{"id":4717,"date":"2008-10-08T10:30:50","date_gmt":"2008-10-08T17:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=4717"},"modified":"2022-03-07T09:49:21","modified_gmt":"2022-03-07T17:49:21","slug":"an-ode-to-the-short-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2008\/10\/08\/an-ode-to-the-short-story\/","title":{"rendered":"An Ode to the Short Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:5015,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.nytimes.com\\\/2008\\\/10\\\/05\\\/books\\\/review\\\/Millhauser-t.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20251001174452\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.nytimes.com\\\/2008\\\/10\\\/05\\\/books\\\/review\\\/Millhauser-t.html&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-08 00:47:32&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-30 11:54:58&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-30 11:54:58&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:5016,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.kottke.org\\\/08\\\/10\\\/short-story-ambitions&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20250817163829\\\/https:\\\/\\\/kottke.org\\\/08\\\/10\\\/short-story-ambitions&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-08 00:47:35&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-30 11:54:59&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-30 11:54:59&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Following up, in a way, to a <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2008\/09\/26\/stephen-king-on-short-stories\/\" title=\"eclecticism: Stephen King on Short Stories\">quote from Stephen King<\/a> that I posted a couple weeks ago, comes this essay by Steven Millhauser, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/10\/05\/books\/review\/Millhauser-t.html\" title=\"New York Times: The Ambition of the Short Story\">The Ambition of the Short Story<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  Of course there are virtues associated with smallness. Even the novel will grant as much. Large things tend to be unwieldy, clumsy, crude; smallness is the realm of elegance and grace. It\u2019s also the realm of perfection. The novel is exhaustive by nature; but the world is inexhaustible; therefore the novel, that Faustian striver, can never attain its desire. The short story by contrast is inherently selective. By excluding almost everything, it can give perfect shape to what remains. And the short story can even lay claim to a kind of completeness that eludes the novel \u2014 after the initial act of radical exclusion, it can include all of the little that\u2019s left.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(via <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kottke.org\/08\/10\/short-story-ambitions\" title=\"kottke.org: Short Story Ambitions\">Kottke<\/a><\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following up, in a way, to a quote from Stephen King that I posted a couple weeks ago, comes this essay by Steven Millhauser, The Ambition of the Short Story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2036],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}