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Al-Ahram Weekly 19 - 25 August 1999 Issue No. 443 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 19 - 25 August 1999 Issue No. 443
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Plain talk
By Mursi Saad El-Din
Many people predict the imminent demise of the short story, while the novel, certainly in the English speaking world, moves from strength to strength. Here in Egypt, though, the situation is reversed, with the short story remaining a favoured form of both readers and writers. This is why I welcomed the supplement published last week by Nisf Al-Donia.
It contained 14 short stories by a number of Egyptian writers, each of whom left an indelible mark on our literature. The authors, in addition to mastering the form of the short story, also produced distinguished work in longer genres, including the novel. And in addition, all the stories are illustrated by Kanaan, the leading painter and illustrator.
Yet going through the issue I wondered how many of the young generation are familiar with the writers' names, let alone their work. I suspect that very few young readers will have even heard of Mohamed Farid Abu Hadid, Ibrahim El-Masry or Salah Zohny. How many people know that Bint Al-Shatei (Aisha Abdel-Rahman) or Hussein Mo'ness were short story writers?
While in England the novel predominates there are those writers and critics who believe that the short story is a more perfect form, and that it is the vehicle that many writers find most accommodating to their aims and techniques.
In an article in last week's Daily Telegraph William Boyd -- himself a short story writer and novelist -- discusses the future of the short story. The title of the article is "Less Said the Better", and in it Boyd claims that there is something of a feeling of release when we, as readers, open a collection of short stories.
He goes on to argue that the relationship between the reader and the text of a short story is consummated swiftly -- however passionately -- in an hour or under, yet despite this short-lived relation, the story can endure, prompt revisits and even haunt.
The short story, in Boyd's opinion, is an infinitely malleable construct. It can be many things, from six lines long to some dozens of pages; from something outrageously larky and post-modern to something that is, in effect a mini-novel. Writing a short story is, in a way, a test for writers and we find many novelists trying their hands.
Reading short stories by novelists can be an introduction to their novels. D.H. Lawrence's St Mawr can explain the writer better than Sons and Lovers or Lady Chatterley's Lover while reading James Joyce's Dubliners can help the reader tackle the daunting edifices of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Boyd gives what I think is a convincing plea for the short story. In great short stories, he says, there is a sort of cipher embodied which the reader has to try to decode. There is a gap between what is written and what is meant that the reader has to locate and then fill. Because the writer has no time or space to elucidate or explain, everything has to be encoded and implicit.
I agree with Boyd that in our quick-tempoed age, the short story is the perfect literary form. The act of reading a short story requires a brief but real collaboration between writer and reader. It is an encounter with literature which appeals to our overtaxed, bombarded, over-crowded brains, providing something different to the richer, more ruminative long-haul that the novel offers.
