Abstract
The short story is commonly – and very productively – treated in the spirit of critical terms such as marginality and liminality. Quite surprisingly, though, New Weird Fiction, which postulates similar interests in, e.g., formal and aesthetic innovation as well as literary ambition, is primarily associated with the novel. The underlying lack of interest in the New Weird Short Story in both popular culture and academic work is scrutinised in this article. In a first step, it will survey the short story as a liminal form, both formally and aesthetically, and contextualize it by drawing upon the state of the literary market in the twenty-first century. The contribution’s main argument is that the short story has always either been considered to be too ‘popular’ or too ‘literary’ in order to contest the novel as the prevalent literary form. Step two will perform a similar move regarding Weird Fiction, thus highlighting the parallels between the short and the Weird, and the need for more academic attention dedicated to the New Weird short story.
References
Achilles, J., and I. Bergmann. 2015. Liminality and the Short Story. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781315817040Search in Google Scholar
Aguirre, M., R. Quance, and P. Sutton. 2000. Margins and Thresholds: An Enquiry into the Concepts of Liminality in Text Studies. Madrid: The Gateway Press.Search in Google Scholar
Bishop, K. J. 2004 [2003]. The Etched City: A Novel. New York: Spectra.Search in Google Scholar
Bould, M. 2017. “Pulp SF and its Others, 1918–39.” In Science Fiction: A Literary History, edited by R. Luckhurst, 103–29. London: The British Library.Search in Google Scholar
Butler, A. M. 2003. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at the British Boom.” Science-Fiction Studies 30 (3): 374–93.Search in Google Scholar
Butler, A. M. 2013. “The Tain and the Tain: China Miéville’s Gift of Uncanny London.” CR: The New Centennial Review 13 (2): 133–53. The British Boom, https://doi.org/10.1353/ncr.2013.0021.Search in Google Scholar
Chabon, M. 2010. “Trickster in a Suit of Lights: Thoughts on the Modern Short Story.” In Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands, 13–26. London: Fourth Estate.Search in Google Scholar
Chekhov, A. 1994. “The Short Story.” In The New Short Story Theories, edited by C. E. May, 273–7. Athens: Ohio University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Cortázar, J. 1980. “Some Aspects of the Short Story.” Arizona Quarterly 36 (1): 5–18. Trans. A. W. Hayes.Search in Google Scholar
Csicsery-Ronay, I.Jr. 2003. “Editorial Introduction: The British SF Boom.” Science-Fiction Studies 30 (3): 353–4.Search in Google Scholar
De Camp, L. S. 1975. Lovecraft: A Biography. New York: Doubleday & Company.Search in Google Scholar
Delaney, P., and A. Hunter. 2019. The Edinburgh Companion to the Short Story in English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.10.1515/9781474400664Search in Google Scholar
Drewery, C. 2011. Modernist Short Fiction by Women. Surrey: Ashgate.Search in Google Scholar
Edwards, E., and T. Venezia. 2015. “UnIntroduction: China Miéville’s Weird Universe.” In China Miéville: Critical Essays, 1–38. Canterbury: Gylphi.Search in Google Scholar
English, J. F. 2005. The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.10.4159/9780674036536Search in Google Scholar
Extrapolation 50 (2). 2009. (special issue on C. Miéville, edited by S. Vint).Search in Google Scholar
Freedman, C. 2015. Art and Idea in the Novels of China Miéville. Canterbury: Gylphi.Search in Google Scholar
Glover, D., and S. McCracken. 2012. Popular Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Goodreads. n.d. Goodreads, Inc. http://www.goodreads.com (accessed February 22, 2021).Search in Google Scholar
Gordimer, N. 1994. “The Flash of Fireflies.” In The New Short Story Theories, edited by C. E. May, 263–7. Athens: Ohio University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Hanson, C. 1985. Short Stories and Short Fictions, 1880–1980. London: Macmillan.10.1007/978-1-349-17685-4Search in Google Scholar
Humble, N. 2012. “The Reader of Popular Fiction.” In Popular Fiction, edited by D. Glover, and S. McCracken, 86–102. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CCOL9780521513371.007Search in Google Scholar
Jameson, F. 2015. “In Hyperspace.” London Review of Books 37 (17): 17–22.Search in Google Scholar
Jones, T. 2019. “The Weird Tale.” In The Edinburgh Companion to the Short Story in English, edited by P. Delaney, and A. Hunter, 160–74. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.10.1515/9781474400664-013Search in Google Scholar
Lanzendörfer, T. 2021. “How to Read the ‘Literary’ in the Literary Market.” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 69 (1): 9–23, https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2020-2026.Search in Google Scholar
Locke, J. 2018. The Thing’s Incredible! The Secret Origins of Weird Tales. Off-Trail Publications.Search in Google Scholar
March-Russell, P. 2009. The Short Story: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.10.1515/9780748632145Search in Google Scholar
May, C. E. 2002. The Short Story: The Reality of Artifice. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
May, C. E. 2004. “Why Short Stories Are Essential and Why They Are Seldom Read.” In The Art of Brevity: Excursions in Short Story Fiction Theory and Analysis, edited by P. Winther, J. Lothe, and H. Skei, 14–25. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.Search in Google Scholar
Meteling, A. 2017. “Gothic London: On the Capital of Urban Fantasy in Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, and Peter Ackroyd.” Brumal: Revista de Investigaciõn sobre lo Fantãstico 5 (2): 65–84, https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/brumal.416.Search in Google Scholar
Miéville, C. 2002. “Editorial Introduction.” Historical Materialism 10 (4): 39–49, https://doi.org/10.1163/15692060260474369.Search in Google Scholar
Miéville, C. 2008. “M.R. James and the Quantum Vampire: Weird; Hauntological: Versus and/or and and/or or?” In Collapse IV, edited by R. Mackay, 105–28. Falmouth: Urbanomic.Search in Google Scholar
Miéville, C. 2009. “Weird Fiction.” In The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by M. Bould, 510–5. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Miéville, C. 2011 [2005]. “Details.” Looking for Jake and Other Stories, 103–21. London: Pan Books.Search in Google Scholar
Morrison, B. 2017. “British Publishing and the Rise of Creative Writing: A Personal View.” In The Literary Market in the UK, edited by A. K. Nensel, and C. Reinfandt, 19–34. Tübingen: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen.Search in Google Scholar
Naimon, D. 2011. “A Conversation with China Miéville.” The Missouri Review 34 (4): 52–66, https://doi.org/10.1353/mis.2011.0085.Search in Google Scholar
Patea, V. 2012. “The Short Story: An Overview of the History and Evolution of the Genre.” In Short Story Theories: A Twenty-first Century Perspective, 1–24. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi.10.1163/9789401208390_002Search in Google Scholar
Poe, E. A. 1997 [1846]. “The Philosophy of Composition.” Graham’s Magazine XXvIII (4): 163–7. 04 April. Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore. https://www.eapoe.org/ (accessed February 15, 2021).Search in Google Scholar
Pratt, M. L. 1994. “The Short Story: The Short and the Long of It.” In The New Short Story Theories, edited by C. E. May, 91–113. Athens: Ohio University Press.10.1016/0304-422X(81)90033-4Search in Google Scholar
Reinfandt, C. 2017a. “The Present in Perspective: Mapping the Literary Market Today.” In The Literary Market in the UK, edited by A. K. Nensel, and C. Reinfandt, 1–18. Tübingen: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen.Search in Google Scholar
Reinfandt, C. 2017b. “Genres: The Novel between Artistic Ambition and Popularity.” In Handbook of the English Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, edited by A. K. Nensel, and C. Reinfandt, 64–81. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110369489-004Search in Google Scholar
Rohrberger, M. 1998. “Where Do We Go from Here? The Future of the Short Story.” In The Tales We Tell: Perspectives on the Short Story, edited by B. Lounsberry, S. Lohafer, M. Rohrberger, S. Pett, and R. C. Feddersen, 201–6. Westport: Greenwood Press.Search in Google Scholar
Rohrberger, M. 2004. “Origins, Development, Substance, and Design of the Short Story: How I Got Hooked on the Short Story and Where It Led Me.” In The Art of Brevity: Excursions in Short Story Fiction Theory and Analysis, edited by P. Winther, J. Lothe, and H. Skei, 1–13. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.Search in Google Scholar
Sacido-Romero, J. 2018. “Liminality in Janice Galloway’s Short Fiction.” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 66 (4): 443–59, https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2018-0037.Search in Google Scholar
Sangster, M. 2015. “Iron Council, Bas-Lag and Generic Expectations.” In China Miéville: Critical Essays, edited by C. Edwards, and T. Venezia, 185–211. Gylphi: Canterbury.Search in Google Scholar
Schneider, C. W. 2017. “London’s Destructions, Dreamed-Up and Real’: The Apocalyptic City of China Miéville.” In London Post-2010 in British Literature and Culture, edited by O. V. Knebel Doeberitz, and R. Schneider, 254–82. Leiden and Boston: Brill Rodopi.10.1163/9789004344013Search in Google Scholar
Smith, E. N. 2012. “Pulp Sensations.” In Popular Fiction, edited by D. Glover, and S. McCracken, 141–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CCOL9780521513371.010Search in Google Scholar
Thompson, J. B. 2012. Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century, 2nd rev. ed. Cambridge: Polity.Search in Google Scholar
Unique Selling Proposition. n.d. Entrepreneur.com. https://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/unique-selling-proposition-usp (accessed January 24, 2019).Search in Google Scholar
Watt, I. 1995 [1957]. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, 7th ed. London: Hogarth.Search in Google Scholar
Williams, M. 2010. “The Weird of Globalization: Esemplastic Power in the Short Fiction of China Miéville.” The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies 8: 30–40.Search in Google Scholar
Wolfe, G. K. 2011. Evaporating Genres: Essays on Fantastic Literature. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Young, E., and J. Bailey. 2015. British Women Short Story Writers: The New Woman to Now. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.10.1515/9781474401395Search in Google Scholar
Zähringer, R. 2017. “China Miéville, Embassytown.” In Handbook of the English Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, edited by C. Reinfandt, 518–35. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110369489-027Search in Google Scholar
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Introduction
- The Short Story, the New Weird, and the Literary Market
- Articles
- The Long and the Short of It: Approaching the (Un-)Representable in China Miéville’s “The Tain” (2002) and “The Condition of New Death” (2014)
- Descriptive Economy in the New Weird Short Story: China Miéville’s “The Condition of New Death”
- Mean Streets: Tracking the Dispositives of Address(es) with China Miéville’s “Reports of Certain Events in London”
- Character and Perspective in Cosmic Horror: Lovecraft and Kiernan
- Book Reviews
- Stefan Schubert: Narrative Instability: Destabilizing Identities, Realities, and Textualities in Contemporary Popular Culture
- Michael Weber: Die Chronologie von Emily Brontës Wuthering Heights. Literary and Cultural Studies, Theory and the (New) Media
- Müller, Timo: The African American Sonnet: A Literary History
- Books Received
- Books Received
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Introduction
- The Short Story, the New Weird, and the Literary Market
- Articles
- The Long and the Short of It: Approaching the (Un-)Representable in China Miéville’s “The Tain” (2002) and “The Condition of New Death” (2014)
- Descriptive Economy in the New Weird Short Story: China Miéville’s “The Condition of New Death”
- Mean Streets: Tracking the Dispositives of Address(es) with China Miéville’s “Reports of Certain Events in London”
- Character and Perspective in Cosmic Horror: Lovecraft and Kiernan
- Book Reviews
- Stefan Schubert: Narrative Instability: Destabilizing Identities, Realities, and Textualities in Contemporary Popular Culture
- Michael Weber: Die Chronologie von Emily Brontës Wuthering Heights. Literary and Cultural Studies, Theory and the (New) Media
- Müller, Timo: The African American Sonnet: A Literary History
- Books Received
- Books Received