How do we read short stories?

Fsjl asks whether short stories should be perceived as novels in miniature, or as vignettes or as sketches. I'm tempted to say, well, they could be any of those. They could be all of those. They can be anything, because, after all, everything is everything these days. If Bristol Palin's breach of the sixth commandment – remember those ten rules written on the tablets that Moses struggled down the hill with? – has suddenly become the epitome of Christian virtue because she happens to be making a baby, well, who can doubt my argument? (I have to confess that I'm thinking of writing an epistemological essay called, "Everything is Everything" – footnote to Prof. Lauryn Hill whose ruminations inspired the title.) It's the age of prestidigitation, the age of virtual obeah. (I confess that I visited a few blogs this evening and they've left me a little bit high.) Everything is up here in the sky, and boy, believe me, it IS everything, double entendre intended! And in the midst of this plenty, who cares that Jamaican children don't know about Miss Lou and many have never heard an Anansi story? Who cares that there are teachers, in Jamaica and elsewhere, who can't tell the difference between a newspaper report and a story – long or short? And is there a difference? Don't both have a beginning, a middle and an end? Can't both affect you emotionally? Don't both have characters? So what makes the thing we call a short story itself and not something else? Apart from saying that a short story is by nature, short, it's not a question I plan to answer directly – not this time around anyway. Here are my reasons for not answering. We don't recognize things by applying definitions. That's an artificial activity. Indeed, definitions are, for the most part, a fiction. We imagine that because we can manipulate and describe things, we can define them. Not so. Outside the countable sciences, definitions don't hold, and once geometry gets into astrophysics and math graduates into infinity, supposed definitions in those sciences cease to hold as well. So how do you know anything? Recognize and identify it? By that same set of cognitive activities that you apply to know the difference between a duck, a turkey and a chicken! As has famously been said, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's a duck. The above, translated, simply means that if you hear and read enough stories, you know a story when you encounter it. I invoke that set of processes that one Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky described long ago: "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts." So you hear a tale from your Granny (an activity between people, and so interpsychological) and then it settles into you as an experience to which you apply the name, 'story' and you begin to form a concept (intrapsychological), creating a little mental hat that fits this thing-called-story. It is this earliest, most satisfying human activity that becomes the basis of our ability to appreciate history, our Holy Books, our family lore, the lays of ancient days, the Harry-Potter-length novels of now – and the short story. It is this earliest activity of storytelling in which I am now most interested, and that we all need to hustle to preserve. So, for the moment, here's my word on the short story: if it looks like one, sounds like one, affects you like one, then it's one. If at one end, it seems to be slipping into a vignette, and at the other, it's carrying on like a sketch, that's okay too. That's how things in life are. Call it a short story if you like. No harm done. So why did I say Ms Urquhart should have included only bona fide short stories in her Canadian collection? For reasons of pedagogy and practicality that we will treat of another time. Have a good weekend, be well and happy and stay dry! We'll talk again soon. Insha'Allah...