Ebb and flow

Literary definitions often have an indeterminate quality. To state the precise formal characteristics of the novel or the short story is almost impossible. There are some basic tenets, but these forms are fluid; open to interpretation and experimentation. Is there, then, any grounds for conceiving of the ‘long story’ as a distinct entity? Caught somewhere between two already amorphous forms, it seemingly occupies a negative space, defined by what it is not.

Mandy Sayer’s lively and thoughtful introduction to this new anthology addresses the technical and stylistic nuances of the long story. Taking her lead from Richard Ford’s Granta Book of the American Long Story (1998), she argues that the long story has a complexity that enriches narrative possibilities, enabling it to ‘embrace more than one point of view without becoming a novella: that is, without diverging into subplots’. She arrives at enough of a definition to give her selection aesthetic unity while remaining fluid enough to include an interesting range of authors and styles.