Here’s a 46-part short course on short story writers, beginning with Chekhov and ending with Roberto Bolaño. Each segment concentrates on a particular writer. Some wonderful biographical details and odd angles of vision. I love this bit on Robert Walser, for example.
Despite writing several novels, it is in the short form that Walser excelled. Many of his pieces defy conventional expectations of short stories – William Gass describes him as “a kind of columnist before the time of columns” – while he himself referred to them as “shortish or longish chapters of a novel. The novel I am constantly writing is always the same one, and it might be described as a variously sliced up or torn-apart book of myself.”
Click the link below for the series.
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Fabulous, Doug. Thanks! And just thanks in general for NC. Your posts always lead me to something thought-provoking (though they also make my stack of Must-Read books higher – right now I’ll need at least one more lifetime to get through them all….)
Thanks, Julie. Don’t forget that another essay for NC is also on your to-do list. Not to add to your burdens. 🙂