‘I would really hope this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel.’

‘A story is not like a road to follow … it’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.’                      

– Alice Munro

Today it was announced that Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Shortly thereafter, Amandeep Sandhu, a writer too, put a comment on his Facebook wall

The times They Are A-changin’: earlier this year short story writer Lydia Davis won the Man Booker and today short story writer Alice Munro wins the Nobel. I like it that the short story is getting its much deserved place in the sun. Congratulations! 

A few questions: does this spell something for the longer narrative? Is this a consequence of the shortening attention span in this digital world? Does this change something in publishing? Answer, but more than that this is just stuff to ponder upon, nothing is right or wrong.

And this is what I wrote in response:

There are always politics at play when such an eminent award is announced. Alice Munro is a deserving candidate. But maybe the Nobel Prize’s focus on short stories could have been foretold by Lydia Davis winning the Booker International Prize 2013. I cannot help but draw parallels with the number of beauty queens who were discovered in India, soon after liberalisation — the spotlight was on new and emerging markets. Here too, the focus is on short stories. For a while now the number of short stories writers have been increasing rapidly, the online platforms that are accepting short story submissions are multiplying fast and the growing demand for good, reliable and quickly produced stories that can be easily converted into other formats — audio books, television serials, animation and short films or even available for auction for long films has firmly put the spotlight on the short form of literature, texts for electronic platforms etc. This is important since the classic reply most publishers trot out is that it is difficult to sell short story collections by debut authors ( Prajwal Parajuly is probably one of the rare exceptions having been most recently nominated for the Dylan Thomas prize). Yet, publishers in their scramble to attract and discover new voices, encourage short fiction submissions for annual anthologies that they would like to consider publishing. So hearty congratulations to Alice Munro and good luck to the many other short story writers. Finally Amandeep, I do not think that this award will really spell the demise of the long form of narrative. This year, after a long time, I cannot help but look at the thick spines of the new novels that have been recently published — The Luminaries, The Signature of All Things and The Kills to name some.

10 Oct 2013