Genre Study

        In his famous review of Hawthorne’s Twice-told Tales, Edgar Allan Poe classifies the short story based on its “unity of effect and impression.” Building on this idea, literary critic Brander Matthews (1901) adds that this “essential unity of impression” “shows one action, in one place, on one day. A Short-story deals with a single character, a single event, a single emotion, or the series of emotions called forth by a single situation.”

        Although I entirely agree with Edgar Allen Poe’s short story dicta, I think Matthews’ definition could certainly be revised. I think his idea of a short story isn’t nearly broad enough as there are many short stories we have read this year alone that don’t fall under his criteria. One of the biggest exemptions from Matthew’s set of rules is Jenny Zhang’s “The Evolution of My Brother.” Matthews’ claim greatly limits the scope of short stories, but Zhang’s story heavily contradicts Matthews’ belief due to the range of its storytelling. The most notable example of this is the story’s sprawling timeline, which reaches out over more than a decade and covers most of the childhood of Zhang’s brother and directly contradicts Matthews’ idea of short stories revolving around one day. In fact, Matthews’ rule can be disproved with just one quote. “Several years after my brother tried to burn his lips on an electric bug racket, and many years after I accidentally burned my brother’s hair with a candle, I found out he would sometimes light a candle and wave his index finger back and forth through the flame.” Not only does this quote look back upon the early years of the story, it also shows how Jenny has had an impact on her brother after all this time, falsifying the limited scope Matthews tries to place upon the short story genre.

        Another notable contradiction of Matthews’ dicta from Zhang’s story is the idea of a short story revolving around one character. “The Evolution of My Brother” wouldn’t be complete if either Jenny or her brother were removed from the story. Zhang’s work may be the story of Jenny’s brother, but if they had turned Jenny into a minor character the story would fall apart due to how integral she was to her brother’s upbringing. Zhang combines the two character’s lives and makes it clear the story is about more than one person, but I think most people still consider “The Evolution of My Brother” to be a short story. The same can be said for the majority of the sibling stories we have read this year. For example, “If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi” may feature Premal as the “main character”, but if Deepak were never brought up the story would lose all weight behind it and become nonsensical. To me, saying that short stories only ever with a single character doesn’t make much sense.

        One rule Matthews sets that I don’t entirely disagree with is the idea of a short story revolving around one event. It may be true that stories such as “The Evolution of My Brother” feature a wide variety of small scale events, but they typically have one big occurrence that connects them all. In Zhang’s story, this event would likely be Jenny’s leave for college. Most of the events discussed in the story take place years apart from Jenny’s departure, but the way Jenny looks back upon them after the fact is what gives the story its emotional weight and it can be argued Jenny would have never looked back upon these events in such a way if she never left.  I still think this dicta would be better if it was much broader, but it’s the one rule of Matthews’ that I can somewhat agree with.

        If I had to rewrite the dicta of Matthews’ I would make it much broader and simpler in a way similar to Poe’s. There aren’t many rules you can set for short stories that haven’t already been broken, so I would just make a small comment about how short stories are about getting you engaged, immersed, and pondering as quickly as possible and would leave it at that. Trying to say anything more would likely go against many tales that I myself consider to be short stories. Trying to categorize an entire category of stories that doesn’t have a set theme or tone such as fantasy or mystery is damn near impossible when it comes to specifics. It’s a finicky genre to describe and I think the less I try my hand at categorizing it, the better.