Before They Were Novelists: 3 Killer Short Story Collections

I don’t think anyone would argue with the fact that even a rather mediocre dental hygienist makes more money in a given year than most writers make in a decade. Generally it is only the best of the best, the luckiest of the luckiest, or the most connected of the most connected who can do so well as to make a living off of their craft. And that’s the novelists. In a modern world where the screen (phone, TV or computer) is so ubiquitous that your local barbershop is likely to have 40 or more flat inches on their wall to help you pass the time, it seems fair to say that most writers would struggle to pay their cell phone bills if they tried to earn a living by exclusively writing short stories.

The temptation then is to leap to the conclusion that the short story is dead. And yet the New Yorker as I’ve heard it, continues to pay short story legends like Alice Munro and William Trevor a special fee to have first access to any story those writers send out – that’s how valuable these works are. And when the magazine does select a work for publication, even a dental hygienist would envy the purchase price. Then you get Francis Ford Coppola, who in 1997 started a magazine devoted to short stories and design. Zoetrope: All Story is based on the great director’s love of fiction and his belief that so many great movies come on the backs of great short stories. This would seem to bode well for the form’s future. So too does the inclusion below of two writers who came to the English world’s attention over the last decade not from their novels, but on the back of their debut story collections.

Perhaps you are only familiar one, two or all three of the world-class writers listed below as novelists. If so, you might want to also consider their masterful work in the short form, where narrative and poetry so often collide, and where a twist ending shocks the heck out of you in the best way possible – that “Usual Suspects” like turn that you never saw coming but when it comes you say, Of course!

The rest of this article, like most all the others I'm writing these days, can be found at Indigo's Fiction Blog. 

Jhumpa Lahumpa Lahiri at Angel Orensanz & Beyond

I think that I’ve always been someone more comfortable observing life ... intensely so as a child ...
-Jhumpa Lahiri (in conversation with Charlie Rose)


I once had a crush on a writer named Jhumpa
[pronounced joom-pa]
Last name: Lahiri
For years now
In my mind's ears and my poor wife's
She was Jhumpa Lahumpa
That's how I thought of her, how I referred to her
I couldn't stop

If you don't know, this is ridiculous
The London born, Bengali-Indian author from America
Her stories are not silly
They're New Yorker literary
Jhumpa doesn't write for kids
That's not her style
Not Jhumpa Lahumpa
Ahem, Lahiri
Sorry

No, but seriously
At 33
For her first book
Jhumpa Lahumpa
Lahiri!
Won the Pulitzer

It's that name
I can't stop converting it to Willy Wonka creations

Jhumpa, Lahumpa, zoomtitty doo

This is unfair
She is a serious writer
I have an actual anecdote

Last year I flew to New York to meet her
Truth told, I was to meet many famous writers
The annual New Yorker Festival

She'd share the stage with two other American scribes
Also with unique names
T. Coraghessan Boyle
And, really, what're you gonna rhyme that with
And Jeffrey Eugenides
Which only ever made me think of Eugenics
Which brings up the Nazis
And there's nothing funny about that
(Unless Tarantino, Roberto Benigni or Mel Brooks are involved)



But Jhumpa
Lahumpa
She didn't have to be funny
Her tense, realist, powerful stories sure weren't

The three writers were on a stage in a converted old synagogue
Angel Orensanz was the venue's name
Someone famous probably
I didn't google him
Left him a Sephardic Jewish left fielder in my mind
Angel Orensanz
If he'd been any baseball good
Shit, if he'd ever gotten to wear the pinstripes
They'd have had to name a fizzy citrus drink after him
Angel Orensanz
Ksh
Glug glug glug
Ahhh!

It was a Friday night
Sabbath eve at the old synagogue
Not that anyone seemed to notice

The writers were speaking

Jhumpa who had been Lahumpa
on that stage
In Angel Orensanz's wooden cathedral of a synagogue
Eugenidies and Coraghessan on either side
Up there she became Lahiri La-lousy

She was so cold and closed
As if she were angry to be there
To share
Not just uncomfortable
Because believe me, I was ready to give sympathy
To Jhumpa who had been
Lahumpa
We all were
Lovers of her Interpretation of Maladies
But this woman was downright contrary
What flow the other two writers on stage produced
Lahiri cancelled out
Like a negative bug lamp
Zapping any good buzz in the room
The Shul
The Orensanz

She was awful
Anti-social
Discomforting
Unsettling
Disagreeable
Awful

I couldn't help myself
Going up after
Joining the line of the many who went up after

No photo request
No, no, I don't want you to sign my book
Just hear my appreciation
Know my thanks
For your big-brassy talent
For the depth of your soul-shuddering insights

To the lined up folks before me
Lahiri was glass-eyed cold
That stage awful
It was also personal

Things would be different for me
For us
She and I
I knew
I was wrong
It was not
She shook my hand
She did not smile
Those cold eyes

There was no Lahumpa to this Jhumpa

Crush crushed
Romance over
I'd no longer even like her
It was decided

But then I heard that quote
That soundbite I wrote above
The half I wrote above
And the half I left to put here, below

...But I think that that’s really … always a part of me – the fact that I am very comfortable removing myself from actual experience.

It's not personal, Jon
You don't even know the woman
It's her books you fell for
Her short stories
Remember
I do
And soon
I'll return
She is that good
Jhumpa Lahumpa Lahiri