I’m tutoring Short Story at uni this semester, and encountering some interesting issues in the classroom. As my students read published short stories and one another’s work, I often hear the complaint that part of a story is “confusing”, that something “jars” or a particular sentence seems “random”. Closer inspection will reveal the seemingly random sentence as a vital clue to the meaning of the whole piece, so-called confusion as a question you must read on to answer, and allegedly jarring notes as moments of modulation. In other words the students protest against complexity, mystery, paradox, contradiction and multiplicity of meaning – everything that, from my point of view, makes a story compelling.
These young readers seem to expect instant understanding of a text: they want to glean everything that’s there from a quick skim. They don’t want to stop and think, or (heaven forbid) re-read anything. One student told me yesterday he likes stories to unfold like films – smoothly, consistently, with events happening one after another. I was reminded of an interview with Lee Childs, in which he said his readers don’t have to do anything but strap themselves in for the ride.
On the other hand, the same student said he also enjoys stories which force him to the dictionary to look up words he doesn’t know. So while these folks may not be exactly open to literary challenges, I’ll lever at the chinks. Hopefully they’ll have gained a new perspective by the end of semester: all the short stories for class study are complex works that reward close reading, re-reading, and contemplation.
Fiction Craft 