It’s being said that short stories are making a comeback. Though I have to confess to a 30-year lapse from writing them, I don’t think the short story as a form ever went away. It has its solid tradition, its classic exponents, just as the novel does. In fact, long before there were things called novels there were short stories – the tales we all tell each other. As human beings we’re all short-story enthusiasts. It’s the novel that’s the oddity.



What there has been in recent times is a somewhat wilful separation of the two forms, resulting in the sense of a contest. Because one is “big” and the other “small” the short story has almost inevitably come off worse. This has led to the notion that, as publishing propositions, stories aren’t as viable as novels – a prejudice so ingrained that it’s become self-fulfilling.

But there’s no real contest. Much is made of the differences between short stories and novels, but I think it needs asserting that they have a great deal in common. Stressing the distinctions only creates the “two camps” mentality that can ultimately do the short story a disservice. The novel and the short story are both prose fiction. Both require narrative art. Both depend on the power of language. Both seek to embrace the human condition. A novel is a long story, a short story is a short one. Enough said.

Practitioners of the short story are apt to say it’s the more challenging form, partly so they can claim it requires superior skill, and partly, in defence, to explain why readers aren’t as keen on them as on novels – though that may be just feeding a myth. More challenging to write? Possibly, but in turning recently, after such a long gap, from novels to short stories I didn’t feel I’d become a different, more challenged creature. If anything, the opposite. I felt refreshed, happily reconnected with the writer of short stories I once was.

More challenging for the reader? Perhaps, but only superficially. Reading a novel is a process of habitation – the reader becomes a sort of lodger under a novel’s roof. This can be a comfortable, familiarising, even privileging process, but of course the lodger can start to get restless. With a short story the reader is only a visitor. He or she may not even be let into the house, they may only stand briefly on the doorstep peering in. But this mere visit or glimpse must be just as convincing as what a novel can offer by allowing the reader to stay.

Why did I return to the short story after so long? I really don’t know. One thing I’ve learnt in decades of writing is that things, mysteriously and surprisingly, just happen. Short stories were what I wrote when I started out as a writer and that was fine by me. I didn’t see them as stepping stones to something else. Then one day – mysteriously and surprisingly – I began a novel. Then I wrote a second novel … It seemed I’d become a novelist, even that short stories had deserted me.

I can’t say what a thrill it was for me suddenly to find myself writing them again. The big difference from those early days was that whereas then I wrote in a sporadic way, publishing each story – or trying to – when it was written, all the 25 stories in my new book came to me in such a steady stream that I soon felt they were contributing to some common enterprise, indeed a single book. I had no wish to publish them individually.

So England and Other Stories isn’t the typical “collection of stories”, a retrospective gathering-together of previously aired pieces. It’s all fresh work that quickly evolved for me into an integral endeavour. Each story, I hope, can be enjoyed separately, but my ideal reader would be one who reads them all in the order they’re presented. I hope such a reader would get something of the excitement I got in moving from world to different world – the liberation of writing a succession of short stories – yet constantly discovering echoes and connections: twenty-five human worlds that go some way to exploring the elusive plurality known singly as England. People who’ve read the book in this way have told me that it does indeed offer a cohesive experience. They’ve even said it’s a bit like reading a novel!

Extract

from Wonders Will Never Cease

When Aaron and I were younger we used to chase women. It’s a phrase. How many times do you actually see a man chasing a woman, say ten yards behind and gaining? We were both runners anyway, literally – athletes. With me it was the hurdles. We both did the same PE course at college, and girls were part of our physical education. I’ll be the first to say that Aaron was better at it than me. In his case it was more that the women chased him, or crawled all over him. It was how he was made. I tended to get his rejects. But even Aaron’s rejects could be something, and one day I married and settled down with one of them. Patti.

After that I didn’t hang out with Aaron so much. In fact we hardly heard from each other. Maybe he thought that by marrying Patti and settling down I was also letting the side down. Well, too bad.

I wouldn’t have said this ten years ago, but I think I’m the type who sees life like a book, with chapters. In one chapter you mess around, then you marry, have kids, get a place of your own, and so on. I’m not like Aaron. I wouldn’t like to guess how many books Aaron’s read. But that’s the point perhaps with physical education, it’s not really about reading.

It was an option anyway. If you did the course and got the certificate you could make a career, a life out of it. It was a chance. Meanwhile we were athletes too.

I never had any illusions about making it to the big competitions. I was just quite good at hurdling, I loved the hurdles. Aaron used to say, ‘Count me out, man. When I run, I want to run. I don’t want to run at something that’ll trip me up.’

I didn’t say, ‘Doesn’t that apply to women?’

They tripped him up and they crawled all over him. And they crawled all over him because he was quite a specimen. It was a vicious circle. But Aaron, I believe – just to talk about his running – could have been championship stuff. I say this as a qualified PE teacher.

More about England and Other Stories

“This is a sharp, beautiful collection: every story quick and readable but leaving in the memory a core, a residue, of thoughtfulness. Some are wicked, some are funny; others, such as “Was She the Only One” or “Fusilli”, encapsulate a huge but numbly personal crisis; some manage all three at once.” - M John Harrison

“All these stories are bits of England but they are bits of different Englands...”

Buy England and Other Stories

England and Other Stories is published by Scribner at £8.99 and is available from the Guardian bookshop for £6.99.

More about Graham Swift

Booker club: Sam Jordison rereads Swift’s Booker-prizewinning Last Orders

Wish You were Here, by Graham Swift - review

Author, Author: Graham Swift on ‘contemporary novels’

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