I read my first critical work on short stories back in high school, around 1965 or ’66. It was The Lonely Voice by Frank O’Connor. To say it had a profound influence on me is an understatement. Starting with a discussion of Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” the story of a friendless nonentity, an absurd take on a little man, O’Connor develops his theory concerning the difference between short stories and novels. According to O’Connor, one of the key aspects of the novel form is that there is always a character the reader can identify with, and a context that includes the concept of a normal society. Short stories, on the other hand, involve characters who are outcasts, members of submerged populations, characters who readers cannot identify with.
Even that early in my thinking about writing I thought the idea had its limitations, but it still fascinated me, and I thought there were some strong hints in O’Connor’s theory that might help me understand the relative levels and kinds of reader participation that differentiated the novel experience from the short story experience. I eventually wrote my own horrific nod to “The Overcoat” — it appeared in my first collection, City Fishing.
