 This lecture is titled Modern Western Short Story. The lecture is divided into four parts. In the first part, we will talk about the short story and the novel. In the second part, titled The Modern Short Story, we will deal with the short story and the classical and folk tales. We will also talk about new visions by examining the work of Poe and Jekka. Then we move on to the postmodern short story where we would talk about its experimental nature and the notion of anti-story and we will look at the work of Borges. Part four deals with our concluding remarks and we are really committed to this notion of generating creativity and therefore, the concluding part deals with our desire to support your effort towards creative experimentation. Now, let us start with the first part. We do not really take it for granted that you would like everything that has been chosen by us. Indeed you may not like or relate to the sensibility of certain writers, but may suddenly feel a shock of recognition when you read certain other writers. So, you have to allow yourself that kind of pleasure by actually reading lots of writers and thereby discovering your own voice, your own sense of excitement about the content, the theme, the methodologies, everything put together. Now, let us talk about the short story and the novel and as I have clearly indicated we have placed this discussion within the western short story and therefore, I would basically assume that the European or the Eurocentric framework would be kept in mind while talking about these stories because some of these stories are also translated stories. Wherever they are translated stories I will try and mention it, but you know both translated texts as well as original writing in English is part of this rich collection of material that we are going to dip into. Now, the first question that I want to briefly touch on is the connection between the short story and the novel. You may quite obviously feel that this is hardly something that one needs to talk about because the links seem so organic and so very visible, but at the same time I feel that because the short story happened later and the novel was such an overpowering presence that many of the short story writers have tried to establish the distinctiveness of the short story rather you know in strong terms. So, therefore, I think also there are very important differences and let us see how this question has been articulated by at least some of the important writers we have chosen. So, both are of course fictional explorations of historical situations in flux. So, I am stating the obvious and both share the tragic and the comic traditions of writing. Now, here I have in mind what Milan Kundera had said elsewhere about the art of fiction and specially with reference to the European novel he had said that all modern literature descends from either Richardson's Clarissa or Stern's Tristram Shandy. Now, Clarissa was in the tragic mode and Tristram Shandy as you know very well was a comic novel. So, I am just trying to suggest that in you know both though these modes are very important for the short story also just as they are important for the novel form actually they are very important for the for modern drama and I would not go into the lineage because we have already discussed Aristotle and the Aristotelian discourse the you know kind of impact it has had and also the variations and transformations that have occurred in this process. Now, the links actually between the two forms are undeniable in terms of therefore not only the tragic and the comic mold, but also the possibilities of prose fiction in terms of you know later on we will talk about it stream of consciousness technique or the comic and again the comic is a very frequent feel and there are so many variations within the comic, but it opened up new ways of articulating experience and meanwhile of course societies were changing, but Edgar Allan Poe was very very forceful in talking about the short story and its significance vis-a-vis the novel and I like to place this quotation before you. This is from a very very important book on the short story written by or edited by Stone Packer and Hoops which is full of extremely valuable insights and I really like you to read this book very carefully, but let me place this quotation from this particular collection. Edgar Allan Poe considered the short story superior to the novel for Poe the unity of effect or impression was of prime importance, but he felt this unity could be obtained only in works that could be read at one sitting. For Poe the novel does not have this unity, can not achieve the immense force derivable from totality Poe believed that the short story is different from the novel and superior to it. So, is this totality this sense of this tremendous power almost a kind of irresistible artistic force which leads you to create one complete piece and you know helps the reader also read it at one go. So, this is what he has to say this compression, this intensity and a sense of totality that this particular form offers. Well, I think personally we would just keep this important insight in mind and move on in terms of what the other writers have to say or how they have you know what kind of stories they have created. So far as the modern short story is concerned. Let us look at its connection with the classical and folk tales. This is the second part of the lecture and we will also look at Poe his short stories very briefly because we have already talked about Poe earlier and we will also talk about checker again very briefly because we have really extensively talked about checker earlier. To come back to this you know introduction to the short story, one of the key statements that was made by the editors is related to the impulses that make the modern short story very very close to the primitive. I would like to use the word primordial instinct of story tellers and at the same time this is to again quote directly from this statement here. He too and I wonder why there is this persistent he, it should be he or she. The he too would like to be a myth maker that is the modern short story writer would also like to be a myth maker and often is but his problem is vastly complicated. Early stories were vehicles of assertion, modern fiction is one of search. I think it is a very very valid and extremely valuable viewpoint. Early stories spoke for a whole community, modern fiction is the work of individuals called authors. Again we have talked about some of these overlaps and some of these issues earlier in our discussion of folk tales and classical tales etcetera. You can go back to some of that discussion. However, I think the same idea has been very powerfully expressed by Edmund Krusek from the, this is a quote from the writer's workbook where he says we are in a sense made of stories. Every culture in every age has told them and our stories form our understanding of ourselves and of the world. Very very rich and important statement indeed and therefore, I think what perhaps would be beneficial for us is to use some of the ideas we have already discussed earlier instead of starting off you know with new examples within this frame of reference. Then I thought you could go back to Atwood's essay where she in her desire to seek some understanding of the doubleness of a writer's sensibility. She went back to some of the mythic resources and some of the important folk tales and again I would say that in terms of a choice the myth of narcissists for example, the folk tale, the gold children these do establish the theme of doubleness and what is important for us is to understand that whether we are talking about the modern or the postmodern sensibility. But somehow there is this resonance of these mythic sources and also some of the folk sources because they keep circulating in our consciousness and therefore, one can say that there are these hidden roots from the earlier archetypes that seem to again lead to new blends in the modern and the postmodern and in that sense there is always a sense of continuity although the stories of the past they were modes of assertion whereas modern to postmodern are stories of search, discovery, finding one bearings and finding forms that enable the short story writer to express his or her world view in the way it is experienced by the writer. Now that is a very, very radical kind of difference between the two historical phases. In terms of the choices that Etwood has made vis-a-vis the modern short story very clearly within the notion of the doubleness that she was interested in exploring. She is chosen amongst the modernist, she is modern short story writers, Etwood has chosen Edgar Allan Poe's William Wilson with reference to the doppelganger theme and in terms of the postmodern example she has chosen Borges and I. Since I am emphasizing the mythic, the classical, the folk but I think in terms of the mythic I would like to say that myths do pervade our consciousness and they are part of our cultural vocabulary. In the second part now we will look at the modern short story New Visions in terms of Edgar Allan Poe and Chekhov. The growth of the modern short story is located from mid to late 19th century and one of the important things that John Gardner has pointed out in this book that we have discussed with you earlier titled The Art of Fiction, he had pointed out in fact he not only pointed out but he made some very dramatic claims in this book. He says that the day the cast of Amontilado was published the theory of fiction exploded because the story has an end but no beginning and middle and therefore it challenges the earlier notion of energetic plot and in fact William Wilson also is another sort of innovative story within that frame of reference. Now in terms of the cast of Amontilado, the reason Gardner considers it so very important as a milestone is because this first of all apart from the structural propensity of the tale, the tale is totally focused on the internal monologue almost or interior monologue of the protagonist, it is a very eerie gothic tale and it also goes very deep into the consciousness of that character and it is a very very unfortunate theme. It talks about failed friendship and what I would like to do is to just read the first line and the last line so that you get a sense of that story primarily in terms of the fact that there is nothing no structure to it except this kind of outburst of the protagonist. So this is how it begins, the thousand injuries of Archanato I had borne as I best could but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge and finally you know he sort of does some way sinister things by burying this friend alive and covering that particular spot and this is how the story ends. I hastened to make an end of my labour for the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. So one is not suggesting that the themes are you know sublime or exciting in terms of you know something outstanding that has been done by Poe but Poe was interested in the gothic and he was also interested in many many darker aspects of human consciousness. In William Wilson this takes a very very different and somewhat more of a moral turn when he describes William Wilson and also creates his double also called William Wilson. To begin with the name William Wilson is also a fake identity but then there is this double identity in the story and this is how this story starts. What say of it? What say of conscience grim that specter in my path? And this is these are quotations from Chamberlain Faronida with which the story starts and this is how it goes. Let me call myself for the present William Wilson then he goes on to say the order the enthusiasm and the imperiousness of my disposition soon rendered me a marked character among my schoolmates. My name, sake alone, presumed to compete with me. And finally you know he traces this whole you know biographical in great detail biographical details the sense of these two coming across each other all the time one of them follows the evil path the other one keeps censuring him and finally these are the last few lines of the story you have conquered and I yield yet hence forward are thou also dead dead to the world to heaven and hope in me this thou exist and in my death see by this image which is thine own how utterly thou has murdered thyself. So indeed you know these are extremely you know unpredictable kind of themes and stories although the doubleness of this story again has a long mythic connection but Poe is considered as a very very important figure in terms of the composition of the short story about theory of the short story also and then I think you could read bit of Poe read his theoretical work on the short story and then move on to someone like checker. Now checker wrote in Russian and we are sharing the translations with you. So this you have to keep in mind because the quality of translations that you read you have to ensure that they are really good because I personally have given my choice earlier and you can go back to our discussion of checker in order to understand what I was trying to say about translation of checker but in terms of checker again we would try and keep this idea that the modern writer does not receive his world view he discovers it and this is a statement again from this important study that we have been referring to and extend this idea to suggest that the reader such as person like you or a person like me we also discover the meaning within the story. So they remain very very open ended for us and so we engage with them and discover the meaning. You can reread checker the shemalayan to discover the taut satire implied in that short story because again it may seem like just a you know portrayal of an event but gradually you begin to discover the taut structure and the satire that is implied. You can also read other stories of checker our favorite is the death of a clerk where the clerk is terribly upset after sneezing and you know he feels that he has been very impolite to the general who was sitting in front of him and the whole story deals with his desire to apologize to the general and the general's refusal to accept that apology. Now this particular portrayal of the clerk is rendered ambiguous and I am using this phrase from Octopia of Paz who has said that the comic renders the modern sense of the comic renders meaning ambiguous and indeed in this story the portrayal of the clerk is rendered ambiguous through comic exaggeration. So read this story and see how this plays out for you. Also looking at these two great figures of modern short story very briefly I would say let us now move to the post modern short story which is very experimental in nature and it has been labeled as anti-story too and we will also look at Borges again very briefly. The reason we have maintained this kind of brevity is to retain our focus on the actual words that the writers have used and also on this sense that you know you could pick and choose the stories that you like. The material therefore that we have explored is material that helps you keep your own sense of freshness, your own sense of vocation as a writer very independent from available milestones but without those milestones you would not know the possibilities because many of us get used to a certain restrictive way of looking at literary forms. So therefore now the examination of the post modern short story is extremely important and in this anthology by Stone Packer and Hoops they have made this statement and let me share that statement with you. These experimental writers deserve our careful attention whether or not they express experiences the reader can easily share. For the form of fiction as well as the content the technique as well as the subject matter are vital indicators of what is happening to us and vital purveyors of value. In his important anthology anti-story Philip Stavik has rightfully classified these anti-traditional tendencies as a series of negations. I would not go on to read the full list of these negations but I would really encourage you to read this book again in order to see what Stavik was talking about or to go to Stavik's book directly in order to understand his point of view and see the kind of writers he has included in this very very well known and respected collection of experimental short stories. So we do keep in mind that sometimes the themes the style of writing may be inaccessible you know it may seem like oh you know that it is like an obstacle race but at the same time it is related to the kind of historical experience the kind of value that is associated you know with the kind of form and content that the writer has you know worked out. So in terms of Borges he again is a very tall figure in this field and we had talked about Borges with reference to Atwood's you know sense of the doubleness and let me read this quotation from Atwood when she you know talked about at length talked about the doppelganger theme she says where does it come from this notion that the writing self the self that comes to be thought of as the author is not the same as the one who does the living. So that was the question that she had posed and this equivocal sense of the writer is what she felt was absolutely powerfully captured in Borges and I the piece that Borges has written. I would also like to read the first and the last line from that story this is how it starts. The other one the one called Borges is the one things happened to I do not know which of us has written this page. Let us finally move to the concluding remarks and again as I had said earlier the idea is to generate creative experimentations. We would definitely not recommend the emulation of any particular model but we would certainly like you to critically examine these short stories, enjoy them, discard them if you so desire but finally I think after critical analysis if you undertake this process you would be in a better position you would be a sturdier writer and so we would like to play some more classifications that may be helpful because this particular essay that we have selected it appeared in the Guardian and I think William Boyd had similar instinct in terms of promoting experimentation and freshness in writing and it is with this spirit that he wrote this essay. Boyd's essay is based on the following notion of the short story and let me read that basic statement. He says let us say that the short story is prose fiction's lyric poem contrasted with the novel as its epic. Based on this idea and of course related ideas he went on to offer seven types of short stories the modernist story is influenced by Hemingway's what he describes this as revolutionary contribution to the short story and he says it is spared down, laconic, unafraid to repeat the most common adjectives rather than reach for a synonym and purposeful opacity I think that is the point perhaps that needs to be noted because it is also been said by one of the critics I forget who said this but you know one of the critics I was reading recently has pointed out that in the short story it is possible for the writer to maintain the opacity of the subtext and you know so the causal elements I do not have to surface at all and at the same time the same you know withholding of the subtext in a novel makes the novel very, very tedious. So this may indeed be a quality that you can examine carefully purposeful opacity. The next classification according to him is the poetic mythic story. This is the short story quasi poem and as examples again he quotes Hemingway's contribution so again you have to say which stories of Hemingway would fit the bell which of Dylan Thomas which of D. H. Lawrence because all of them have written such so extensively. So again you have to select but as a writer this will really help you understand the variations and the possibilities and the enormous range that has developed in the modern and postmodern short story. Then the biographical story is another variety which deliberately borrows and replicates the properties of non-fiction, of history, of reportage, of the memorial and who else but Borgia's is the best example of it. You know his everything and nothing is absolutely marvellous biographical rendering of Shakespeare do read that great short story. Finally we present readings of extracts from famous short stories. Can you identify the stories and their authors? The hills across the valley of Ebrole were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Across against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain made of strings of bamboo beads hung across the open door into the bar to keep out flies. The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade outside the building. It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in 40 minutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went on to Madrid. What should we drink? The girl asked. She had taken off her hat and put it on the table. It's pretty hot, the man said. Let's drink beer. Those surveys as the man said into the curtain. Big ones? A woman asked from the doorway. Yes, two big ones. The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glasses on the table and looked at the man and the girl. The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry. They looked like white elephants, she said. I have never seen one. The man drank his beer. No, you wouldn't have. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of but could not apprehend their wavered and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey, impalpable world. The solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling. A few light taps upon the pain made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to get out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right. Snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the bog of Allen and farther westward, softly falling into the dark, mutinous, shanon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Fury lay barred. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling like the descent of their last end upon all the living and the dead. Thank you.