Over at 50 Books, Doppelganger writes about my least favorite kind of storyteller: the snotty kind:
Not only did I not like any of the characters in any of these stories (with the exception of the very last one I read, “Racial Memories”), I got the impression that Cohen didn’t like them, either.
I spent the past week attempting to read The Gift (“…And then he talked to some other expatriate, and then he trudged around Berlin some more, and then he thought about Russia,”), right after the amazing Heir to the Glimmering World. I sympathize with the disappointment, albeit for different reasons.
She also meditates on gender stereotypes and storytelling:
Since we’re all in the trust tree together here, can I confess to you that I flirted dangerously with a vague theory about male short story writers versus female short story writers? Something along the lines of how flawed characters are always more interesting to read about, but female writers are better able to imbue these characterizations with warmth and sympathy, if not outright affection, than male writers. I got to this idea when I thought about all the great short fiction writers I’ve read over the past couple of years: Alice Munro, Carol Shields, Margaret Atwood, Annie Proulx, and Mavis Gallant, to name just a few.
But then I put paid to my own theory when I rolled the tapes back a bit further and thought about some of my other favourite short story writers: Guy Vanderhaeghe, Sherwood Anderson, Truman Capote, and a certain author named Anton Chekhov. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?
Or George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, J.M. Coetzee, Peter Carey, Dale Peck, James Baldwin, Julian Barnes, Rohinton Mistry, Chang Rae-Lee, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, possibly even David Foster Wallace…?
(Can anyone think of any women writers who are terrible at flawed-yet-sympathetic characterization? Most of the books I read are recommended to me because the characterization is so rich, so I got nothin’.)
{ 5 comments }
I’m a big Zelda and F Scott Fitzgerald fan, and especially love their short stories, but I am currently reading a Zelda bio and there seems to be some criticism that her short story characters were a bit flat, flawed yes, but not fleshed out enough which could then mean not sympathetic. In general I prefer her to F Scott because her writing style is just so intriguing. Way too many metaphors and similes and strange wording, but then I like that kind of thing.
I’m also (don’t hate me) a big JD Salinger short story fan, but find his oddball male characters pretty hard to understand/sympathise with sometimes.
I know it’s not a short story, but “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt reeked of this problem. I only finished it because I wanted to see how the central mystery resolved, but as I was reading I realised I hated every last one of these brilliant, selfish, screwed-up characters. I think I’ll be selling the book on Amazon; it’s not even worth a second read.
Hah!
Well, she did pal around with Bret Easton Ellis.
…Yeah, I think I…yeah. I was reading the book primarily for the suspense, which I thought was masterfully done. And, of course, some of the characterization is excused by the premise, which kind of depends on all of these characters being amoral enough to turn themselves into dangerous crazy people.
oh nooooo! don’t hate the Secret History!!! Mainly because I am/was a Greek and Classics student, I loved that they were into the same stuff as me (it’s hard to find that…trust me). However I can see your point about the characters being smug, nasty etc. Still, even things that we find repulsive can be successful entertainment, so said Aristotle (ha, had to chuck that in there).
I thought that part of it was fascinating. Most of it is just hatred for The Little Friend, which, eeesh.
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