Books on short fiction as a form

[J-Sun]

I'm not even sure exactly what I'm looking for which may help explain why I can't find it. I have some old public domain PDF scans of books that look relevant but I'd like something at least a little newer (doesn't have to be new). And I have May's New Short Story Theories which I doubt is what I want. I'm looking for a book that provides some discussion on the history of the short story form as well as an analysis of it. Not a "howto" book or pure history or pure critical "theory" but just a general approach to the topic. There are books like Aspects of the Novel and Structure of the Novel and The English Novel and the This and That Novel but it seems there's not much on short fiction. Which, incidentally, underscores another issue - it doesn't have to be "genre" fiction but I'm also not interested in just the pure New Yorker genre of fiction, either. Not just the "short story" but the novelette and novella (which many of the lit folks don't even know exist, I don't think). Anyway - anybody have any ideas about this simultaneously vague and precise want?

 

[Randy M.]

I hope you get more answers to this, but the only one I know if is The Lonely Voice by Frank O'Connor. Probably sff readers, if they know him at all, know of him as one of Peter Beagle's instructors at (I think it was) NYU, and as a writer who did not care for fantasy and told Beagle so, I believe, repeatedly, often while otherwise praising his writing.

O'Connor was one of that late 19th- early 20th century generation of Irish writers who gained a good deal of renown, and the only one I know of whose reputation rests primarily on his short stories. If you haven't read "Guest of the Nation" or "My Oedipus Complex" you might want to rectify the omission.

Randy M.

 

[J-Sun]

Thanks very much for the suggestion. That looks like it's in the right ballpark but focuses on individual authors (and those authors aren't Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Faulkner, Conrad, Kafka, etc.). I'm sure it must get much history and analysis in general along the way but just might not be the ideal angle for me.

I know there aren't very many books on the topic but there must be more. The "related" links just go to anthologies and how-tos, though. Maybe some more chronsfolk will pitch in.