In this week’s NY Times Book Review, Stephen Millhauser waxes succinctly on the short story — its virtues and titanic ambitions:
The short story — how modest in bearing! How unassuming in manner! It sits there quietly, eyes lowered, almost as if trying not to be noticed. And if it should somehow attract your attention, it says quickly, in a brave little self-deprecating voice alive to all the possibilities of disappointment: “I’m not a novel, you know. Not even a short one. If that’s what you’re looking for, you don’t want me.”
Read the rest (and see what cut of the cow a short story is) here.
