calmWilliam Gibson said a couple years ago that a short story was a sort of bonsai novel. And that was why he didn't write short stories any more, because they took almost as much work as novels, but you can make a living writing novels (if you're William Gibson), and you can't earn a living writing short stories.
I think it's true that most good short stories are miniature novels. But it also occurs to me that some of the best short stories, the ones that affect us most strongly, the ones we remember forever, are nothing of the kind. They are transgressive, peculiar, they obey different natural laws than the rest of the fiction universe. These stories are sui generis, and if you tried to create a novel on the same model, it would most likely fail.
Examples:
Terry Bisson's "They're Made Out of Meat."
Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas."
Frederik Pohl's "Day Million."
Can you think of others?
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CHOU ido(mu) meaning: challenge, defy 挑発的 == chouhatsuteki == (adjective that takes な) provocative, suggestive, lascivious |
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Left radical is one of the radical versions of 'hand'. Right radical is 'sign/trillion' (兆), acting phonetically to express 'stir'. Thus, to 'stir by hand'. As in English, 'stir' became used metaphorically, as in to 'stir up trouble', leading to the character's present meanings. Henshall suggests as a mnemonic: 'Trillion hands raised in defiance.' Info from Taka
Kanji Database |
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