Reading the Story
Before embarking on a study of fiction, we might ask a basic ques­
tion: Why bother to read it? With so many pressing demands on our
time, and with so many nonfiction books of history, memoir, politics,
and cultural discussion competing for our attention, why should we
spend our scarce free time on works of imagination?
The eternal answers to this question are two: enjoyment and under­
standing.
Since the invention of language, human beings have enjoyed hear­
ing and reading stories, participating in the fictional experiences and
adventures of imaginary people. The bedtime stories read to children,
the thrillers and romances many adults take to the beach, the histori­
cal novels and inspirational fiction elderly people often enjoy-any
such harmless activity that helps make life less tedious or stressful surely
needs nothing else to recommend it. Simple enjoyment has always
been a primary aim and justification for reading fiction.
Fiction whose sole purpose is to entertain, however, requires no se­
rious or intensive study. Unless a story expands or refines our thinking
on a significant topic or quickens our sense of life, its value is not ap­
preciably greater than that of video games or crossword puzzles. A story
written with serious artistic intentions, on the other hand, must yield
not only enjoyment but also understanding.
Like all serious art, fiction of this latter kind provides an imagined
experience that yields authentic insights into some significant aspect of
life. "Art is a lie," Picasso said, "that leads to the truth," and since a
short story is a fiction, and thus a kind of "lie," this statement perfectly
sums up the kind of story that provides entertainment but also may be­
come part of an enduring literature. Most fiction, of course, is of the
other sort: it has no aspirations beyond merely entertaining the reader.
In order to distinguish these types of fiction, therefore, we should begin
by defining two broad classifications, employing the terms most often
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used today: commercial fiction, the kind intended solely to entertain;
and literary fiction, which is the primary subject of this book.
Commercial fiction, such as the legal thrillers and romance novels
that make up best-seller lists and the easy-to-read short stories that ap­
pear in mass-market magazines, is written and published primarily to
make money, and it makes money because it helps large numbers of
people escape the tedium and stress of their lives. Literary fiction, how­
ever, is written by someone with serious artistic intentions who hopes
to broaden, deepen, and sharpen the reader's awareness of life. Com­
mercial fiction takes us away from the real world: it helps us temporar­
ily to forget our troubles. Literary fiction plunges us, through the au­
thor's imaginative vision and artistic ability, more deeply into the real
world, enabling us to understand life's difficulties and to empathize with
others. While commercial fiction has the reader's immediate pleasure as
its object, literary fiction hopes to provide a complex, lasting aesthetic
and intellectual pleasure rather than a simple, escapist diversion; its ob­
ject is to offer pleasure plus understanding.
We should immediately make the point that these two categories
of fiction are not clear-cut. Not every given story can simply be tossed
into one of two bins marked "commercial" or "literary." Rather the two
categories suggest opposite ends of a spectrum; some works may fall
close to the middle rather than to one end, and genres normally associ­
ated with commercial purposes and categories are sometimes used suc­
cessfully by authors with literary intentions. A famous work such as
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin ( 1 852), for instance, seems
to straddle the line between commercial and literary fiction; immensely
popular in its own time, it was written with serious intentions but is
marred by significant aesthetic flaws. Because it does have some literary
quality, however, and because it is an historically important work of its
century, it is still read today by general readers and scholars alike. An­
other example of the occasional blending of our two broad categories is
Charlotte Bronte's novel ]ane Eyre ( 1 847), which adheres to certain
conventions of the romance novel and has been commercially success­
ful since it was first published; but it also remains one of the finest lit­
erary novels ever written. Similarly, writers such as Charles Dickens,
Edith Wharton, and John Updike have published novels that were si­
multaneously best-sellers and highly praised by literary critics.
The terms "commercial" and "literary" should be applied to novels
or stories themselves, not necessarily to their authors. Dickens, in fact,
is a good example of a single author capable of writing different works
that fall into one category or the other. His novel Martin Chuzzlewit
( 1844), for instance, had disappointing sales when first published but to-
Chapter One I Reading the Stol)'
63
day is greatly admired and discussed by literary scholars; on the other
hand, his sentimental but hugely popular A Christmas Carol ( 1 843) is
essentially a commercial work. More recently, Graham Greene wrote
some novels he subtitled "entertainments" as a way of setting them
apart from his more serious, literary novels.
It should likewise be stressed that the difference between commer­
cial and literary fiction does not necessarily relate to the absence or
presence of a "moral." A story whose incidents and characters are no­
tably shallow may have an unimpeachable moral, while a literary story
or novel may have no "moral" at all in the conventional sense; it may
choose to dramatize human experience rather than to moralize about it.
Similarly, the difference between commercial and literary fiction does
not lie in the absence or presence of"facts." An historical romance may
be packed with reliable information and yet be pure escape in its de­
piction of human behavior. Nor does the difference lie in the presence
or absence of an element of fantasy. Commercial fiction may have the
surface appearance of everyday reality-a police detective novel is a
good example-but have little significance beyond the reality depicted;
on the other hand, a wildly fanciful tale may impress the reader with a
profound and surprising truth. The differences between the two kinds
of fiction are deeper and more subtle than any of these distinctions.
Perhaps we can clarify the difference by analogy. Commercial writers
are like inventors who devise a contrivance for our diversion. When we
push a button, lights flash, bells ring, and cardboard figures move jerkily
across a painted horizon. Such writers are full of tricks and surprises:
they pull rabbits out of hats, saw beautiful women in two, and j uggle
brightly colored balls in the air. By contrast, literary writers are more like
explorers: they take us out into the midst of life and say, "Look, here is
the world in all its complexity." They also take us behind the scenes,
where they show us the props and mirrors and seek to dispel the illusions.
This is not to say that literary writers are merely reporters. More surely
than commercial writers, they carefully shape their materials. But they
shape them always with the intent that we may see, feel, and understand
them better, not for the primary purpose of furnishing entertainment. In
short, any fiction that illuminates some aspect of human life or behav­
ior with genuine originality and power may be called "literary." Such a
story presents an insight-whether large or small-into the nature and
condition of our existence. It gives us a keener awareness of our hu­
manity within a universe that is sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile.
It helps us to understand our world, our neighbors, and ourselves.
The distinctions we have drawn between the two types of fiction
are true of both the full-length novel and the short story. Since the
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latter form is the focus of this text, however, we should stress that the
short story, by its very nature, is a more literary genre. Writers hoping
to succeed as commercial authors usually work in the novel form,
which has proved more popular with large masses of people than has
the more refined and subtle art of the story. (A collection of short sto­
ries appearing on any best-seller list is an extremely rare event.) Al­
though there are types of commercial short stories that appear in men's
adventure magazines, mystery and horror anthologies, and women's
publications, the majority of short fiction published today appears in
journals that are called, in fact, "literary magazines." Because of their
serious intentions and their brevity, short stories provide the ideal
vehicle for studying those elements of storytelling common to all liter­
ary fiction.
As you read and reread the stories in this book, you will become
aware that the term "short story" is a highly elastic one. While brevity
is an obvious characteristic of the genre, short narratives have always
been part of the human storytelling impulse and have shown an impres­
sive diversity throughout history. Ancient fairy tales and fables were the
precursors of the modern short story, but only in the last two centuries
has the short story assumed the generally accepted characteristics, out­
lined in the following chapters, which constitute its uniqueness as a lit­
erary genre. Authors of short stories continually seek new ways to ex­
ploit the genre, however, using fresh techniques and storytelling
approaches in order to advance and refine this sophisticated form. A
seemingly conventional tale may veer in an unexpected direction; a
fragmented structure may help to mirror the world of one story, while
an experimental approach to language or style may distinguish another
from anything you have read before. The short story's lack of commer­
cial appeal has, in a way, helped its development as an art form, for
writers of short fiction, unconstrained by the demands of the market­
place and a mass audience, are able to give free rein to their creativity
and imagination. Noting the "freedom and promise of the form," au­
thor Joyce Carol Oates has observed that "radical experimentation,
which might be ill-advised in the novel, is well suited for the short
story." This outlook, shared by most literary writers, has helped to
maintain the status of the short story as a genre capable of ongoing di­
versity, richness, and self-renewal.
Before beginning a serious study of fiction, you should be aware
that literary fiction requires a different way of reading than commercial
fiction does. When we take a novel by Stephen King or Danielle Steel
to the beach, we do not want to have to think much, if at all, about
what we are reading; we simply want a diverting way of passing the time.
Chapter One I Reading the Story
65
When we read a literary novel or story, however, we are seeking some­
thing different. We expect a serious work to offer some of the immedi­
ate pleasures of a well-told story-an original premise and intriguing
characters, for instance; but we also know that a literary work may be
more demanding of the reader in terms of its language, structure, and
complexity. U ltimately we expect to come away from a literary work
with an enhanced understanding of life.
In order to appreciate how it operates as a work of narrative art, we
should read any piece of literary fiction at least twice before we can fully
grasp what it has to offer. This is another reason the short story repre­
sents an ideal medium for the intensive study of fiction, since its length
enables us to reread a story without making unreasonable demands on
our time. As you read the stories included in this book, try following
this general procedure: ( 1 ) read the story the first time simply to enjoy
and familiarize yourself with it; ( 2 ) read the story a second time, more
slowly and deliberately, in the attempt to understand its full artistic sig­
nificance and achievement. As you proceed through the chapters,
learning about plot, characterization, theme, and so forth, you will
gradually develop the instincts of a serious reader: it is important to ask,
for instance, why a story is constructed in a certain way, or why an au­
thor explores a specific character's inner life. With commercial fiction,
such questions are irrelevant: there the focus is usually on what happens
next, not on the techniques the author uses to tell the story. But with
literary fiction, we are willing to invest more time and energy into read­
ing more deliberately, and into careful rereading, because we know the
personal rewards will be greater.
When we speak of different kinds of reading, of course, we aren't
necessarily talking about different kinds of people. Avid readers may
read both commercial and literary fiction at different times, just as an
individual may sometimes want fast food, or "junk food," and at other
times be willing to invest considerable time and money in savoring a
gourmet meal. An English professor may buy a paperback thriller to en­
joy during a vacation, while a factory worker might read ]ane Eyre dur­
ing her work breaks. So the primary distinction is between kinds of
reading, not kinds of readers.
We also bring different expectations to our reading of these two
different types of fiction. When we pick up a commercial novel, we
come to the book with specific, fixed expectations and will feel frus­
trated and disappointed unless those expectations are met. Depending
on the genre, some of these expectations may include ( 1 ) a sympathetic
hero or heroine-someone with whom the reader can identify and
whose adventures and triumphs the reader can share; (2 ) a defined plot
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in which something exciting is always happening and in which there is
a strong element of suspense (thus the term "page-turner," often ap­
plied to a successful commercial novel); (3) a happy ending that sends
the reader away undisturbed and optimistic about life; ( 4) a general
theme, or "message," that affirms widely held, conventional views of
the world.
By contrast, when we come to a novel or story with literary inten­
tions, we approach the work with a different set of expectations. For
one thing, we are willing to expect the unexpected: instead of adopting
a conventional way of storytelling, a literary author may create a
unique style or angle of vision in order to express his or her artistic
truth; and instead of a happy or conventional ending in which every­
thing is tied together in a neat package, a literary work may end in an
unsettling or even unresolved way, forcing us to examine our own
expectations about the story itself, about the way the story is told,
and about our ingrained, perhaps unconscious way of viewing a certain
topic or idea that may have been challenged or changed by what
we have read. In short, when reading literary fiction we must keep
an open mind and stay receptive to the author's imaginative vision,
however different it may be from our own habits of perceiving and
"reading" the world.
Reading effectively, it should be stressed, involves evaluating what
we read. A typical library contains thousands of books, and any indi­
vidual has time to read only a fraction of them. To choose our reading
wisely, we need to know two things: ( 1 ) how to get the most out of any
book we read and (2) how to choose the books that will best repay the
time and attention we devote to them. The assumption of this book is
that a proper selection will include both fiction and nonfiction­
nonfiction as an indispensable fund of information and ideas that con­
stitute one kind of knowledge of the world; literary fiction as an equally
indispensable source of a different kind of knowledge, a knowledge of
experience, felt in the emotions as well as apprehended by the mind.
One aim of this book is to help you develop your understanding and
judgment in evaluating what you read.
If we approach a literary story in a serious, committed way, after all,
we will probably have a more memorable and satisfying reading experi­
ence than the kind we derive from commercial fiction, which we tend
to forget as soon as we have consumed it. Especially if you are accus­
tomed to reading fiction quickly and without much thought about its
possible complex meanings, try to adopt a slower, more thoughtful ap­
proach as you read the stories in this and later chapters. Inevitably, as
with different commercial works, you will find some of the stories in
Connell / The Most Dangerous Game
67
this book more appealing than others. They have been chosen care­
fully, however, to help you explore the elements of fiction and to illus­
trate the diversity of the short-story form as practiced by a broad range
of writers. Ideally, a careful reading of these stories will convince you
that while nonfiction may be an indispensable fund of information and
ideas, and one way of knowing about the world, fiction is an equally in­
dispensable source of knowledge, and a knowledge apprehended not
only by your intellect but by your emotions and imagination as well.
Through the act of reading a story and sharing an author's imaginative
vision, you will gain not only a pleasurable experience but growth in
your understanding of the world and of the human condition.