Short Story lovers discussion
Linked Short Story Collections
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The last book of linked stories I read was Bodies In Motion by Mary Anne Mohanraj. I loved the book and was fortunate enough to study with her at one point. I don't generally seek out linked collections so I haven't come across any that I considered failures in that respect. As a short story writer, I think it's hard enough to produce a group of stories to make a collection.
The decision to link stories or not is something that every writer has to figure out on her or his own.
Two much-praised collections of linked stories came out just this year: Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work by Jason Brown and Knockemstiff, by Donald Ray Pollack. Both are well worth reading.
I would agree with _Knockemstiff_ by Donald Ray Pollock. It's not just worth reading. It's fantastic, one of my favorite books in a long time.Also would recommend _Later, At the Bar_ by Rebecca Barry. A short collection of linked stories about people in a small town in upstate NY who gravitate toward a particular drinking hole.
This isn't a new collection, but one of my favorites is Alice Munro's The Beggar Maid. The subtitle is Stories of Flo and Rose, but mostly the focus in on Rose, giving snapshots of her life from childhood to middle age. The overall effect is something like a novel, but without a single story arc. Somehow, this makes Rose’s world seem more complete. We see ups and downs throughout her life instead of focusing on a single story line with a clean ending. 
I had never heard of the genre of linked short stories when I started writing a series myself. I had only intended to write a pair linked stories when I started, but ended up with 10 after three years worth of writing. A character showed up in the first story that I didn't expect and he insisted I tell his story, but not directly.This past July, I spoke about my book (as yet unpublished) to a church group and a lit professor told me afterward that I had created a short story cycle. I'd been working in an established genre without realizing it. The lit prof also gave me the name of a classic short story cycle: Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson.
Hey I just joined this group. Great topic. I wanted to mention Winesburg, Ohio but i see it has been mentioned.Also wanted to mention: Sketches from a Hunter's Album: The Complete Edition (perhaps the earliest book in this genre? does anybody know?) I've not read it yet but I've always wanted to. I liked his novel Father's and Sons.
Am in the middle of Fathers and Sons. Oh, the names!!! Any suggestions?
My favorite book of short stories is "Emporium" by Adam Johnson. Tight stories, interesting, great writing. They are not linked. If you want to see interesting way of formatting a collections, check out "Mexico is Missing." It alternates between short-short fiction and full-length short stories, which gives nice variety.
Has anyone here read Olive Kitteridge A Novel in Stories by Elizabeth Strout? It was my favorite fictional read last year. A series of short stories, each of which feature the title character. Sometimes she's the protagonist, sometimes she's just in the background. Toward the end a couple of the stories drag, but I really loved the way Strout showed Olive from different perspectives. And Strout has a lot of interesting things to say about the last years of a long marriage.
Rhys Hughes' 'Nowhere Near Milkwood' (Prime) is a fantastic cycle of linked stories. His books 'The Postmodern Mariner' (Screaming Dreams) and 'Mister Gum' (Dog Horn Publishing) are interlinked as well, sharing certain locations and characters. The latter isn't released yet, but is due out this year.
The way that Dubliners by James Joyce links together is incredible. I'm a bit in love. I've not had the courage to touch any of his other works yet because, y'know. :-P But Dubliners really is amazing. It's a shame that so many people seem to be put off, but you can't blame them really.
Is there a point at which linked short stories become a novel? It seems to me that this format straddles the line - especially with a recurring character likeOlive Kitteridge: A Novel in Stories. It's a valid choice for an author - seperating the narrative in story form. It can be used very powerfully. But, somehow, I can just feel writing instructors all over the countery cringing at the thought of a "ring of short stories." It seems to me it is almost a seperate genre from the classic short story model, say Chekhov or Grace paley or Flannery O'Connor.Don't get me wrong - I do love it so when it's done well. Some of my favorites:Our Kind: A Novel in Stories, Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories
Actually, writing instructors are doing the opposite of cringing. Linking short stories "novelistically" (which helps 'brand' the book--i.e., makes readers more comfortable) makes the book easier to sell to publishers.
I would have to add ¨house on mango street¨by cisneros and possibly ¨Beans of Egypt¨ by Carolyn Chute as well. It´s been over twenty years since I have read the latter so I can not say for certain that her book is linked stories but I do recall there was an oblique allusion to Winesburg, Ohio in which a teacher bundles up paper and tosses it at students. ¨Paper Pills¨was the name of that particular story.As for Russian novels, their writers will use all three names of a single character throughout a book. Dostoyevsky is particularly known for this as he will sometime use the formal name, the nickname or the family name for the character. I would suggest writing down all three names for a character, memorizing them, and then when you encounter any of the names, refer back to your notes. Otherwise, you have my sympathy. As much of a masterpiece as it is, BROTHERS KARAMOZOV was an arduous odyssey of monikers.
Another collection of short stories, linked, is ¨Close to Spiderman¨ by Ivan E. Coyote. Some transgender issues there but not polemically presented. A very unpretentious, imaginative collection of stories from childhood, that ring almost autobiographical but probably an admixture.
---and with Winesburg, Ohio, Geoffrey, one thinks of the fictional town in Sherwood Anderson stories. I have to read that story, Paper Pills, because I am guilty of throwing them. I was speaking in my outdoor voice to some annoying person on a political show last fall and my daughter brought me a bowl of little wads of paper to throw at the person (tv pundit) who shall not be named. We later settled on Marshmallows as much more effective. The cat loved either, and for some reason it seemed to work. 
Brandi wrote: "I recently finished Jesse Lee Kercheval's The Alice Stories, which won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction. It's a collection of stories that are linked by character and place. I haven't rea..."I've been reading a lot of linked story collection and have given a talk called "From Winesburg, Ohio to Olive Kitteridge" in which I discuss a lot of examples. It all leads up to my own book, In an Uncharted Country, which isn't as tightly linked as some but follows in that tradition. Here's the video of a talk that I gave at a local college recently:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JBdlV...
There has been so much comment about Olive Kitteridge, and I keep wondering why. I read it because it received the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and found it incredibly dull, except for one chapter that wasn't even about Olive (the piano player who pinched her mother) I sometimes think prize evaluators don't read a whole work. Blasphemy? By chance I came upon and read recently The #1 Detective Agency, by McCall I think. It's truly a collection of short stories about one person and absolutely delightful. I think it's classified as a novel (2003) but it's much more than that. I care about this small, round lady detective from Botswana and her adventures in her lovely country with its snakes and sunshine, as I never cared about what happened to Olive. Both characters live with outdated mores, but Mma Ramotswe carries with her the glow of the past of every culture. I don't know how I've missed this charming book for so long. You shouldn't. Brandi take note. You will love this book -- as will you all. And only 272 pages. Also on Kindle.
I just re-read Alice Fulton's The Nightingales of Troy and loved it even more this time. This is a beautifully crafted, funny, and moving book. The connectedness of the stories locates it between a novel and a linked collection, but each of the stories is so dazzling as "story" that I guess it belongs firmly on the linked stories shelf. Fulton's sentences are exquisite, and a number of reviewers have attributed her style to the fact that she's a poet. But this isn't a "poet's fiction" -- Fulton really gets plot, character, narrative. As far as I know this is her first fiction. If you have The Best American Short Stories 2009, check out "A Shadow Table," which is from The Nightingales of Troy.
A collection of linked stories that I really liked was "After The Quake" by Haruki Murakami. All are set after the Kobe earthquake of 1995, and they are all very well written and memorable. I also really liked Margaret Atwood's "Moral Disorder", which follows one character through many different stages of her life from childhood to old age. The stories were frequently laugh-out-loud funny, but also touching. "Servants Of The Map" by Andrea Barrett is another nicely written collection that features characters who are somehow related to one another in some of the stories.
Of course this is self-serving, but I know a lot of people who liked my linked collection, Half-Past Nowhere. I patterned it after Hemingway's seminal collection, In Our Time. That one followed Nick Adams from the age of about 8 to 21. I do more or less the same with my etnically correct Joey Fusaro. If either of our works was a novel,it would be qualify as a "bildungsroman," a fancy term for a work that follows a young hero from "innocence to experience." Many believe the self imposed limitation of the form is made up for by the close up view one gets of the main character as he passes through those most wonderful,most terrible years that challenge us all.
Two of the stories were selected as finalists by Glimmer Train. Another was a finalist in the Tom Howard/John Reid International Short Story Contest.
Of course, in Our Time Time has long been read and enjoyed for almost ninety years. Like my tribute to Hemingway, both were first books.
Purchased and will read. Looking forward to it. Comments later.
Thanks Chris. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me. I'd be happy to try and answer them. Best.
I believe IN OUR TIME was the collection of short stories that included THE QUAI AT SMYRNA, an intriguing, somewhat ambiguous story as told by the principal character in the story, the officer of one of the gun boats during WWI. I have given that story to my Mexican students for two fold reasons-first being that Hemingways fatalism resonates with Mexicans and secondly because it´s obscure meaning tantalizes my powers of analysis. There are several surreal descriptions of what had happened on the wharf, including a small herd of horses floating in the harbor with their legs cut off, dead babies on the docks, etc. etc. Very grisly stuff until you realize the psychological state of mind of its narrator.
Geoffrey, I agree. Although it's been a long time, I have never forgotten the image of the (mules?)floating in the water.I also remember(vaguely) that the "inter-chapter's" were important.
Of course, when I was college age I very much appreciated Hemingway's assurance in "The Three Day Blow" that ,"Friday was a good thing to have in hand." It's not an exact quote, but it was very reassuring to me nonetheless to believe that when one of my own love affairs had come to an end there was still that friday night hope of finding a replacement.
There's really not a poor story in the collection."Indian Camp" introduces Nick to the reality of death although he is still young enough to believe that with his father's arm around him nothing bad can happen. The "End of Something" and "The Three Day Blow" show Nick how even those close to him can cause him great pain. I think the most important jolt to his youthful belief in his own invulnerability comes in the story about the crazed boxer. I think in that one Nick comes to learn that we are at risk even from those who neither know us nor care to. By "Big Two Hearted River," Nick is scarred, but wise enough to realize that while he cannot avoid the swamp-like branch of the river he can postphone it for another day.
My character in Half-Past Nowhere undergoes his own rite of passage, but like all of us discovers the same bitter truth... Our individual life is of no serious concern to Nature. The endless and perhaps ultimately meaningless perpetuation of our species is all that is of even temporary concern.
Just read 'The Emigrants' by W.G. Sebald. It's essentially four shorter stories compiled into a novel. It's about the lives of german jews post WWII but it's all about the individuals rather than the greater themes. Really enjoyed it.
Many good recommendations above. Another couple of favorites of mine are Tim O' Brien's The Things They Carried, and Lorrie Moore's Self-Help. Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad is first-rate too. This week I am leading a panel discussing linked collections at the AWP Conference in Seattle, with Clifford Garstang (who has commented above) as a member. His "novel-in-stories" What the Zhang Boys Know is another must-read, though he's too modest to plug it. I'm not, so I will add that my own Stoning the Devil (Skylight Press, 2012), which was longlisted for the Frank O'Connor Award, is worth taking a glance at too.
Thanks Garry. Good luck with the panel! Please report back to we that can't be there!
I'll through in another one of my favorites from the SF area. Robert A Heinlein's - Time Enough for Love. It's really a set of stories around/about his Howard Families and Lazarus Long. Wonderful stuff.Time Enough for Love
Hi Everybody, I found my way back here when a friend asked me to recommend some linked collections to him as his novel is starting to seem more to him like a cycle of stories. Thanks for all the great ideas. I wanted to add, if I may, that in 2016 I published a collection of linked stories called THEY COULD LIVE WITH THEMSELVES by Press 53. It was a finalist for the Maine Book Award and an IPPY Silver Medalist and got some nice write-ups. If anyone is interested in reading it, you can find it through Amazon, but you can also order it at Press 53 or directly from me at jodipaloni.com. If you decide to read it, I'd love to hear what you thought. https://www.jodipaloni.com/books
Short Story lovers
Books mentioned in this topic
Time Enough for Love (other topics)The Nightingales of Troy (other topics)
Pharmacognosy (other topics)
Our Kind (other topics)
Ideas of Heaven (other topics)
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Have any of you read linked collections that you love? What about ones that fail? For those of you who write short stories, how do you think about this issue when you think about a collection?