I'm not saying the C*******s word yet, of course I'm not, but......you might want to be thinking about your list to Father C*******s and starting to drop hints because, as I say every year, be it on your own head if you get the Strictly Come Baking I'm a Celebrity Apprentice Annual 2015 when you might have preferred to find these 'neath the tree...
Fortunately I had received advance warning in the shape of a small proof sampler or I might just have collapsed with joy when two volumes of The Penguin Book of the British Short Story arrived.
Bookhound was off on his weekly bookbinding course day. It's going swimmingly well, he's finally back in touch with his inner art student, the first hand-stitched notebook is out of the press and I can see I am going to love all this....
My plan is that I try and use my home-alone day to do something creative too, rather than domestic duties.
I was upstairs cleaning the bath when I heard Jim the Postie pull up outside. Normally he skips in like a whippet, puts the post in the box if Magnus isn't sitting on it and he's off again before you can blink, but on this particular day there was a lot of commotion and a bit of huffing and puffing and the noise of large parcels.
'Oh good, books,' I thought.
So much for my creative day, and the bath cleaner had solidified in situ by the time I came to run a bath at 11pm, having forgotten all about it.
I was riveted to the kitchen table for the next how-ever-long drinking in the beauty that is these two linen-bound volumes; 700 pages and a lot of short stories, just what my self-prescribed reading had ordered in between the interminable but very enjoyable escapade that is The Luminaries (100 pages to go)
'Hilarious, exuberant, subtle, tender, brutal, spectacular, and above all unexpected ; these two extraordinary volumes contain the limitless possibilities of the British short story.'
Edited by Philip Hensher Volume One - From Daniel Defoe to John Buchan and Volume Two - From P.G.Wodehouse to Zadie Smith promises to take me on a massive journey via ninety short stories, and if there is one thing I love about that, as I did about the Persephone short story collection, it is the chance to meet so many different authors who I may not have read before.
Of the Persephone collection I said this at the time...
"Each story in the Persephone book has a delicious kernel of quiet truth at its centre, as well as a good crunchy bite at the end, and I would be hard pushed to choose a favourite to date, but along the way I am meeting some authors whose voices resonate and I will seek out more short stories by them for sure...to be honest, forget the 100th book, I'd love Persephone to publish a volume like this every year. There can be no shortage of stories and the collective approach makes for fascinating contrasts whilst, for all the years that pass, the concerns and themes surrounding the constraints and pleasures of women's lives seem timeless and unchanging."
There would certainly seem to have been no shortage of stories for Philip Hensher to choose from, and he confirms this in his introduction which makes for interesting reading. I'm ahead of him on the potential for monotony and repetition of themes in a single-author collection, whilst agreeing that Secret Villages by Douglas Dunn is superb example of one that bucks that trend. It might be one of the first short story collections I bought back in the 1980s and is a book I would never part with.
Some very relevant points are made about the seemingly parlous state of the short story today. The current lack of enthusiasm for them around the publishing houses and magazines, the poor remuneration for the authors if they do manage to get one into print, and to think that prior to World War One there were at least thirty-four high circulation magazines devoted to nothing but. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle could command £100/1000 words.
Philip Hensher makes an interesting point about the ability of the short story, in its heyday, to react almost immediately to national events, compare this to the furore surrounding the publication of Hilary Mantel's The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher (which incidentally he considers to be ' not a very accomplished piece of work) so I am hoping this might be played out in some of the stories that have been selected for inclusion.
An equally interesting stance, given our recent read of the entries for the BBC Short Story Award, on the rise of the short story competition...
'The problem with relying on competitions as a means of developing talent, rather than the response of the paying public, is that they reward what they think ought to be good, and not what contains any real energy.'
and this..
'Not until the rise of literary competitions in the second half of the twentieth century, however, did the British hit upon a method ingeniously devised to suppress everything that had previously been good about a literary form.'
By replacing the system of commissions, payments, circulation and readers with competitions, Philip Hensher argues that much has been lost, pointing out that the dullest he read whilst compiling these anthologies were those very winners.
Neither are we very good at banging the national drum apparently. British modesty forbids it and as a consequence the short story in this country has been 'underestimated and even dismissed.' Fighting talk and there is plenty more in this introduction, Philip Hensher takes no prisoners, setting this reader up for a roller coaster of a ride through some of the very best.
This one of those perfect books for slow-dip-into every so often progress. I have made a start and even given over a new notebook for the duration, though I am all back to front and reading Volume Two first, 1920 to the present day.
I wonder what you think about Philip Henser's opinions...
Where do we find British short stories these days...
Are there any magazines out there upholding the tradition...
Are other countries better at this than here in the UK...
And talking of wish lists...are there any other books you will be hoping to find nicely wrapped on that day some weeks hence...
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