inAuthors: Alethea Black Riffs on the Magic of the Short Story

July 18, 2011 by inReads

Alethea Black is an award-winning writer whose work has garnered the Arts & Letters Prize and has appeared in many literary magazines. Her recently released collection of short stories, I Knew You’d Be Lovely, was chosen as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick.

Here, Black shares her love and respect for the art form of the short story:

I’ve heard it said that our brains are built to absorb information in the form of brief narratives. I’ve heard that this form—more ancient than the fables of Aesop or the parables of Jesus or the folktales of Scheherazade; who can say when the first human uttered the equivalent of “it was a dark and stormy night,” or in what tongue?—is inscribed in the structure of our minds, and that the short story, in a sense, is the undiscovered art of language in the same way that equations are the undiscovered art of mathematics. I’ve heard that if we were able to divine the invisible architecture of consciousness, the city that would rise before our eyes would be built of stories. I don’t know if any of it is true. But it seems to be true for me.

It’s not that I think the novel is a quagmire, or that they’re all, as Henry James famously dubbed the 19^th-century Russian variety, “loose baggy monsters.” It’s just that, for me, the short story is more manageable—and more magical. As I’m working, I can hold the whole thing in my mind (without necessarily knowing it), and let the language and events take their surprising yet inevitable turns. The necessary concision and precision of stories—their compression and density, and the ensuing critical mass—make it easier for me to get out of my own way.

Any artist knows the great paradox of form—that restrictions give us freedom—and I enjoy trying to suggest an entire life, or to provide a complete narrative experience, in under 5,000 words. It’s fortunate that I enjoy it, because I’ve come to see that discipline as a chiropractic requirement. Last week, after my first collection of short stories was published, I gave a reading to which I had to bring copies of my book. I had a radio interview that morning on the Upper West Side, and the reading was downtown in Greenwich Village, so I ended up carting those boxes of books all over Manhattan on a sweltering July day. And I thought: This is perfect. If only we had to hump our own wares around more often, we would be even more careful not to say with twenty words what could be said with two. The next time I sit down to write, I’m going to begin by reminding myself that one day I may have to carry these words.

I’ve seen early pictures of myself holding a box of raisins and sticking out my tongue, or giving my new baby sister a kiss, but really, short stories were my beginning. The first time I can remember thinking anything was when my father was reading me a story. I liked the sound of his voice, and the feeling that I was being taken on an adventure. I liked the knowing, and the not knowing. I still remember what I thought, even as I chased the ending: I don’t want it to end.

It could be that when I write, I am always trying to get back to that place. My stories are not fairy tales, and they’re written for adults, but I’ve never lost sight of the virtue of directness and the value of simplicity—big simplicity—and I’ve never stopped loving the kind of stories that are not cagey or coy and that don’t back away from the questions they raise. Most of all, I still count the intimacy of language as among the greatest intimacies. And I believe that the intake of breath, just before a story starts, is life at its most delicious.

DEEPER DIVE

Review the five short stories that staff at Electric Literature’s wishes they could have published.

Try to keep a dry eye as you listen to Alethea Black graciously accept an award for her writing, remembering her father’s loving support:

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