Confessions of a Guilty Freelancer

Andrew Levy: The Culture and Commerce of the American Short Story

The first prose one encounters in Andrew Levy’s study of the cul­ ture and commerce of the American short story is an anonymous description , part jacket copy, part abstract, of the book: “Since 1980, the American short story has undergone a renaissance of sorts. . . .” The rest of the paragraph is more factual than analytical, but it brought to mind some recent remarks of Tobias Wolff (found in his “Introduction ” to The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories (1994) and somewhat paraphrased in an interview in the Washington Post Book World (January 8, 1995): “Most of the stories gathered here were published during the last fifteen years or so, during the period of what has been termed a short story ‘renaissance’ in this country. To judge by the respectful attention this renaissance has received from reviewers and academics, you would think it actually happened. It did not. This is a rhetorical flourish to give glamour, even valor, to the succession of one generation by another. The problem with the word Andrew Levy: The Culture and Commerce of the American Short Story 325 326 ‘renaissance’ is that it needs a dark age to justify itself. I can’t think of one, myself.” Wolff is wrong. Something did happen, and it wasn’t merely “the succession of one generation by another.” It is interesting how writers whodon’tcurrentlyteachorwritemuchliteraryjournalism(andsome who do) often set up, as straw men, “reviewers and academics.” Such designations are usually a matter of economics, and are the sites of the last battlefields of the “can’t do, teach” wars. But something did go on during the last fifteen years, brought about by the culmination of large forces prowling about the culture for a few decades. The short story went from being a reigning popular culture, commercial magazine form, to a reigning noncommercial, literaryartform .Thereisagreatdealofevidenceforthis.Oneoftheeasiest to discover is found in the backs of the two principal “best” short story annuals, where they list the magazines consulted. In the thirties, the list is short and made up, predominantly, of the well-paying slicks. During the last two decades, it has lengthened considerably and consistsalmostentirelyofnonpaying ,ortokenpaying,literarymagazines. Thecommercial turns intothe literary when no onewill payforits production–at least, not directly. The “renaissance” that occurred did not occur because of the writers of short stories, it occurred because of theconsumers(thepublications)ofthem,thedemandsideratherthan the supply side. The “renaissance” had to do with the ascendancy of the short story as the literary art form most prized (in more ways than one) by our late-twentieth-century critical apparatus, which includes literary journalists and the academy and the mostly noncommercial publications that print short stories. But twenty, thirty, years ago, it was a “dark age,” very relatively speaking, for the short story, given the lack of critical caché the genre then carried. Wolff to the contrary, it has little to do with “succession.” 327 Some of what it has to do with can be found in Andrew Levy’s most pertinent and insightful volume. Levy is not interested in defining the short story. Indeed, that moment may have passed. Lohafer and Clarey’s edited volume of essays, ShortStoryTheoryataCrossroads (1987),whichLevyslights–mentioning it in only one unilluminating footnote–may have been the apex of those defining tendencies. Levy writes, about his own book: “The purpose of this work is to describe the birth and the construction of the short story as a literary form,andtodescribe the development ofthe social contractthat guidedthewriting ,teaching,andpublishingoftheshortstoryinAmerica.” He hints at the point I have made above (and elsewhere) when he states: “The workshop system currently provides a remarkable confluence of writerly authority and middle-class respectability–it allows for thousands of individuals to write fiction that deliberately eschews popular values, and to be remunerated for the activity. It institutionalizes the marginal voice.” Here is one place where Levy and I differ: in matters of “remuneration.” For most contemporary short story writers theremunerationisindirect–noonethesedayswritesshortstoriesfor the “money,” in the way F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed he did. The publishing (as opposed to the writing) of short stories will help you retain or secure a teaching job, raise your name in the critical realm, warm your heart on a cold day, but it will not earn you a living–or at least it won’t earn a living for literary short story writers, beyond the world’s two or three exceptions. About a third of Levy’s study discusses...