Maybe it's a matter of taste

 Liking short stories is a bit like liking music.

If I love music and you love music, we don’t necessarily have a lot in common. I might like Mozart, while you love Jimi Hendrix. Maybe we are both interested enough in Joan Baez, Billie Holiday or John Coltrane to argue. 

Short stories are like that. I’ve been slowly working my way through Why I Like This Story, edited by Jackson R. Bryer and published by Camden House in 2019. It’s a collection of 48 essays by American writers. Each essay is about an American short story.

The book has helped me see that there is no one way to tell a story. Further, there can’t possibly be one way to tell a story because there is no one thing that every reader is looking for. The story that really moves one reader doesn’t touch another.

I was surprised that Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” wasn’t on anyone’s list. On most days, I’d say that was my favorite story written by an American.

But Crane didn’t have any story on the list of favorites in this book, and neither did William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Guy Davenport and some others who’ve held my attention.

Some writers whose stories I admire are included in the book, but I was surprised at how often others had found great things in stories I didn’t particularly like. I like Ernest Hemingway’s stories about a World War I veteran named Nick Adams. But I have never seen much in some of his more famous stories.

What should we make of all this?

I’d say this: If you are a writer and someone tells you that a story must be written in a certain way, I’d run.

If you are a writer and are told that there are rules for writing a good story, I’d keep an open mind but take the rules with a grain of salt.

If you are a reader and haven’t found a short story that you love, I’d keep looking. Short stories are like music — and the trick is to read (or listen) until you find what you like.

But that moment when you find it is worth the search. There’s real pleasure there.