in the collection. Last night I went to look at the contents to asterisk my favorites and laughed when I had stared 8 of 10 because I couldn't star 10/10, could I?! I think these stories all speak to my heart as someone who is terrible at small talk and thrives on connection and relationship.
I am amazed by the depth of emotion and how connected I was to the characters, their lives and experiences. I was so moved and felt like I knew them and was part of their lives by the end of the stories. Sahar was one of my favorites too. Gloria's loneliness was palpable. I also understood deeply what Gloria went through working in the hotel as someone who made a living working in restaurants until I finally "got a real job" at 40. I was continually misunderstood by management and told I'd be a lot prettier if I'd only smile more. And yet the relationships, like that of Gloria and Apollo, are what sustained me. Bystander also was heartbreaking and touched me deeply. Anita's desire to build and have a home while at the same time alienating her family was hard to witness. I understood Anita's desire and pain with her inability to feed her family while seemingly unable or unwilling to see or meet their other needs. Somehow I still love her so much. Comfort was another one of my favorites. I read an NPR article with Jamel Brinkley where he talked about writing Comfort, and because the story was so difficult to write he took it slowly and let it evolve over time. The story and the interview were great reminders to me not to look aways from difficult situations or people, to go slow and to remember it's not why do people behave the way they do but what happened that causes us to behave as we do.
A writing mentors said that, "If a novel is a marriage, a short story is a love affair.” This always made me smile. But what does it even mean? in Japan, I fell in love with shorter forms. From haiku to Kawabata's palm-of-the hand stories, I began to really embrace the constraints of shorter forms. I think working with constraints and compression are things that poets think about a lot... but maybe so do short story writers?
Traditional Japanese poetry, must have a seasonal term. It can make use of evocative place names and tropes. They usually have a pivot (marked off by the hyphen) Short stories also often have a similar pivot. And like Roxane said the pivot might make you think or feel something unexpected. I am a huge fan of Bryan Washington's work in the New Yorker. They have the staying power of a novel--I think he does it through his characters maybe. I also loved Weike Wang's New Yorker story Omakase which was more of a thought experiment.
I am really looking forward to starting Brinkley's collection--fantastic choice by a great writer!! More soon as I try to catch up!
I have two kids and a job I work 10-12 hours a day so short stories are sometimes the only ones I have time for. Sometimes I read for the narrative and plot but other times I’m looking for emotion or a new perspective (I need to have more energy to engage with the emotional stories).
I would put this collection on the list of books to revisit - and I did have to read it when I had more energy to think about the stories more. It was enjoyable but it took some work.
To the question - what do you like about short stories, my favorite short story writer of all time is Ray Bradbury because each of his stories is about an emotion and how it plays out with a small cast - as a moody teen, he helped me sort myself. I also like the short story collection Changing Planes by Ursula Le Guin because it is a tour de force in the exercise of world creation. Isaac Asimov is a favorite for his collection Robert Dreams and the questions it asks about technology. Charles DeLint and Luis Borges have fantastic collections if you like magical realism. And of course there is a collection called Difficult Women that does a great job exploring the emotional landscape of women by another of my favorite authors....
Witness: The Pleasures of Short Stories
I haven't read the collection yet and this is coming from someone that loves short stories too. I'm enamored with other writers who are able to craft a great short story because I always seem to fall short or go too far in length. Always. Oh my life.
I have been a less than enthusiastic short story person. My mother, however, was a fiend for the short story, and had tons of collections in our house. I read them hungrily as a child, and when I was in college and taking creative writing, I even wrote some short stories. The form was never comfortable for me either as a writer or reader after that point. I think after reading Witness, which is staggering good, I’m about to read more, obv his first collection, but others too. Any ideas? As to my favorite story, it’s Blessed Deliverance. Why? For one, there were moments in it when I stopped breathing. Passages like this came from Brinkley pulling back from the dialogue (which was sugar delight good) and making observations through the narrator’s mind. Here’s just one: “We-the-five weren’t a thing anymore, and we wouldn’t be ever again, but for a little while, as long as Headass kept up the intensity of his racket, we could be part of another thing, a large and incoherent body that had plenty to say and no need or desire to justify itself.” But the scene in the story that I will never be able to be free of was the one with the narrator and his father. Not long after dinner, Brinkley writes, Dad started crying in his room again. Here’s the passage that lifted me out of my life: “When you hear someone you love make a sound like that, the problem isn’t that you don’t know how to respond, it’s that you lose all your reserve, the discipline and self-restraint that were actually keeping everything intact. So you take liberties. You close the door to your friend’s room and begin gathering the dented soda cans and empty water bottles, arranging them in rows on his desk. You pick up every loose bit of soiled, funky clothing from the floor and the chair and drop them into the hamper in his closet. You stack the crusted cereal bowls on top of the smeared...etc.” It goes one like a holy litany, bringing me back to the title, the way in which the animal shelter was a storefront church.
I ❤️ short stories! Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing,” Anne Petre’s “Like a Winding Sheet,” Katherine Anne Porter’s “Rope,” Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation,” Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” I could go on and on. There are so many wonderful women writers that are doing and have done short stories so well!
I love short stories and can't wait to get started with this collection...
Just started reading this book. Savoring the experience and the anticipation for what lies ahead.
Exactly this! For a reason unbeknownst to myself, we seem to view short stories as inferior - that they're not really worth our while. But there is something phenomenal to me about them. To be able to break up my time reading an entire story instead of a chapter or two, to observe the magic that goes into the creation of a short story - ingredients neatly compacted, compounded, creating a delicious snack rather than attempting to consume an entire cake in one sitting!
I just this afternoon had a discussion about the unique beauty of short stories with the former fiction editor of Redbook Magazine, which was widely known in its heyday for its superb fiction. I'm so glad you're celebrating the form.
I loved all the stories in the collection. Last night I went to look at the contents to asterisk my favorites and laughed when I had stared 8 of 10 because I couldn't star 10/10, could I?! I think these stories all speak to my heart as someone who is terrible at small talk and thrives on connection and relationship.
I am amazed by the depth of emotion and how connected I was to the characters, their lives and experiences. I was so moved and felt like I knew them and was part of their lives by the end of the stories. Sahar was one of my favorites too. Gloria's loneliness was palpable. I also understood deeply what Gloria went through working in the hotel as someone who made a living working in restaurants until I finally "got a real job" at 40. I was continually misunderstood by management and told I'd be a lot prettier if I'd only smile more. And yet the relationships, like that of Gloria and Apollo, are what sustained me. Bystander also was heartbreaking and touched me deeply. Anita's desire to build and have a home while at the same time alienating her family was hard to witness. I understood Anita's desire and pain with her inability to feed her family while seemingly unable or unwilling to see or meet their other needs. Somehow I still love her so much. Comfort was another one of my favorites. I read an NPR article with Jamel Brinkley where he talked about writing Comfort, and because the story was so difficult to write he took it slowly and let it evolve over time. The story and the interview were great reminders to me not to look aways from difficult situations or people, to go slow and to remember it's not why do people behave the way they do but what happened that causes us to behave as we do.
A writing mentors said that, "If a novel is a marriage, a short story is a love affair.” This always made me smile. But what does it even mean? in Japan, I fell in love with shorter forms. From haiku to Kawabata's palm-of-the hand stories, I began to really embrace the constraints of shorter forms. I think working with constraints and compression are things that poets think about a lot... but maybe so do short story writers?
Traditional Japanese poetry, must have a seasonal term. It can make use of evocative place names and tropes. They usually have a pivot (marked off by the hyphen) Short stories also often have a similar pivot. And like Roxane said the pivot might make you think or feel something unexpected. I am a huge fan of Bryan Washington's work in the New Yorker. They have the staying power of a novel--I think he does it through his characters maybe. I also loved Weike Wang's New Yorker story Omakase which was more of a thought experiment.
I am really looking forward to starting Brinkley's collection--fantastic choice by a great writer!! More soon as I try to catch up!
I have two kids and a job I work 10-12 hours a day so short stories are sometimes the only ones I have time for. Sometimes I read for the narrative and plot but other times I’m looking for emotion or a new perspective (I need to have more energy to engage with the emotional stories).
I would put this collection on the list of books to revisit - and I did have to read it when I had more energy to think about the stories more. It was enjoyable but it took some work.
To the question - what do you like about short stories, my favorite short story writer of all time is Ray Bradbury because each of his stories is about an emotion and how it plays out with a small cast - as a moody teen, he helped me sort myself. I also like the short story collection Changing Planes by Ursula Le Guin because it is a tour de force in the exercise of world creation. Isaac Asimov is a favorite for his collection Robert Dreams and the questions it asks about technology. Charles DeLint and Luis Borges have fantastic collections if you like magical realism. And of course there is a collection called Difficult Women that does a great job exploring the emotional landscape of women by another of my favorite authors....
Who is the author of the collection? Thank you!