Annie Dillard wrote, âHow we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.â On the first of each month, Catching Days hosts a guest writer in the series, âHow We Spend Our Days.â
How We Spend Our Days / OCTOBER: DAVID JAUSS
As part of the How We Spend Our Days series, writer Jodi Paloni talks to October’s writer David Jauss about Alice Munro, Anton Chekhov, Raymond Carver, and the short story.
JODI: What was your reaction when you heard that Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature?
DAVE: I had pretty much given up hope that the Swedish Academy would ever recognize someone who wrote short fiction rather than novelsâafter all, not one of the previous winners wrote short fiction exclusivelyâso I was thrilled when she won the prize. I took it as reparation, 110 years late, for failing to give the award to Chekhov, and it made me feel that short stories just might finally start to get their due.
JODI: Iâve heard Munro referred to as Canadaâs Chekhov. How has her work instructed your writing and teaching?
DAVE: I wish I could say that my writing shows her influence, but alas, I donât think it does. Her work has definitely affected the way I teach writing, however. By subverting so many of the so-called ârulesâ of fiction, she has made me aware of possibilities available to fiction writers that I wouldnât have thought of on my own. Munroâs fiction is frequently described as âtraditional,â but it is anything but. Like Chekhov, to whom sheâs often comparedâindeed, itâs become almost obligatory to call her âthe Canadian Chekhovââshe is an extraordinarily innovative writer. Like him, she breaks every so-called rule in the book, and by doing so she reveals new ways to convey the depth and complexity of human experience.
But she hasnât been merely following Chekhovâs playbook. They share subtlety, a self-effacing, unprepossessing style, a sympathetic but unsentimental understanding of an enormous range of human beings, and a willingness to depart from the conventions of their times, but her approach to story-telling is quite different from his. Her stories are far more capacious than hisâand certainly far more capacious than mine. Itâs not unusual for her stories to cover decades, and they loop backwards and forwards in time in unexpected but always enlightening ways. And her handling of point of view is also more complex than Chekhovâs and virtually anyone elseâs. Anyone who believes the contemporary shibboleth that point of view should be consistent throughout a story would have that belief seriously tested by Munroâs brilliant modulations of point of view.
The best description of Munroâs original approach to both structure and point of view is her own: âA story is not like a road to follow,â she said, âit’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.â Ultimately, it is her innovations, especially in structure and point of view, that make her stand in relation to our time as Chekhov stood in relation to his, not any superficial similarity in their styles or their attitudes toward their characters.
JODI: I like that analogy of entering a house; itâs useful to think about writing a story in that way, especially about the way in which âthe world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows.â Do you think this kind of notorietyâa Nobel Prize in Literatureâwill serve the short story form?
DAVE: Iâm not expecting the world to reverse its novel-centric view of fiction anytime soon (or ever), but I do hope the prize makes people recognize that, in Munroâs own words, âthe short story is an important art, not just something you play around with until you write a novel.â For me, the short story is the most demanding and beautiful of all fictional forms. But donât take my word for it; take Gabriel GarcĂa MĂĄrquezâs. A few years ago, he said, âIâm convinced more than ever of the supremacy of the short story over the novel.â The short story may be small in size but not in ambition. As Stephen Milhauser has said, the âambition of the short storyâ is âto body forth the whole world . . . in a grain of sand.â Whereas novelists all too often make a molehill out of their mountain of material, short story writers can make a mountain out of a tiny grain of sand. Amy Bloom summed it up best: both forms scale Mt. Everest; the short story just does it faster.
JODI: Besides Chekhov and Munro, what other short story writers would you recommend to short story readers and why? Or, to use the old familiar question, if you were to be stranded with five story collections on a desert island, which ones would you hope theyâd be?
DAVE: Chekhov and Munro would definitely be on my desert island list, but since youâve asked for other choices, Iâll be greedy and take five nice fat ones: the collected stories of Hemingway, Faulkner, GarcĂa MĂĄrquez, Kafka, and Flannery OâConnor. But these are all books by established masters and your readers have probably already read them (if they havenât, they should do so pronto). So here are five of the many lesser known contemporary collections that I admire and wish were more widely read: Leslee Beckerâs The Sincere CafĂ©; Jack Driscollâs Wanting Only to Be Heard; Julie Orringerâs How to Breathe Underwater; Ann Pancakeâs Given Ground; and Eric Puchnerâs Music Through the Floor.
JODI: And, Carver?
DAVE: Raymond Carver was a very big influence on me, as many of my stories probably make all too clear. I was drawn to his work in the same way, and for the same reasons, I was drawn to Chekhov, who is to me the Lord God of short fiction. They both have a cold eye and a warm heart and write sympathetically about people quite different from themselves. I think of them as the literary equivalent of defense attorneys, writers who make the case for even the most flawed of us while looking unblinkingly at those flaws. OâConnorâs been a big influence on me as well, but I see her more as a prosecuting attorney, someone who is doing her damnedest to convict her characters. Even though she sees these âconvictionsâ as ultimately for the charactersâ goodâher goal is to show them, and her readers, the way to salvationâI think sometimes her heart is almost as cold as her eye, so Iâm less drawn to her. But lordy, can she ever write. I marvel at her storiesâand her essays, too. I think Mystery and Manners should be required reading of anyone who wants to be a fiction writer.
How We Spend Our Days: David Jauss
Catching Jauss: David Jauss on Point of View
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—Â Other Writers in the Series—
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Lovely and helpful as always. Many thanks to the three of you–Dave, Cyn, and Jodi–for birthing this one. Wonderful.
Thanks, Claire.
Nice to see you here, Claire. Hope you and your writing are going well.
I have to say to all of you that this interview has helped me realize that, although my world is all about Kidlit, I would be much more likely to read adult literature through short stories due to the fact that they are much faster reads than novels. Not that I’ve never considered it before, but it’s a bit clearer after having read your opinions on it. I mean, I own some short stories (e.g., The Best American Short Stories 2007 edited by Stephen King), so hopefully I’ll start fitting them in! Thanks đ
Thanks for your thoughts, Donna! Hope you find some stories to read and love.
Thanks, Cynthia—me, too! Reading fiction is becoming more and more of a luxury for me. I do hope that changes! đ Happy Saturday!
And feel free to take Dave’s advice on which ones to read. He has a good eye.