Did you know that dog was real?

A recent post discussed a particular kind of short story — something Guy Davenport called the archtectonic story.

In my mind, it’s this: a fictional story that is so well researched, so grounded in fact, that it’s difficult to tell fact from fiction.

In “John Charles Tapner,” a story about how the great French writer Victor Hugo came to Guernsey, Davenport says that that Hugo was followed everywhere by Senate, a little dog with a spot over its eye. Alas, when I first read the story, I was not a good enough Hugo scholar to know whether Davenport was reporting or inventing that detail.

Davenport’s fiction is the kind that made me want to learn more about the man, the era, and the place. The fiction whetted a reader’s appetite for fact. One can find a badly faded image of Senát online.

The post should have come with a disclaimer: Because it’s the kind of story I like to read, it’s the kind of story I’d like to learn to write.

I’m always puzzled why so many people read novels and so few read short stories.

I’m a frank fan of brevity.

I have a friend who is an expert at speed-reading, and I’ve wondered whether his experience of a novel is similar to my experience of a short story. The productivity guru Ali Abdaal said he buys recorded books so that he can play them at twice the normal speed. He says it’s more fun. Getting the material quicker keeps his mind engaged.

I wonder if the same thing couldn’t be achieved by brevity.