It's often said that the short story today goes with poetry. But the trouble with bringing poetry in is not only that the 'poetic' is a bad thing in prose but that it implies a degree of consciousness and concentration which the very best stories don't seem to have. William Gass rationally observed that the story 'is a poem grafted onto a sturdier stock' but Borges decreed that 'unlike the novel, it may be essential.' That has an ominous sound.

LRB 24 April 1997 | PDF Download