In high school I did a senior research project on short stories and their unique purpose and structure. A quote I found during research which I think really embodies the ambition of the short story really stuck with me.
"It wants to be shorter still. It wants to be a single word. If it could find that word, if it could utter that syllable, the entire universe would blaze up out of it with a roar. That is the outrageous ambition of the short story, that is its deepest faith, that is the greatness of its smallness." -Natalia Real
The paper I wrote in high school centered around the way structure relates to function in short stories--in their conciseness they aim to capture, embody, or define a certain thought, idea, or emotion with the powerful force of limitation. The more short short stories I read the more I began to appreciate the unique structure of different types of literature. The short story doesn't want to be a shorter version of a novel I realized. It is concise as crucial part of its purpose: to express a concise meaning in a way that is profound due to its purposeful limitation.
From there I'm personally trying to read this novel in a similar way, trying to recognize the novel's ultimate purpose as a guiding tool for understanding and appreciating the structure. I think the book's ultimate purpose is to propose the idea that nothing can be defined in one exact way, and that's okay. To me the book is saying that beauty is the product of disregarding the limitations definitions create. So, ultimately I almost think we shouldn't try to define the novel itself at all. It's human nature to be really uncomfortable with allowing something to be undefined. But maybe that discomfort we feel in just accepting the work as something without a definition opens our eyes more to the beauty of the world that Gould and Flanagan are creating.
No comments:
Post a Comment