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Pif Magazine
Pif Magazine |
Minimalism and the Short Story -
In Minimalism and the Short Story - Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, and Mary Robison, literary critic Cynthia Whitney Hallett attempts to trace the origins of American Minimalist fiction, define it, and take on its critics. In other words, she steps into the waters of contemporary literature’s perfect storm. Despite the undeniable renaissance of the short story in the late seventies and eighties credited to Minimalist writers, nobody seems to like playing for the home team. Hallett quotes Raymond Carver, "somebody called me a ‘minimalist’ writer. But I didn’t like it. There’s something about ‘minimalist’ that smacks of smallness of vision and execution that I don’t like." Here’s Amy Hempel on the subject: "[T]he only thing I really felt unfair was a review in which my book was used as the occasion for a very tired essay on minimalism. . .I much prefer the term miniaturist." And Mary Robison once told me that for a long time she preferred the term ‘subtractionist’ because "that at least implied some effort." Hallett’s reluctance to analyze why "minimalism seems still to be one of the more disparaging" labels to fiction writers is a disappointment. We’re left to draw our own conclusions. The book becomes more forceful and convincing when Hallett defines the terms of minimalism. She begins with the famous Hemingway writing rule: "If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water." Hallett goes on to explain that a Minimalist story relies on dialogue and perfected surface details rather than introspective comments by the narrator or characters to tell a story. As Hallett points out, this fiction rejects "storyness" in many ways. Without the typical trajectory of conflict-development-resolution, readers eavesdrop on the characters. Storytelling is replaced by patterning, texturing — and the reader becomes a more active participant, puzzling out what’s been given and withheld. Hallett writes, minimalists "employ an aesthetic of exclusion — a prudent reduction of complex equations, a factoring-out of the extraneous until the complicated is expressed in its simplest terms." As Hallett wisely points out: "The artisans of minimalism and of the short story in general share the creative gift of knowing when to amplify, when to fade, and when to modulate — theirs is the ability to achieve a credible texture of consciousness without apparent strain." Hallett successfully argues that the "art of economy" of Minimalism has been an objective for some of the best short story writers of the past including Poe, Chekhov, Joyce, and of course, Hemingway. "Poe insisted that nothing in any story be extraneous to the fabric of the final effect, an effect to be felt by, known to, the reader." Chekhov’s stories also convince us that a character’s inner state is best conveyed through careful selection of details — "which first appeared realistic becomes profoundly figurative." It is difficult to leave this section of the book without asking yourself: what exactly is the Minimalist’s crime? Unfortunately, Hallett is less convincing when she analyses individual stories by Carver, Hempel, and Robison. Carver is difficult, because so much has been written about him and his writing in the past few years. Strangely, Hallett ignores much of the speculation and controversy surrounding his more expansive, later stories and attributes the change only to his recovery from alcoholism. Another disappointment comes in the Hempel section where Hallett doesn’t even mention Hempel’s latest book Tumble Home. Hallett also describes Robison’s work as more bleak and simplistic than I’ve ever read it. She somehow fails to capture the delicate entanglements of humor, disappointment, and tenderness in both Hempel’s and Robison’s stories. Maybe she sticks too closely to literary analysis when approaching these stories, forgetting, despite her well-thought-out arguments, that the short story writer’s "conscious codes of omission were designed to make an audience feel more than they understood." Tell us what you think. Email talkback@pifmagazine.com Want Pif to review your book?
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