Prolegomenon to a Generic Study of the Short Story

In my efforts to understand qualities of story--or perhaps should say, that are short--I am always haunted by Ruth Suckow's stinging 1927 rebuke against critical use of definite article. All discussions of art on basis of `the' are unprofitable, scolded Suckow. I never meet any of these `thes' without wanting to say `Boo!' to its pretensions. The phrase the story, is fundamental stupidity, and to anyone who uses it, she mocked, I feel must inquire gently, `And who are you, my little man?' (318) Suckow was, of course, reacting to what one critic of time called an orgy of formalistic rules and formulaic stories that followed Brander Matthews's The Philosophy of Short Story and Henry's popular success during first 25 years of century, finally forcing even Edward O'Brien, most influential champion of form, to condemn story (along with its damnable rule books) as mechanized, mass-produced metaphor of machine age. However, knowledge of historical justification for Suckow's sarcastic skepticism is small comfort to me, for since my own attempts to discover what is unique about that are short began in early seventies, critics have been no less insistent in their rejection of all such efforts to characterize story as genre, Suzanne Ferguson concludes that there is no evidence that characteristic or cluster of characteristics distinguishes story from other (218). Norman Friedman says he does not believe there is definition of story more specific than a fictional narrative in prose (29). Mary Louise Pratt suspects that discovery of attributes of story is impossible, or if possible, not very interesting (111). And John W. Aldridge, in repetition of Edward O'Brien's reaction against form so many years ago, has recently blasted contemporary story as so much assembly-line fiction--all empty technique and no significance. Many critics have long argued that genre definitions are of dubious value--either so exact that they completely stifle what they pretend to describe or so general that they can be applied to any literary work. Benedetto Croce is simply most influential to have claimed that all genre descriptions either evaporate into general definition of art or appear as an arbitrary raising of works of art to status of genre and norm, concluding as vehemently as Ruth Suckow, All books dealing with classifications and systems of arts should be burned without any loss whatsoever (43 and 188). In what follows, would like to suggest that current critical attitude toward genre might be more hospitable to new approach toward generic understanding of story than it has been in past. At least, want to Jay bare some of causes of past critical resistance to generic theory of form and try to lay groundwork for new critical approach in future. The first problem wish to review is fact that resistance to generic theory of form by most critics from Suckow to Ferguson, Friedman, and Pratt is based on their failure to find, as Ferguson puts it, single characteristic or cluster of characteristics that ... distinguishes story from other fictions (218). Wittgenstein's shrewd solution to this Crocean refusal to accept universal entity present in all instances of kind or connecting relation that all items must share was, of course, family resemblance metaphor: Do not look for something common to all, urged Wittgenstein, but rather for whole series of complicated networks of similarities and relationships that overlap and crisscross, sometimes involving overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail (31). However, even family resemblance compromise has not been without its critics. …