(Adapted

from Perrines Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense)

Section 1: Reading the Story

Opening

Fiction. . .Why read it?

With the demands/responsibilities of modern life, with so much non-fiction,

(history, memoir, politics, cultural discussion),

competing for our attention, why should we spend what little free time we have on
works of imagination?

1. Enjoyment
2. Understanding

Since the invention of language, humans have enjoyed reading and hearing stories,
participating in the fictional experiences of imaginary people.

-Bedtime stories read to children
-Thrillers and romances read on the beach
-Historical novels and inspirational fiction

Any such harmless activity that makes life less tedious or stressful surely needs
nothing else to recommend it.

Commercial vs. Literary Fiction

Fiction whose sole purpose is to entertain, however, requires no serious or intensive
study.

Unless a story expands or refines our thinking on a significant topic or quickens our
sense of life, its value is not appreciably greater than that of a video game or
crossword puzzle.

On the other hand, a story written with serious artistic intentions must yield not
only enjoyment, but also understanding.

Like all serious art, fiction if this latter kind provides an imagined experience that
yields authentic insights into some significant aspect of life.

Art is a lie that leads to the truth. ~Pablo Picasso

Since a short story is fiction, and thus a kind of lie, this statement perfectly sums
up the kind of story that provides entertainment but also may become part of an
enduring literature.

Most fiction, of course, is of the other sort: It has no aspirations beyond merely
entertaining the reader.

For our purposes, we are going to begin by defining two broad classifications:
commercial fiction and literary fiction.


1. commercial fiction

-written and published primarily to make money

-does so because it helps large numbers of people escape the tedium and stress of
their lives

2. literary fiction

-written by someone with serious artistic intentions who hopes to broaden,
deepen, and sharpen the readers awareness of life

To reiterate:

-Commercial fiction takes us away from the real world: it helps us temporarily to
forget our troubles

-Literary fiction plunges us, through the authors imaginative vision and artistic
ability more deeply into the real world.

-While commercial fiction has the readers immediate pleasure as its object,
literary fiction hopes to provide a complex, lasting aesthetic and intellectual
pleasure rather than a simple, escapist diversion; its object is to offer pleasure
plus understanding.

*Please Note: These two categories are not clear-cut.

Not every story or novel can be conveniently tossed into one bin or the other.
These categories simply suggest opposite ends of a spectrum; some works may
fall close to the middle rather than to one clear end, and genres normally
associated with commercial purposes and categories are sometimes used
successfully by authors with literary intentions.

-Uncle Toms Cabin straddles the line between commercial and literary.

-Jane Eyre is regarded as one of the finest literary novels ever written, but
adheres to certain conventions of the commercial romance novel and has been
very successful since the time it was first published.

-Dracula was regarded in its time as a primarily commercial work, but has since
garnered enough critical acceptance and analysis to be considered further toward
the literary end of the spectrum today.

-The House on Mango Street, while written with an audience that did not often
find the time to read in mind and having maintained a consistent level of
commercial success since its publication, is primarily literary in its purpose and
execution.

Additionally, the terms commercial and literary should be applied to novels or
stories themselves, not necessarily to their authors.

Charles Dickens, for example wrote works that fall into both categories. His novel
Martin Chuzzelewit is greatly discussed and admired by literary scholars, but his
hugely popular A Christmas Carol is essentially a commercial work.

Also, the difference between commercial and literary fiction does not necessarily
relate to the absence or presence of a moral.

A story whose incidents and characters are notably shallow may have an
unimpeachable moral (Dracula), while a literary story or novel may have no
moral at all in the conventional sense; it may choose to dramatize human
experience rather than to moralize about it

Nor do the differences lie in the presence or absence of an element of fantasy.
Commercial fiction may have the surface appearance of everyday reality a
police detective novel is a good example (see John Greens novels as well) but
have little significance beyond the reality depicted.

On the other hand, a fanciful tale may impress the reader with a profound and
surprising truth.

The differences between the two kinds of fiction are deeper and more subtle than
any of these distinctions.

Perhaps we can clarify the differences by analogy:

Commercial writers are like inventors who devise a contrivance for our diversion.
Such writers are full of tricks and surprises: they pull rabbits our of hats, saw people
in half, and juggle brightly colored balls in the air.

By contrast, literary writers are more like explorers: they take us into the midst of
life and say, Look, here is the world in all its complexity. They also take us behind

the scenes, where they show us the props and mirrors and seek to dispel the
illusions.

More surely than commercial writers, they carefully shape their materials with
the intent that we may see, feel, and understand them better, not for the primary
purpose of furnishing entertainment.

In short, any fiction that illuminates some aspect of human life or behavior with
genuine originality and power may be called literary.

Such a story presents an insight whether large or small into the nature and
condition of our existence. It gives us a keener awareness of our humanity within
a universe that is sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile. It helps us to
understand our world, our neighbors, and ourselves.

What do we mean by short story?

The short story, by its very nature, is a more literary genre. Commercial writers
more often work in the novel form, which has proven more popular with mass
audiences that has the more subtle short story.

While there are types of commercial short stories that appear in mens and womens
magazines, the majority of short fiction published today appears in journals that are
called, in fact, literary magazines

For example:

The New Yorker
Black Clock
Ploughshares
Tin House
New England Review

just to name a few.

Because of their serious intentions and their brevity, short stories provide the ideal
vehicle for studying those elements of storytelling common to all literary fiction,
which is why most of the English textbooks youve used and most English curricula
in general feature them in such prominence.

The term short story itself is a highly elastic one. There is no minimum or
maximum word count, nor is there any set structure or formula. Additionally, the
short storys lack of commercial appeal has, in a way, helped its development as an
art form, for writers of short fiction, unconstrained by the demands of the
marketplace and a mass audience, are able to give free rein to their creativity and
imagination.

Radical experimentation, which might be ill-advised in the novel, is well suited

for the short story. ~Joyce Carol Oates

Approaches to Reading

Literary and commercial fiction call for different approaches to reading.

When we take a novel by Stephen King, Danielle Steel, or, dare I say, Stephanie
Meyer to the beach, we do not want to have to think much, if at all, about what
we are reading; we simply want a diverting way of passing the time.

When we read a literary novel or story, however, we are seeking
something different.

We expect a serious work to offer some of the immediate pleasures of a
well-told story, an original premise and intriguing characters, for
instance, but a literary work may also be more demanding of the reader
in terms of its language, structure, and complexity.

Ultimately, we expect to come away from a literary work with an
enhanced understanding of life.

In order to appreciate how it operates as a work of narrative art, we should read any
piece of literary fiction at least twice before we can fully grasp what it has to offer.

Try following this general procedure:

1. Read the story the first time simply to enjoy and familiarize yourself with it.

2. Read the story a second time, more slowly and deliberately, in the attempt to
understand its full artistic significance and achievement.

It is important to ask, for instance, why a story is constructed in a certain way,
or why an author explores a specific characters inner life.

While many of these questions may be irrelevant to commercial fiction, with
literary fiction, we are willing to invest more time and energy into reading
more deliberately, and carefully rereading, because we know the personal
rewards will be greater.

In closing. . .

When we speak of different kinds of reading, we arent necessarily talking about
different kinds of people. Avid readers may read both commercial and literary
fiction, just as an individual may sometimes want fast food, or junk food, and at
other times a gourmet meal.

The primary distinction is between kinds of reading, not kinds of readers.

We also bring different expectations to our reading of these two different types of
fiction.

When we pick up a commercial novel, we come to the book with specific, fixed
expectations and will feel frustrated and disappointed unless those
expectations are met. Depending on the genre, some of these expectations may
include:

1. a sympathetic hero or heroine
2. a defined plot in which something exciting is always happening and in
which there is a strong element of suspense (a page turner)
3. a happy ending that sends the reader away undisturbed and optimistic
about life
4. a general theme, or message, that affirms widely held, conventional views
of the world.

By contrast, when it comes to literary fiction, we approach the work with a different
set of expectations. We are willing to expect the unexpected:

Instead of adopting a conventional way of storytelling, a literary author may
create a unique style or angle of vision to express his or her artistic truth (see
Catch-22)

Instead of a happy or conventional ending in which everything is tied together
in a neat package, a literary work may end in an unsettling or even unresolved
way, forcing us to examine our own expectations about the story itself, about
the way the story is told, and about our ingrained, perhaps unconscious way of
viewing a certain topic or idea that may have been challenged or changed by
what we have read (see Catch-22).

When reading literary fiction, it is important to keep an open mind.

If we approach a literary story in a serious, committed way, we will probably have a
more memorable and satisfying reading experience than the kind we derive from
commercial fiction, which we tend to forget as soon as we have consumed it.

Through the act of reading a story and sharing an authors imaginative vision, you
will gain not only a pleasurable experience but growth in your understanding of the
world and of the human condition.

Works Cited
Arp, Thomas R., and Greg Johnson. Perrines Literature: Structure, Sound & Sense. 11th
ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2012. Print.