#136 A Little Ramble- Robert Walser
As we have already seen, the length of short stories can
vary greatly. From a few page O. Henry tale that is like an after-dinner
aperitif, to a 70-page, small-font missive by David Foster Wallace, each has
their own value. To try to limit such definitions would be a disservice. I’m
comfortable calling any short fiction less than a novel a short-story. Other
distinctions can be made in the matter of form and development of characters or
plot, but I have no need to parse these definitions here.
In any case, this piece by Robert Walser will certainly be
the shortest of the short stories surveyed here. Personally I think he fails in
whatever point he was trying to accomplish, but ends his story in a way that
almost stubbornly defends his brevity:
“We don’t need to see anything out of the ordinary. We
already see so much”
No comments:
Post a Comment