Short Stories....

I'm reading 50 of the World's Greatest Short Stories according to the book's title and I'm about a third of the way through. As an author it's really interesting to see the gulf between celebrated authors and unknown authors in the short story realm because there isn't one.

So say I.

But I mean it.

You see - and I appreciate short stories are a glimpse into another time and space which may be different in writing techniques to our own - but so too are they the ability to hold a reader and make them think, or surprise them, in a short span of words. To date, and in this book, I have read tales by the likes of:

• Alexander Pushkin

• Ambrose Bierce

• Charles Dickens

• F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Frank R. Stockton

• Fyodor Dostoyesvsky

• Guy de Maupassant

• Anton Chekov

Of the short stories in the collection most are good, in my humble opinion, but they are no better or worse than indie authors whose short pieces I have read in recent years. Indeed some of these greats are far worse. Personally I didn't take to Chekov or Dostoyevsky - the former being mundane and the latter a word salad - and if they wrote these today I'm pretty sure they would disappear into oblivion. But then stories like 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' by Ambrose Bierce are still absolutely genius, even though written over 150 years ago. And still others by the likes of Dickens, Pushkin and Fitzgerald lie in between the two extremes. I guess what I'm trying to say is that indie authors should read and write more short stories, if only because they might then realise there isn't necessarily a gulf between their work and that of the greats.

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