England

Nobody writes sonnets now; or, if they do, nobody reads them. Tomorrow, nobody will write short stories.

Not that I have ever favored the view that the short story is a very special form: the best short-story writers are novelists and always have been. There are exceptions; Katherine Mansfield is a case in point. But is the short-story writer anything more than a novelist in little, a novelist short of staying-power? It is true that he or she has to be very good at writing economically, at making each word do a lot of work and at assembling the words in patterns which themselves do a lot of work. But . . . well, the sprinter who runs 100 yards very fast is hardly as considerable a man as the long-distance runner. Like the poet, the short-story writer does more manipulation, more correction and polishing, than invention; that is the least taxing part of writing, and the form does not call for sustained endurance, for the ordeal of living with a passion and an idea for many months or even years.