Under the Influence of Short Stories

How many times have I heard the question, "What book has influenced your life?" My comment is, in reply, "Tell me about a short story." I remember the story which changed my mother's life. The Dream Dust Factory, first published in 1947. Apparently, it was about a man who transported himself to this magical location when the going got tough by pushing an imaginary button in his brain. My mother even had a little hand signal when she was about to drift off from some tedious conversation; it involved touching her face with one finger and shooting me a wisp of a smile. Traveling on the train last week reminded me of a cautionary tale about expectations: a man working on a train route passes a house by the tracks on his run and waves to a woman and a child. Over the years, he begins to think of this as coming home. Eventually, the man retires and decides to go visit the woman. I don't recall whether the woman had also fantasized about the man waving at her through the years; I only remember the disappointment and shock (for the man, for the reader)when the man discovers the woman is not at all what he had hoped. Because of that story, I have been careful not to build up expectations, although generally, events in my life have exceeded the wild white mares of dreams. Another story which influenced me was O'Henry's, The Last Leaf. It taught me that death is an appointment we all have. The story saved me the wrenching, "If only I had..." In the story, the bedridden woman looks out the window at a tree in autumn and knows she will die when the last leaf falls, not before, not later. Nothing can prevent or alter this appointment. Poe's stories testified to the importance of mood and Isak Dinesen's, the spell of place. Arthur Conan Doyle made plotting and deduction as essential as a title. A short story is what my friend, Ellen, calls a "baklava event"--small, sweet, intense... and I would add, the taste lingers. Henry thought of Ray Bradbury's Golden Apples of the Sun and Billie Lu talked about the metaphorical imprisonment of women in The Yellow Wallpaper. Jenny said Gogol can't be beat for understanding the nature and propulsion of "habit" in our lives, that the world could be changed by discarding the pettiness of these daily decisions. Another form of entrapment? Frank O'Connor influenced my writing simply by his love of revision. His widow wrote a preface to a collection of his stories in which she said it would be the final version since he was now dead. I didn't know this about him but applauded when she said he rewrote stories after they were published. Like Mark Twain, Frank was a believer in getting the right word in the right place and having the lightning strike. John wrote: "I know you're looking for a short story by a writer who -- as Joyce might have put it -- succeeded in crafting an epiphany to fit into an economy size package. Perhaps like a small toy box in an animated cartoon. It opens and up pops a gigantic, fearsome clown. Two stories -- both read a hundred years ago and reread from time to time -- helped open a universe-sized door for me. The first was Salinger's A Perfect Day for Bananafish. I didn't know you could do that! It was a just a little grenade, but the shrapnel could have leveled a city. The second was William Faulkner's The Bear. Granted it's really a novel in disguise, but great writers deserve to get away with anything. Let bean counters color between the lines. Faulkner says 'Here is life in a universe that happens to be set in a place called Mississippi.' And it was and am I glad I got in." Will said he was affected by the struggles in Toilers of the Sea. Charlie's vote: "When I was in the Navy I read a Hemingway short story called, I believe, Up in Michigan (or maybe Minnesota). It made me realize how awful a woman's lot in life can be at the hands of a callous man." Perhaps because I am a descendant of the southwestern peoples who sat around fires under starry, expansive skies and told stories complete in one night is why I love a short story. Or it could have come from parables, as I thirsted for sermons using the illustration of a mustard seed or the lilies of the field. This is not to say I don't like novels. They are my favorites but if you list your ten best, one of them will always remind me of a short story. Short stories are the candy eggs with the dioramas delicately constructed inside, fragile ships in a bottle, or geodes cracked in half in a display case. They are exquisite miniatures bringing a particular lesson from the outer world. They are a wink, a blown kiss, a sudden smile, a notebook with extra pages, a tiny gift of prophecy, a brief concentrated glance of recognition. In their brevity lies their strength. They are the poetry of prose.
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...may the blessings of fleeting golden moments be yours...