How Stories Mean

by John Metcalf (Editor)

How Stories Mean gathers together criticism and theory written by short story writers themselves. Several of the essays were newly written for this book. The essays document the establishment and growth of the story form in Canada over the last twenty-five years but the collection is far more than archival. It offers endless insights into how writers write and how they wish to be read. In discussing the nuts and bolts of their craft, the writers are inviting us into their workshops so that we can see how stories are made and come to a more intimate understanding of them. How Stories Mean is the one indispensable book for all those interested in the short story in Canada. Contributors Margaret Atwood; Clark Blaise; George Bowering; Keath Fraser; Mavis Gallant; Jack Hodgins; Hugh Hood; Norman Levine; John Metcalf; Alice Munro; Leon Rooke; Carol Shields; Ray Smith; Audrey Thomas and Kent Thompson.

360 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1993

Reviews

[A.J.]

This book carries an ambitious title, but it's something of a mish-mash, much of it reprinted from other sources. At its best, it's brilliant, but in places, it's a little dated.

Consider Ray Smith, complaining about realist stories in "Dinosaur": "it was useful thirty, forty years ago." Smith criticizes writers adhering to a convention forty years out of date, and points to some newer writers:

"Some big dogs in speculative fiction: Jorge Luis Borges, Vladimir Nabokov. Coming big dog: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Prominent younger dogs: Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Richard Brautigan."

Say, who is this Pynchon guy, anyway? It's now that you check and discover that this essay dates from 1972; within a few years, Brautigan would be written off (unfairly) as an anachronism. The irony is, of course, that a reader adopting Smith's stance today, in 2009, would be adhering to a convention thirty-seven years out of date. And thirty-seven is perilously close to forty. This is a history lesson.

But there are also some real gems here. "The Same Ticking Clock" by Carol Shields lucidly addresses the ever-popular controversy of gender. "What is Style?" by Mavis Gallant gets right to the point. Margaret Atwood's "Happy Endings" is, of course, well known. And "Soaping a Meditative Foot," "Punctuation as Score" and "That Damn Clock Again" by John Metcalf are indispensable -- Metcalf is one of the collection's most lucid voices.